Author: stephchun

New in the Hawaii Studies on Korea Series

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Non-Traditional Security IssuesIn the wake of political succession to Kim Jung Un, the issue of non-traditional security (NTS) is increasingly important. From the lasting effects of the famine of the 1990s to continued food shortages and the growing marketization of North Korean society, the Pyongyang regime is facing diverse and unprecedented challenges. Non-Traditional Security Issues in North Korea, edited by Kyung-Ae Park, offers cutting-edge analyses of emerging North Korean NTS issues by the world’s leading specialists in the field. It looks at these issues and their effects at the local, regional, and international level, as well as examining the international community’s efforts to promote an NTS approach to North Korea. More specifically, the volume addresses the traditional and non-traditional security paradigms, energy security, gender security, transnational organized crime, the internal and external dimensions of North Korea’s food security, the “Responsibility to Protect,” refugee issues and international law, and the role of NGOs in promoting NTS in North Korea.

Hawai‘i Studies on Korea
July 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3739-6 / $54.00 (CLOTH)

Chinese Modernity and Global Biopolitics Book Review Seminar

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Chinese ModernitySheldon Lu will be participating in a book review seminar of his recent book Chinese Modernity and Global Biopolitics: Studies in Literature and Visual Culture, at City University of Hong Kong on Friday, June 28, 4:30-6:30 pm. For more information, go to: http://ctl.cityu.edu.hk/NewsCentre/f_usr/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1356&FORUM_ID=8&CAT_ID=1&FORUM_TITLE=Upcoming+Events.

Professor Lu is also the editor (with Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh) of Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics and Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender.

UH Press Titles Make the 2013 ICAS Book Prize Short List

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Two UH Press titles have been short listed for the 2013 ICAS (International Convention of Asia Scholars) Book Prize in the humanities and the social sciences. Winners will be announced during the ICAS Book Prize Awards Ceremony on June 25, 2013, in Macao. Press director Michael Duckworth, marketing manager Colins Kawai, and acquisitions editor Pamela Kelley will be attending this year’s meeting.

Chinese Architecture and the Beaux-ArtsChinese Architecture and the Beaux-Arts, edited by Jeffrey W. Cody, Nancy S. Steinhardt, and Tony Akin

“[The] fascinating and under-appreciated cross-pollination of Eastern and Western architecture is thoroughly examined in [this] absorbing new book. . . . Although filled with handsome photos contemporary and historic, Chinese Architecture and the Beaux-Arts is no coffee-table book — this volume is a thoughtful and far-ranging account of international trends in architecture, which have been too little known in the U.S. It fills an important need and is certain to find its place in every serious library of architectural history.” —Traditional Building (2011)

Burning MoneyBurning Money: The Material Spirit of the Chinese Lifeworld, by C. Fred Blake

“Blake fully illustrates the common practice of burning paper money in the daily lives of many people throughout China, exploring the forces that have continued and transformed this old tradition from old times up to the present. His book is innovative and comprehensive in its interpretation of this common custom in China and will be welcomed by anyone interested in the living traditions and cultures of China.” —Asian Ethnology (71:2, 2012)

Faking It in China – Original Copies at the NYR Blog

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Original CopiesWhat drives China’s obsession with foreign styles? In a New York Review of Books blog post, “Faking It in China,” Ian Johnson provides some answers in his discussion of Bianca Bosker’s Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China:

“In her fascinating new book . . . Bosker focuses on the suburbs for the upper class that began to be built in the late 1990s, following the privatization of real estate. These are not just individual buildings but entire streetscapes, with cobblestone alleys, faux churches (often used as concert halls), towers, and landscaping designed to reproduce the feel of European and North American cities. . . . Original Copies is filled with analysis about why these developments flourish.”

Original Copies is part of the Spatial Habitus: Making and Meaning in Asia’s Architecture series and is
published in association with Hong Kong University Press.

