Category: China

How Zen Became Zen Now Available in Paperback

Posted on by stephchun

How Zen Became ZenThe paperback edition of How Zen Became Zen: The Dispute over Enlightenment and the Formation of Chan Buddhism in Song-Dynasty China, by Morten Schlűtter, is now available.

“Its solid, sophisticated, and original research is undeniably outstanding. Schlütter presents us with many innovative and insightful observations and conclusions on the doctrinal and soteriological issues behind the enlightenment dispute, which greatly enhance our understanding of the development of Song Chan Buddhism. His exhaustive search and use of all available, relevant primary materials and well-crafted application of philological and sociohistorical approaches are especially remarkable. The achievements of this excellent work will serve to inspire the field for many years to come.” —H-Buddhism

April 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3508-8 / $27.00 (PAPER)
Studies in East Asian Buddhism, No. 22
Published in association with the Kuroda Institute

UH Press Distributing the Cornell East Asia Series and KITLV Press

Posted on by stephchun

University of Hawai‘i Press is pleased to announce it is now a distributor for the Cornell East Asia Series (excluding North America) and KITLV Press (North America only).

The Cornell East Asia Series is produced by the Cornell University East Asia Program and publishes a wide range of genres on subjects relative to the cultures of China, Japan, and Korea. For the complete list of titles distributed by UH Press, click here.

KITLV Press is the publishing department of the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies and is the publisher of the longest-running anthropological and linguistic journal in the world (since 1851), Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (BKI) / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia and Oceania. For the complete list of titles distributed by UH Press, click here.

Livia Kohn Leads Daoist Immersion Workshop

Posted on by stephchun

Livia Kohn, author of Chinese Healing Exercises: The Tradition of Daoyin, will lead “Daoist Immersion,” a week-long workshop that explores how living a Daoist life can make a difference in the world today. The workshop will be held in Bear Mountain Range, Cibola National Forest, near Albuquerque, New Mexico, September 11-18, 2010. For more information and to register email liviakohn@gmail.com or call 727-501-6915.

Professor Kohn is the author of many books on Taoism and Chinese religion and philosophy published by Three Pines Press, which is distributed by University of Hawai‘i Press.

Choice Magazine’s Outstanding Academic Titles for 2009 Announced

Posted on by stephchun

Each year Choice Magazine, the official publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries, compiles a distinguished list of Outstanding Academic Titles. The following two UH Press books were recognized for 2009. A complete list of titles will be available in Choice’s January 2010 issue.

Tour of Duty: Samurai, Military Service in Edo, and the Culture of Early Modern Japan
by Constantine Nomikos Vaporis

“Vaporis has written a magnificent book on the sankin kotai, or alternate attendance system. . . . Long considered the central political control mechanism of the Tokugawa period, the system has received surprisingly little scholarly attention until now. Filling a major gap in the understanding of Japanese history, the author provides a detailed account of the mechanics of the system and demands placed on daimyo and retainers on tours of duty in Edo. Exploiting the latest archaeological and archival sources, Vaporis makes clear the economic burden of the system on the daimyo, as well as its role as an engine of cultural, intellectual, and material exchange, from the center in Edo and between regions. The author also provides intimate details of the lives of samurai, both on the road to and from Edo and while serving their time in Edo. For all interested in early modern history. . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice (July 2009)

Kabuki’s Forgotten War: 1931-1945 by James R. Brandon

“Brandon offers new and intriguing research on the development of Kabuki through the turbulent 1930s and into the 1940s. . . . A vital addition to existing literature on what one thinks of as ‘traditional’ Kabuki, this book will be fascinating reading for those interested in Japanese theater, history, or politics. . . . Essential.” —Choice (April 2009)

Chinese Pop Music and Its Cultural Connotations

Posted on by stephchun

Cries of JoySince the mid-1990s, Taiwan’s unique brand of Mandopop (Mandarin Chinese–language pop music) has dictated the musical tastes of the mainland and the rest of Chinese-speaking Asia. Cries of Joy, Songs of Sorrow: Chinese Pop Music and Its Cultural Connotations, by Marc L. Moskowitz, explores Mandopop’s surprisingly complex cultural implications in Taiwan and the PRC, where it has established new gender roles, created a vocabulary to express individualism, and introduced transnational culture to a country that had closed its doors to the world for twenty years.

December 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3369-5 / $40.00 (CLOTH)

Sexuality in China on the Verge of Modernity

Posted on by stephchun

Polygamy and Sublime PassionFor centuries of Chinese history, polygamy and prostitution were closely linked practices that legitimized the “polygynous male,” the man with multiple sexual partners. Despite their strict hierarchies, these practices also addressed fundamental antagonisms in sexual relations in serious and constructive ways. Qing fiction abounds in stories of female resistance and superiority. Women—main wives, concubines, and prostitutes—were adept at exerting control and gaining status for themselves, while men indulged in elaborate fantasies about female power. In Polygamy and Sublime Passion: Sexuality in China on the Verge of Modernity, Keith McMahon introduces a new concept, “passive polygamy,” to explain the unusual number of Qing stories in which women take charge of a man’s desires, turning him into an instrument of female will. To this he adds a story that haunted the institutions of polygamy and prostitution: the tale of “sublime passion,” in which the main characters are a “remarkable” woman and her male lover.

