Format: Open Access

New Threats to Academic Freedom in Asia (Dimitar D. Gueorguiev, Editor)

9781952636318. 202 pages

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New Threats to Academic Freedom in Asia examines the increasingly dire state of academic freedom in Asia. Using cross-national data and in-depth case studies, the authors shed light on the multifaceted nature of academic censorship and provide reference points to those working in restrictive academic environments.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface — Kamran Asdar Ali

Introduction: Progress Under Threat: Academic Freedom in Asia — Dimitar D. Gueorguiev

Academic Freedom in Asia from 1900 to 2021: A Quantitative Overview — Katrin Kinzelbach

Contesting Academic Freedom in Japan — Jeff Kingston

The State of Academic Freedom in Singapore’s World-Beating Universities — Cherian George, Chong Ja Ian, and Shannon Ang

Academic Freedom in China: An Empirical Inquiry through the Lens of the System of Student Informants (xuesheng xinxiyuan) — Jue Jiang

In the Name of the Nation: Restrictions on Academic Freedom in Contemporary Indonesian Higher Education — Stefani Nugroho

Afterword: Canary in a Coal Mine — Patricia M. Thornton

“This short book by an international and interdisciplinary set of scholars covers a lot of ground in illuminating ways. Through a combination of tightly focused case studies and sections that place threats to academic freedom in different parts of Asia into comparative and global perspective, it offers a valuable window onto a multifaceted issue of pressing concern.”
— Jeffrey Wasserstrom, author of Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink and former editor of The Journal of Asian Studies

“Where freedom of inquiry stops, other fundamental rights also suffer. Academic freedom, in that sense, is a fortress for free societies that value the pursuit of truth and unbiased knowledge. This book is a collection of excellent research that gives an alarming call to all scholars, researchers, and concerned individuals. It tells us that academic freedom is being increasingly threatened in many Asian societies, even in places where it has been taken for granted.”
— Ji Yeon Hong, Associate Professor of Political Science and Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies, University of Michigan

“I have long been searching for an answer to the conundrum of how authoritarian regimes aim to combine high global rankings with diminished academic freedoms. This insightful volume focused on Asia as a region of great ambition and increasing restrictions, provides the answer to this question and many others. A very valuable contribution to the literature on academic freedom globally.”
— Nandini Sundar, Professor of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics

“Nuanced and thoroughly researched, this volume offers new data to shed light on the state of academic freedom in Asia. An important and timely contribution.”
— Risa J. Toha, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Wake Forest University

“The case studies in this volume illuminate how tensions among traditional “strong states” in Asia, facing growing civil society, intellectual space, and geopolitical competition, resort to interference in academic institutions. It is an insightful comparative study that speaks beyond the Asian particulars, casting light on the vulnerability of the intellectual endeavor elsewhere as well.”
— Haruko Satoh, Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University

DIMITAR D. GUEORGUIEV is Associate Professor of Political Science in the Maxwell School of Citizenship Public Affairs and Chinese Studies Director at Syracuse University. Gueorguiev specializes in Chinese politics. Gueorguiev’s newest book, Retrofitting Leninism (Oxford, 2021), explores the limits and opportunities of non-democratic participation and digital control in China. Gueorguiev is also co-author of China’s Governance Puzzle (Cambridge, 2017).

Who Is the Asianist? The Politics of Representation in Asian Studies (Will Bridges, Nitasha Tamar Sharma, and Marvin D. Sterling, Editors)

VIEW THE BOOK LAUNCH AND DISCUSSION (from October 6, 2022)

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9781952636295. 220 pages.

Who Is the Asianist? reconsiders the past, present, and future of Asian Studies through the lens of positionality, questions of authority, and an analysis of race with an emphasis on Blackness in Asia. From self-reflective essays on being a Black Asianist to the Black Lives Matter movement in West Papua, Japan, and Viet Nam, scholars grapple with the global significance of race and local articulations of difference. Other contributors call for a racial analysis of the figure of the Muslim as well as a greater transregional comparison of slavery and intra-Asian dynamics that can be better understood, for instance, from a Black feminist perspective or through the work of James Baldwin. As a whole, this diversified set of essays insists that the possibilities of change within Asian Studies occurs when, and only when, it reckons with the entirety of the scholars, geographies, and histories that it comprises.