For more on China’s architectural mimicry:
Copycat Architects in China Take Aim at the Stars: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/pirated-copy-of-design-by-star-architect-hadid-being-built-in-china-a-874390.html
China’s Copycat Cities: http://uhpress.wordpress.com/2012/12/03/foreign-policy-article-on-chinas-copycat-cities/

Dread and Enchantment in an Indonesian Literary Archive

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Situated TestimoniesThe Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer made a distinction between a “downstream” literary reality and an “upstream” historical reality. Pramoedya suggested that literature has an effect on the upstream flow of history and that it can in fact change history. In Situated Testimonies: Dread and Enchantment in an Indonesian Literary Archive, Laurie J. Sears illuminates this process by considering a selection of Dutch Indies and Indonesian literary works that span the twentieth century and beyond and by showing how authors like Louis Couperus and Maria Dermoût help retell and remodel history.

“This is a remarkable book in the way it attempts to tease out and crash through the barriers of self-restricting and self-restraining area studies. Situated Testimonies poses a challenge to Indonesianists as well as to many beyond the field. It is an adventure embarked upon with the help of Freud, Lacan, and other friends and foes. Sears demonstrates both the benefits and tribulations of such an endeavor. At its best, her book attains an impressive simplicity as it uncovers a sense of the world in both its subjects—the colonial and postcolonial literary figures—and its author as she thinks and writes about them.” —Rudolf Mrazek, University of Michigan

June 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3683-2 / $57.00 (CLOTH)

Student Migration and the Remaking of Asian America

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Transpacific ArticulationsIn 1854 Yung Wing, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, returned to a poverty-stricken China, where domestic revolt and foreign invasion were shaking the Chinese empire. Inspired by the U.S. and its liberal education, Yung believed that having more Chinese students educated there was the only way to bring reform to China. Since then, generations of students from China—and other Asian countries—have embarked on this transpacific voyage in search of modernity. What forces have shaped Asian student migration to the U.S.? What impact do foreign students have on the formation of Asian America? How do we grasp the meaning of this transpacific subject in and out of Asian American history and culture? Transpacific Articulations: Student Migration and the Remaking of Asian America, by Chih-ming Wang explores these questions in the crossings of Asian culture and American history.

“Wang’s incisive scholarship urges us to rethink the contours of ‘Asian America’ through a sophisticated analysis of ‘foreign students’ as transpacific subjects. By examining the transnational subjectivities and alliances that have been at the center of Asian America since its beginnings, Wang’s analysis helps to move beyond a dichotomous view of diasporism and nationalism. With a historian’s hand reaching deep into the archives and a literary scholar’s sophisticated eyes and ears for language, Wang presents a nuanced analysis of various forms of ‘translation’—linguistic, cultural, psychosocial, political—by foreign students that in turn shaped the ideals and struggles of the Asian American movement. —Mari Yoshihara, professor, Department of American Studies, University of Hawai`i at Mānoa

June 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3642-9 / $46.00 (CLOTH)

New Catalog Available: Books for Fall 2013

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Fall 2013
The UH Press Fall 2013 catalog is now available!

Highlights include:

* A beautifully illustrated guide to plants  for watersmart tropical xeriscape gardens  — The Watersmart Garden: 100 Great Plants for the Tropical Xeriscape

* A look at how current attempts to preserve Hawai‘i’s native fauna and flora are embracing the emerging paradigm of ecological restoration — Restoring Paradise: Rethinking and Rebuilding Nature in Hawai‘i

* A revised and expanded edition of a popular guidebook to East O‘ahu’s spectacular nature preserve — Exploring Hanauma Bay: Revised and Expanded

* California roll, Chinese take-out, American-made kimchi, dogmeat, monosodium glutamate, SPAM: an exploration of the other side of Asian gastronomy — Dubious Gastronomy: The Cultural Politics of Eating Asian in the USA

* A reconsideration of the sudden and dramatic emergence of aesthetic eccentricity during the Edo period — The Aesthetics of Strangeness: Eccentricity and Madness in Early Modern Japan

* Retelling and remodeling history in twentieth-century Dutch Indies and Indonesian literarature — Situated Testimonies: Dread and Enchantment in an Indonesian Literary Archive

* The first scholarly edition of a classic of Pacific history and anthropology — Mutiny and Aftermath: James Morrison’s Account of the Mutiny on the Bounty and the Island of Tahiti

* A comprehensive, empirically grounded study of the production, circulation, and reception of Japanese popular culture in Asia — Regionalizing Culture: The Political Economy of Japanese Popular Culture in Asia