“This book is a tour de force, the first in English to discuss Chinese fiction from the nineteenth century through the first decade of the twentieth within a comprehensive thematic frame. McMahon’s familiarity with Chinese fiction of the period covered is extremely impressive, as is his command of the secondary sources, both English and Chinese.” —Theodore Huters, UCLA

December 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3376-3 / $55.00 (CLOTH)

Heroes of China’s Great Leap Forward

Posted on by stephchun

Heroes of China's Great LeapHeroes of China’s Great Leap Forward: Two Stories, edited by Richard King, presents contrasting narratives of the most ambitious and disastrous mass movement in modern Chinese history. The objective of the Great Leap, when it was launched in the late 1950s, was to catapult China into the ranks of the great military and industrial powers with no assistance from the outside world; it resulted in a famine that killed tens of millions of the nation’s peasants.

Li Zhun’s “A Brief Biography of Li Shuangshuang,” written while the movement was underway, celebrates the Great Leap as it was supposed to be: a time of optimism, dynamism, and shared purpose. In contrast, Zhang Yigong’s short novel The Story of the Criminal Li Tongzhong, written two decades later, was one of the first works published in China to suggest a much darker side to the Great Leap. Although Zhang stopped short of portraying the horrors of famine, his tone of moral outrage provides a rejoinder to the triumphalism of “Li Shuangshuang.”

“The careful, accurate, and lucid rendition of these two stories allows scholars and students to mine the mentalities and conceptual worlds of the cataclysmic Great Leap Forward campaign. Together they provide a very useful window into China’s greatest self-made disaster in the 20th century and the sense made of it at the time and immediately after.” —Timothy Cheek, Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia

December 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3436-4 / $15.00 (PAPER)

The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition

Posted on by stephchun

The Chinese Aesthetic TraditionLi Zezhou (b. 1930) has been an influential thinker in China since the 1950s. Before moving to the U.S. in the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Li published works on Kant and traditional and contemporary Chinese philosophy. The present volume, a translation of his Huaxia meixue (1989), is considered among Li’s most significant works. Apart from its value as an introduction to the philosophy of one of contemporary China’s foremost intellectuals, The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition fills an important gap in the literature of Chinese aesthetics in English. It presents Li’s synthesis of the entire trajectory of Chinese aesthetic thought, from ancient times to the early modern period, incorporating pre-Confucian and Confucian ideas, Daoism, Chan Buddhism, and the influence of Western philosophy during the late-imperial period. As one of China’s As one of China’s major contemporary philosophers and preeminent authority on Kant, Li is uniquely positioned to observe this trajectory and make it intelligible to today’s readers.

November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3307-7 / $50.00 (CLOTH)

UH Press Now Distributing Shanghai Press

Posted on by stephchun

University of Hawai`i Press is pleased to announce it is now a North American distributor for Shanghai Press and Publishing Development Company, a mainland China publisher of fine books in English for general readers. Highlights include:

–full-color photo essays on Tibet, the Great Wall, the Yangtze, Shaoxing (hometown of Lu Xun, the father of modern Chinese literature), the legendary 20th-century Beijing opera star Mei Lanfang;

–full-color guides to Shanghai’s colonial Western architecture, Qufu (Confucius’ birthplace), China’s most famous cultural and natural sites;

–full-color introductions to Chinese civilization, tea, popular customs, classical furniture and home decor, architecture, calligraphy, brush painting, Beijing opera;

–the Cultural China Chinese-English Reader series, featuring abridged, bilingual editions of Chinese fiction and nonfiction for language students;

–colorful children’s books illustrating Chinese fables and idioms.

For a complete list of titles, please click here.

Chinese Avant-garde Art and Independent Cinema

Posted on by stephchun

Children of Marx and Coca-Cola
Children of Marx and Coca-Cola: Chinese Avant-garde Art and Independent Cinema, by Xiaping Lin, affords a deep study of Chinese avant-garde art and independent cinema from the mid-1990s to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Informed by the author’s experience in Beijing and New York—global cities with extensive access to an emergent transnational Chinese visual culture—this work situates selected artworks and films in the context of Chinese nationalism and post-socialism and against the background of the capitalist globalization that has so radically affected contemporary China. It juxtaposes and compares artists and independent filmmakers from a number of intertwined perspectives, particularly in their shared avant-garde postures and perceptions.

This book is the second volume in the Critical Interventions series.

November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3336-7 / $47.00 (CLOTH)

Polylocality in Contemporary Chinese Cinema

Posted on by stephchun

Cinema, Space, and Polylocality
In Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China, prominent China film scholar Yingjin Zhang proposes “polylocality” as a new conceptual framework for investigating the shifting spaces of contemporary Chinese cinema in the age of globalization. Questioning the national cinema paradigm, Zhang calls for comparative studies of underdeveloped areas beyond the imperative of transnationalism.

This book is the inaugural volume in the Critical Interventions series.

October 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3337-4 / $49.00 (CLOTH)

MENU