CONTENTS

Introduction: Do Black Lives Matter for Asian Studies? by Will Bridges, Nitasha Tamar Sharma, and Marvin D. Sterling

Who Is a South Asianist? A Conversation on Positionality by Hoda Bandeh-Ahmadi and Isabel Huacuja Alonso

A Different Way of Seeing: Reflections of a Black Asianist by Carolyn T. Brown

From Bhagdād to Baghpūr: Sailors and Slaves in Global Asia by Guangtian Ha

The Asianist is Muslim: Thinking through Anti-Muslim Racism with the Muslim Left by Soham Patel and M. Bilal Nasir

Racial Capitalism and the National Question in the Early People’s Republic of China by Jeremy Tai

Science without Borders? The Contested Science of “Race Mixing” circa World War II in Japan, East Asia, and the West by Kristin Roebuck

Toward an Afro-Japanese and Afro-Ainu Feminist Practice: Reading Fujimoto Kazuko and Chikappu Mieko by Felicity Stone-Richards

Black Japanese Storytelling as Praxis: Anti-Racist Digital Activism and Black Lives Matter in Japan by Kimberly Hassel

From Black Brother to Black Lives Matter: Perception of Blackness in Viet Nam by Phuong H. Nguyen and Trang Q. Nguyen

“We Have a Lot of Names Like George Floyd”: Papuan Lives Matter in Comparative Perspective by Chris Lundry

“In this uniquely conceived volume, editors Will Bridges, Nitasha Tamar Sharma, and Marvin D. Sterling have assembled a cast of progressive-minded contributors whose collective aim is to decenter Asian Studies from its customary self-absorption and circumscription and propel the discipline into a broadened engagement with and advocacy for Black Studies. Through its eclectic and insightful scholarship contending that such intersectionality can only benefit the interests of all parties, no work currently matches Who Is the Asianist? as an indicator and expression of the emerging imperatives within Asian Studies for racial equity and justice. More so than any other now available, this book fully represents and reflects the expanding vision and transformed agenda of the future that Asian Studies is destined to embrace.”

— DON J. WYATT, McCardell Distinguished Professor, Middlebury College and Chair, Diversity and Equity Committee, Association for Asian Studies

“These outstanding essays compel us to reflect on the ways in which the pernicious ‘color line’ belts the world (Du Bois), including Asia, but in ways that must be attentive to both the singularities of locality and the entanglements of our worlded conditions. This means that we must also interrogate the past and present of Asian Studies as a radicalized formation. A courageous, timely, and important intervention that should be read in and far beyond Asian Studies.”

— TAKASHI FUJITANI, Dr. David Chu Professor and Director in Asia Pacific studies, University of Toronto and author, Race for for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans During WWII

“This extremely timely and crucial book helps Asian Studies to finally reckon with its racial unconscious in epistemological, pedagogical, and institutional terms. It examines the racial logic in various Asian countries in relation to the global racial formation, and shows how such studies are critical for Asian Studies. A must read for all Asianists.”

— SHU-MEI SHIH, Irving and Jean Stone Chair in the Humanities, and Professor of Comparative Literature, Asian Languages and Cultures & Asian American Studies, UCLA

Will Bridges is Associate Professor of Japanese at the University of Rochester. His first monograph, Playing in the Shadows: Fictions of Race and Blackness in Postwar Japanese Literature was published by the University of Michigan Press in 2020.

Nitasha Tamar Sharma is Professor of African American Studies and Asian American Studies at Northwestern University. She is author of Hawai’i is my Haven: Race and Indigeneity in the Black Pacific and Hip Hop Desis: South Asian Americans, Blackness, and a Global Race Consciousness, both published by Duke University Press, and coeditor of Beyond Ethnicity: New Politics of Race in Hawai’i, published by the University of Hawai’i Press.

Marvin D. Sterling is Associate Professor, Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington. His research centers on the popularity of a range of Jamaican cultural forms in Japan, mainly roots reggae, dancehall reggae, and Rastafari. In a more recent line of research, he has shifted geographical perspectives from Japan to explore the Japanese community in Jamaica, one primarily centered on an interest in learning Jamaican culture at its source.

Teaching About Asia in a Time of Pandemic (Edited by David Kenley)

Teaching About Asia in a Time of Pandemic, edited by David Kenley, is a collaborative work between Asia Shorts and the AAS pedagogical journal Education about Asia.

9781952636196. 234 pages. Paperback. Also available in e-book and open access formats.

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In the spring of 2020, educators suddenly found themselves teaching remotely as they and their students began a multiweek period of pandemic-induced isolation. As weeks turned to months, administrators announced that students would not return to campus until the following school year and perhaps even longer. Teachers quickly scrambled to design new pedagogical approaches suitable to a socially-distanced education.