* A book for those allergic to the wide-eyed superficiality of ordinary travel literature — A Faraway, Familiar Place: An Anthropologist Returns to Papua New Guinea

Rethinking and Rebuilding Nature in Hawai‘i

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Restoring ParadiseThree quarters of the U.S.’s bird and plant extinctions have occurred in Hawai‘i, and one third of the country’s threatened and endangered birds and plants reside within the state. Yet despite these alarming statistics, all is not lost: There are still 12,000 extant species unique to the archipelago and new species are discovered every year. In Restoring Paradise: Rethinking and Rebuilding Nature in Hawai‘i, Robert Cabin shows why current attempts to preserve Hawai‘i’s native fauna and flora require embracing the emerging paradigm of ecological restoration—the science and art of assisting the recovery of degraded species and ecosystems and creating more meaningful and sustainable relationships between people and nature.

“Bob Cabin has that rare gift of a scientist who writes like a novelist. The tale he tells is not so much about science as it is about courageous people—many of them dedicated volunteers—who are responding in very personal ways to environmental crises. These are people who are restoring impaired Hawaiian ecosystems in a heroic effort to recover Nature. Cabin, who has logged many hours as a restoration practitioner himself, explains that we can’t always return Hawai‘i’s fabled ecosystems back to the way they were in the past. Instead, he recovers as much as possible of the remaining native biodiversity and gives Nature the opportunity to reinvent itself in a contemporary expression. The story Cabin tells is one of fulfillment as Hawaiians engage directly in natural processes as if they were part of their own evolving ecosystems—and indeed they are.” ―Andre Clewell, Restoration Ecologist and President Emeritus, Society for Ecological Restoration

June 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3693-1 / $24.99 (PAPER)

UH Press Welcomes a New Director

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University of Hawai‘i Press is pleased to announce that Michael Duckworth will start as its new director on June 3.

Michael was director and publisher for four years at Hong Kong University Press, a bilingual press at one of East Asia’s leading universities. From 1995 to 2008, he served as acquisitions editor and later executive editor at University of Washington Press, where he was responsible for a diverse list that included Asian studies, American ethnic studies, architecture, and regional trade books in natural history. He has been a member of the Association for Asian Studies editorial board since 2000.

Before his career in scholarly publishing, Michael worked at the Wall Street Journal in New York and as a reporter for the Asian Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong, where he wrote business and cultural features on Hong Kong and China.

New in the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy Series

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Schopenhauer's Encounter with Indian ThoughtSchopenhauer is widely recognized as the Western philosopher who has shown the greatest openness to Indian thought and whose own ideas approach most closely to it. This book examines his encounter with important schools of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy and subjects the principal apparent affinities to a careful analysis. Initial chapters describe Schopenhauer’s encounter with Indian thought in the context of the intellectual climate of early nineteenth-century Europe.

Principal sections of the book consider the two main pillars of Schopenhauer’s system in relation to broadly comparable ideas found, in the case of Hindu thought, in Advaita Vedānta, and within Buddhism in the Mādhyamika and Yogācāra schools. Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the world as representation, or a flow of impressions appearing in the consciousness of living beings, is first considered. The second main pillar of Schopenhauer’s system, the doctrine of the world as will, is then examined and its relationship to Indian thought explored. This section of the work breaks new ground in the study of Schopenhauer, for although the similarity of his ethical and soteriological teaching to that of Indian religions (particularly Buddhism) has long been noted the underlying reasons for this have not been grasped. It is demonstrated that they are to be found in hitherto unrecognized affinities, of which Schopenhauer himself was largely unaware, between the metaphysics of the will and Indian ideas relating to karmic impressions (vāsanās), the store-consciousness, the causal body, and śakti as the “force” or “energy” that maintains the existence of the world.

Final chapters discuss the controversial and difficult question of the relation of the will to final reality in Schopenhauer’s thought in the light of Indian conceptions, and suggest that the two central pillars of his philosophy may be seen, to a greater extent than previously supposed, as a bridge by which the Eastern and Western traditions of philosophical thought may be brought into a closer and more creative relationship.

Society for Asian and Comparative Monographs, No. 24
May 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3735-8 / $50.00 (CLOTH)

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