stephchun

UH Press Author Wins Outstanding Book Award

Posted on March 13, 2009 by stephchun

This month the Conference on College Composition and Communication will present it’s 2009 Outstanding Book Award to John M. Duffy for his book, Writing from These Roots: Literacy in a Hmong-American Community. As the book award committee noted in its discussion of the book, “it richly conceptualizes the study of literacy by considering its historical, personal, institutional, cultural, and transnational dimensions.”

The CCCC Outstanding Book Award is presented annually to authors or editors of a book published two years previously that makes an outstanding contribution to composition and communication studies. Books are evaluated for scholarship or research and for applicability to the study and teaching of composition and communication.

Representations of the Exotic in Twentieth-Century Japanese Literature

Posted on March 5, 2009 by stephchun

Readers worldwide have long been drawn to the foreign, the exotic, and the alien, even before Freud’s famous essay on the uncanny in 1919. Given Japan’s many years of relative isolation, followed by its multicultural empire, these themes seem particularly ripe for exploration and exploitation by Japanese writers. Their literary adventures have taken them inside Japan as well as outside, and how they internalized the exotic through the adoption of modernist techniques and subject matter forms the primary subject of The Alien Within: Representations of the Exotic in Twentieth-Century Japanese Literature, by Leith Morton.

“Leith Morton adds an exciting and valuable dimension to this field of criticism by introducing some relatively unknown but important writers and providing original and stimulating discussions of others who are under-treated but significant. By helping us look at these literary figures in a different light, he adds new layers to a fascinating subject.” —Susan Napier, Tufts University

February 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3292-6 / $56.00 (CLOTH)

A Penal History of Singapore’s Plural Society

Posted on March 5, 2009 by stephchun

During the nineteenth century, the colonial Straits Settlements of Singapore, Penang, and Melaka were established as free ports of British trade in Southeast Asia and proved attractive to large numbers of regional migrants. Following the abolishment of slavery in 1833, the Straits government transported convicts from the East India Company’s Indian presidencies to the settlements as a source of inexpensive labor. The prison became the primary experimental site for the colonial plural society and convicts were graduated by race and the labor needed for urban construction. Hidden Hands and Divided Landscapes: A Penal History of Singapore’s Plural Society, by Anoma Pieris, investigates how a political system aimed at managing ethnic communities in the larger material context of the colonial urban project was first imagined and tested through the physical segregation of the colonial prison. It relates the story of a city, Singapore, and a contemporary city-state whose plural society has its origins in these historical divisions.

Writing Past Colonialism
February 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3354-1 / $28.00 (PAPER)

Ethnobotany of Pohnpei

Posted on March 5, 2009 by stephchun

Ethnobotany of Pohnpei: Plants, People, and Island Culture, compiled and edited by Michael J. Balick and others, examines the relationship between plants, people, and traditional culture on Pohnpei, one of the four island members of the Federated States of Micronesia. Traditional culture is still very strong on Pohnpei and is biodiversity-dependent, relying on both its pristine habitats and managed landscapes; native and introduced plants and animals; and extraordinary marine life. This book is the result of a decade of research by a team of local people and international specialists carried out under the direction of the Mwoalen Wahu Ileilehn Pohnpei (Pohnpei Council of Traditional Leaders). It discusses the uses of the native and introduced plant species that have sustained human life on the island and its outlying atolls for generations, including Piper methysticum (locally known as sakau and recognized throughout the Pacific as kava), which is essential in defining cultural identity for Pohnpeians.

The work also focuses on ethnomedicine, the traditional medical system used to address health conditions, and its associated beliefs. 387 color illus.

Published in association with The New York Botanical Garden
February 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3293-3 / $28.00 (PAPER)

New Edition of Oceania Map Now Available

Posted on March 4, 2009 by stephchun

Completely revised and updated with enhanced readability, James A. Bier’s Reference Map of Oceania, Second Edition, is the most comprehensive Pacific map in existence. Its main map and 52 inset maps of all major parts of the region provide a wealth of information in one source. Principal cities, towns, and villages are shown along with roads, topography, and population figures where available. The main map’s Mercator projection is useful for planning routes. Time zones for the Pacific and individual countries are also included. It is the only map that clearly focuses on the political units of Micronesia, Polynesia, and Melanesia, using as its boundaries the 200-mile Extended Economic Zone. With more than 3,400 place names, Oceania will be an invaluable reference for everyone interested in or living in the Pacific islands, including teachers, students, historians, anthropologists, businesses, and travelers.

“Making sense of as complex an area as Oceania challenges the best of cartographers. Bier and the University of Hawaii Press have risen to that challenge producing a manageable double-sided sheet full of well laid-out information.” —Special Libraries Association Bulletin

February 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3108-0 / $9.95, color

The State in Myanmar

Posted on February 20, 2009 by stephchun

The State in Myanmar, by Robert H. Taylor, attempts to draw the complex history of state-making and state perpetuation in Myanmar in one volume. The social and economic forces, as well as international and domestic issues, which have made Myanmar one of the poorest and least understood Asian countries, are discussed. The efforts of Myanmar’s kings, British colonial officials, nationalist politicians, socialist ideologues, and army generals to preserve the state in Myanmar is a history worth attempting to understand on its own terms.