Teaching About Asia in a Time of Pandemic presents many lessons learned by educators during the COVID-19 outbreak. The volume consists of two sections. Section one includes chapters discussing how to teach Asian history, politics, culture, and society using examples and case studies emerging from the pandemic. Section two focuses on the pedagogical tools and methods that teachers can employ to teach Asian topics beyond the traditional face-to-face classroom. Both sections are designed for undergraduate instructors as well as high school teachers using prose that is easily accessible for non-specialists. The volume is a collaborative work between the AAS Asia Shorts series and the AAS pedagogical journal Education about Asia, exemplifying the high standards of both publishing ventures.

“Teaching about as huge and diverse a region as Asia is hard in ‘ordinary’ times. In the midst of a global health crisis, it may seem an even more daunting challenge. Fortunately, this timely collection offers teachers knowledge, wisdom, and advice from a community of colleagues who have thought deeply about how to help students enrich their lives through study of Asia. The many short and stimulating essays not only contextualize the pandemic in Asian history and contemporary Asia, but also provide practical suggestions for teaching about Asia in these challenging times.”
— Kristin Stapleton, University at Buffalo, SUNY

“This collection of twenty-one concise and well-written essays offers much needed intellectual and pedagogical sustenance for our COVID-19 times. Authored by academics at K–16 institutions in the U.S. and Australia, they offer timely and helpful guidance for understanding the responses of different Asian states and societies to the pandemic and appraising the tools and platforms available to enhance online teaching and learning about Asia. Whether you are a beginning or highly experienced instructor, you will find yourself wishing you had utilized some of the delivery strategies and technologies our enterprising colleagues have successfully utilized in classes ranging from language instruction to humanities and social science offerings to experiential classes. This is definitely a volume well worth bunkering down with along with our computers and loved ones!”
— Anand Yang, University of Washington

ABOUT THE EDITOR: David Kenley is Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Dakota State University. Formerly Professor of Chinese History at Elizabethtown College, he is committed to the concept of the scholar-teacher. His publications include Modern Chinese History (published in the AAS Key Issues in Asian Studies series), New Culture in a New World: The May Fourth Movement and the Chinese Diaspora, 1919–1932, and Contested Community: Identities, Spaces, and Hierarchies of the Chinese in the Cuban Republic (with Miriam Herrera Jerez and Mario Castillo Santana).

The Pandemic: Perspectives on Asia (Edited by Vinayak Chaturvedi)

The Pandemic: Perspectives on Asia, edited by Vinayak Chaturvedi, is a collaborative work between Asia Shorts and the Journal of Asian Studies.

9781952636172. 198 pages. Paperback. Also available in e-book and open access formats.

Please support the work of AAS by ordering print or ebook copies from our distributor, Columbia University Press.

The Pandemic: Perspectives on Asia provides analyses of the COVID-19 pandemic in Asia. It covers the first phase of the pandemic that will help future scholars to contextualize the history of the present. It includes interpretations by leading scholars in anthropology, food studies, history, media studies, political science, and visual studies, who examine the political, social, economic, and cultural impact of COVID-19 in China, India, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and beyond. Contributors are David Arnold, Manan Ahmed Asif, Mary Augusta Brazelton, Clare Gordon Bettencourt, Yong Chen, Alexis Dudden, John Harriss, Jaeho Kang, Ravinder Kaur, Catherine Liu, Kate McDonald, Sumathi Ramaswamy, and Christine Yano. The volume is introduced by Vinayak Chaturvedi and concludes with an afterword by Kenneth Pomeranz. The timely and provocative essays in the volume will be of interest to scholars, teachers, students, and general readers.

“Why have Asian societies, despite different political systems, been so successful in fighting the pandemic, while the United States and the UK have lost control with catastrophic consequences? The essays in this indispensable volume use history to illuminate the reasons for this ‘great divergence.’”
— Mike Davis, Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing, University of California, Riverside and author of The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu and the Plagues of Capitalism (2020)

“This is a rare book of essays that achieves what it sets out to do: generate new insights on the pandemic in and across Asian societies and histories. Technology, state making, ecology, and ideology are among the themes explored in brief but telling cameos. Not to be missed in learning and thinking about pandemics and society in a time of change in Asia and the world at large.”
— Mahesh Rangarajan, Professor of History and Environmental Studies, Ashoka University

“The topics in this collection are as varied as the course of the disease and its effects across Asia. Its value derives from the vivid portrayls of the relationships of the epidemic to histories, popular arts, public health, data regimes and surveillance, and not least, the use and abuse of political power. It captures the pandemic in medias res much as Boccaccio did for the Black Death.”
— Prasenjit Duara, AAS President 2019–2020, Oscar Tang Professor of East Asian Studies, and Director, Global Asia Initiative, Duke University

ABOUT THE EDITOR: Vinayak Chaturvedi is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. He is the former editor of the Journal of Asian Studies.