Eric Faden is Professor of Film/Media Studies at Bucknell University and Lead Producer of The Japanese Paper Film Project, co-winner of the 2025 AAS Sumie Jones Prize for Project Leadership in Japan-centered Humanities. To begin with, please tell us what your project is about. I am the lead producer on The Japanese Paper Film Project. […]
We are pleased to share an excerpt from the introduction of Modern Indian History, by Emily Rook-Koepsel, the latest addition to the Key Issues in Asian Studies series of classroom texts. This concise volume begins in the 16th century and carries readers through to the present day, covering the subcontinent’s major political, economic, and social […]
Carter J. Eckert, beloved teacher and mentor, passed away on December 13, 2024 in Cambridge, MA. I am relieved that this is only one of many remembrance pieces for Prof. Eckert, because there are so many dimensions to his life and career that no single account could begin to capture how special he was. Every account will […]
“Decolonization” is an academic, high-level word for a political process that has had consequences in the lives of millions of people. Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia following World War II involved the withdrawal of colonial administrations and the establishment of new nation-states in India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Malaya, and elsewhere. This, however, was not […]
Lawrence Zhang is Associate Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and author of Power for a Price: The Purchase of Official Appointments in Qing China, published by Harvard University Asia Center and recipient of the 2024 AAS Joseph Levenson Prize (pre-1900) honorable mention. To begin with, please tell us what your […]
What happens when ordained Buddhist monks and nuns break the law? In her new book, Buddhism in Court: Religion, Law, and Jurisdiction in China (Oxford University Press, 2024), Cuilan Liu (University of Pittsburgh) traces the origins and transformations of a two-millennia-old Buddhist campaign for clerical legal privileges that would exempt ordained monks and nuns from […]
Ho-fung Hung is Wiesenfeld Professor in Political Economy at the Johns Hopkins University and author of City on the Edge: Hong Kong under Chinese Rule, published by Cambridge University Press and winner of the 2024 AAS Joseph Levenson Prize (Post-1900). To begin with, please tell us what your book is about. The unrest and crackdown […]
When World War II ended in August 1945, Laos was among many Japanese-controlled territories in Southeast Asia facing the future with uncertainty. Would the country once again become part of French Indochina? Could it escape re-colonization and establish itself as a sovereign nation-state? On October 12, 1945, the Lao Issara—an anti-French nationalist movement—declared Lao independence, […]
“Many scholars, colleagues, and friends told me that Indian Buddhism was dead,” Douglas Ober notes, “so I had better seek out a different subject.” Undeterred, Ober continued working on his dissertation project on the history of Indian Buddhism, which in 2023 he published in revised form as Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism […]
Richard Jacob (“Dick”) Smethurst, a noted scholar of modern Japanese history at the University of Pittsburgh, passed away on May 4, 2024, at the age of 90 in the Westminster Place Senior Living facility in Oakmont, PA. Dick was born in 1933 in Carlisle, PA, the youngest son of Edward William (“Bill”), Sr. and Helen (nee […]
Morgan Pitelka is a professor of history and Asian studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of Reading Medieval Ruins: Urban Life and Destruction in Sixteenth-Century Japan, published by Cambridge University Press and winner of the 2024 Honorable Mention, John Whitney Hall Prize. To begin with, please tell us what […]
Nicole Willock is Associate Professor at Old Dominion University and author of Lineages of the Literary: Tibetan Buddhist Polymaths of Socialist China, published by Columbia University Press and winner of the AAS 2024 E. Gene Smith Inner Asia Book Prize. To begin with, please tell us what your book is about. Lineages of the Literary […]
In workshops and industrial spaces across North India, artisans practiced their trades: tailoring and carpentry, lithography, stonemasonry, and electroplating. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these skilled workers adapted to new tools and technologies, saw transmission of knowledge move from family workshops to technical schools, and dealt with the expanding presence of the […]
Joseph W. Esherick is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, San Diego and author of Accidental Holy Land: The Communist Revolution in Northwest China, published by University of California Press and winner of the 2024 AAS post-1900 Levenson Prize honorable mention. To begin with, please tell us what your book is about. […]
In this interview, AAS Membership Manager Bill Warner speaks with historian Dr. Sudev Sheth, Senior Lecturer at the Lauder Institute at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, about his recent book Bankrolling Empire: Family Fortunes and Political Transformation in Mughal India (Cambridge University Press, 2024). The book focuses on the Jhaveri family in the western […]
Christian de Pee is a Professor of History at the University of Michigan and author of Urban Life and Intellectual Crisis in Middle-Period China, 800-1100, which was published by Amsterdam University Press in 2022 and which has received an Honorable Mention for the 2024 AAS Joseph Levenson Prize (Pre-1900). To begin with, please tell us […]
“How did an impoverished country that was fully reliant on US military support until the 1970s modernize its defense and commercial industries in less than a decade?” This question propels the story that Peter Banseok Kwon (Assistant Professor of Korean Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY) traces in his new book, Cornerstone of the […]
Missionaries who left the United States for China in the early 20th century packed for overseas assignments that lasted years at a time. They needed clothing, of course; Bibles and other religious texts were tools of the trade. If they had additional responsibilities—as medical missionaries, for example—they would need equipment to carry out that work. […]
Mark Elvin, Emeritus Professor of Chinese History at the Australian National University and Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford, sadly passed away on 6 December 2023 in Oxford (England). Mark Elvin was an eminent scholar of Chinese history and the author of several ground-breaking works that changed the way in which China and its […]
Robert E. Entenmann, a longtime member of the Association for Asian Studies, died January 7, 2024 in Northfield Minnesota, having taught Chinese history at St. Olaf College for 36 years. A native of Seattle, Bob earned a B.A. in Chinese History from the University of Washington, an M.A. from Stanford, and a Ph.D. from Harvard […]