“A substantive addition to [Taylor’s] 1987 version of The State of Burma, [this work] continues the story of the evolution and development of the modern Burmese state to 2008. It is clearly one of the best books (if not the best) published in the English language on the modern state in Myanmar, particularly in terms of evidence, conceptualization, methodology, analysis, and perspective. As such, it has few, if any, equals. In large part, it is because the author is an unassuming and sensitive scholar of the country’s modern institutions for nearly half a century, grounded by frequent and long-term stays in the country that have provided first-hand and unique access to data, individuals, and events. In the latter sense too, the author has few equals. Thus, both his professional and personal experiences have given him the special wherewithal for producing such a work. For scholars and other educated readers genuinely interested in, and concerned about, the affairs and people of Myanmar, this book is required reading.” —Michael Aung-Thwin, University of Hawai‘i

February 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3362-6 / $28.00 (PAPER)

Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China

Posted on February 19, 2009 by stephchun

By the middle of the third century B.C.E. in China there were individuals who sought to become transcendents (xian)—deathless, godlike beings endowed with supernormal powers. This quest for transcendence became a major form of religious expression and helped lay the foundation on which the first Daoist religion was built. Both xian and those who aspired to this exalted status in the centuries leading up to 350 C.E. have traditionally been portrayed as secretive and hermit-like figures. Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China, by Robert Ford Campany, offers a very different view of xian-seekers in late classical and early medieval China. It suggests that transcendence did not involve a withdrawal from society but rather should be seen as a religious role situated among other social roles and conceived in contrast to them. Robert Campany argues that the much-discussed secrecy surrounding ascetic disciplines was actually one important way in which practitioners presented themselves to others. He contends, moreover, that many adepts were not socially isolated at all but were much sought after for their power to heal the sick, divine the future, and narrate their exotic experiences.

“This pioneering study overturns conventional wisdom about ancient Chinese religious traditions by vividly portraying the social processes by which adepts could achieve recognition and legitimacy as transcendents (immortals). Campany convincingly demonstrates that some forms of self-cultivation and asceticism were culturally scripted performances that could have a profound impact on the audiences who observed or read about them, and that both adepts and the individuals they encountered were involved in constructing narratives about transcendence. Making Transcendents succeeds in bringing these seemingly ephemeral beings down from the summits and the clouds by locating them where they have always belonged: in the hearts of their worshippers and acquaintances. This eloquently written book should prove an invaluable resource for both teaching and research.” —Paul R. Katz, Academia Sinica

February 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3333-6 / $48.00 (CLOTH)

Tonga: A New Bibliography

Posted on February 19, 2009 by stephchun

Tonga is a fascinating and subtle combination of a traditional Polynesian kingdom—the only one to survive the impact of colonization in the nineteenth century and remain independent—and a thoroughly Christian country. This comprehensive bibliography is a selective guide to the most significant and accessible English-language books, papers, and articles on every aspect of the kingdom’s history, culture, arts, politics, environment, and economy. It is a much updated and expanded edition of the original version that was published in 1999 as part of the World Bibliographical Series, with the addition of more than 200 new entries. Each of the approximately 600 described and annotated items is organized under broad subject headings, and indexed by author, title, and subject. In addition—and new to this edition—all known Ph.D. theses, although not annotated, are shown within their appropriate subject categories and indexed. Also new is a section on the most important Tonga-related websites. A general introduction describes the Tongan kingdom, its history and society, and its current situation.

“Tonga is unique among bibliographies in its perception and understanding, and in its affection for Tonga and its people. . . . Daly’s work stands on exceptionally sound foundations. . . . His summaries are excellent, indeed, but Daly writes always with the authority of first-hand knowledge, with a keen eye for the essential, and the ability to interpret and clarify obscurities. . . . A trustworthy introduction to Tonga in all its diversity, a splendid point de départ for all, layman or scholar, needing a reliable guide to the essential literature about this remarkable Polynesian kingdom.” —Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies

February 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3196-7 / $65.00 (CLOTH)

Socially Engaged Buddhism

Posted on February 19, 2009 by stephchun

Socially Engaged Buddhism, is an introduction to the contemporary movement of Buddhists, East and West, who actively engage with the problems of the world—social, political, economic, and environmental—on the basis of Buddhist ideas, values, and spirituality. Sallie B. King, one of North America’s foremost experts on the subject, identifies in accessible language the philosophical and ethical thinking behind the movement and examines how key principles such as karma, the Four Noble Truths, interdependence, nonharmfulness, and nonjudgmentalism relate to social engagement.

Dimensions of Asian Spirituality
February 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3351-0 / $16.00 (PAPER)

Roth Receives National Award for Social Justice Work

Posted on February 3, 2009 by stephchun

UH law professor and UH Press author Randall Roth was awarded the Gandhi, King, Ikeda Award from Morehouse College for his pursuit of social justice though nonviolent means. Roth received the award last month on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day at the tenth anniversary of “Victory Over Violence,” an activity of the International Committee of Artists for Peace.

The GKI Award was created by Morehouse College to celebrate the lives and work of three individuals from different cultures and countries whose common path of profound dedication to peace is recognized internationally. The award presentation emphasized Roth’s writings that call for transparency and accountability in government and charities.