Category: Asia

The Decorative Object in Early Modern China

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Sensuous SurfacesSensuous Surfaces: The Decorative Object in Early Modern China, by Jonathan Hay, is a richly illustrated and in-depth introduction to the decorative arts in Ming- and Qing-dynasty China. Hay explores materials and techniques, as well as issues of patronage and taste, which together formed a loose system of informal rules that affected every level of decoration in early modern China, from an individual object to the arrangement of an entire residential interior. By engaging the actual and metaphoric potential of surface, Hay contends, this system guided the production and use of the decorative arts during a period of explosive growth, which started in the late sixteenth century and continued until the mid-nineteenth century. This understanding of decorative arts in China made a fundamental contribution to the sensory education of its early modern urban population, both as individuals and in their established social roles. Sensuous Surfaces is also an elegant meditation on the role of pleasure in decoration. Often intellectually dismissed as merely pleasurable, Hay argues that decoration is better understood as a necessary form of art that can fulfill its function only by engaging the human capacity for erotic response.

September 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3361-9 / $63.00 (CLOTH)

Desire and Difference in Indonesia

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Falling into the Lesbi WorldFalling into the Lesbi World: Desire and Difference in Indonesia, by Evelyn Blackwood, offers a compelling view of sexual and gender difference through the everyday lives of tombois and their girlfriends (“femmes”) in the city of Padang, West Sumatra. While likening themselves to heterosexual couples, tombois and femmes contest and blur dominant constructions of gender and heterosexuality. Tombois are masculine females who identify as men and desire women; their girlfriends view themselves as normal women who desire men. Through rich, in-depth, and provocative stories, author Evelyn Blackwood shows how these same-sex Indonesian couples negotiate transgressive identities and desires and how their experiences speak to the struggles and desires of sexual and gender minorities everywhere.

“Falling into the Lesbi World sheds valuable light on the ways in which locally distinctive sensibilities articulate with regional, national, and transnational discourses bearing on the making of gender and sexual identities among Indonesia’s Minangkabau. This is a very sophisticated, nuanced, and theoretically provocative piece of work that is simultaneously lucid and compelling; it will be of great interest to Southeast Asianists and others committed to understanding gender diversity and sexual subjectivities in postcolonial contexts and beyond.” —Michael G. Peletz, Emory University

September 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3487-6 / $24.00 (PAPER)

First in Paperback: Neither Monk Nor Layman

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Neither Monk nor LaymanBuddhism comes in many forms, but in Japan it stands apart from all the rest in one most striking way—the monks get married. In Neither Monk nor Layman: Clerical Marriage in Modern Japanese Buddhism, the most comprehensive study of this topic in any language, Richard M. Jaffe addresses the emergence of an openly married clergy as a momentous change in the history of modern Japanese Buddhism. He demonstrates, in clear and engaging prose, that this shift was not an easy one for Japanese Buddhists. Yet the transformation that began in the early Meiji period (1868–1912)—when monks were ordered by government authorities to marry, to have children, and to eat meat—today extends to all the country’s Buddhist denominations.

“First-rate. Jaffe’s research is utterly original; virtually none of the issues covered have been seriously investigated in any other Western-language study, and there are precious few Japanese secondary studies in the area. The book is well organized, well balanced, and a delight to read.” —Robert Sharf, University of California, Berkeley

August 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3527-9 / $25.00 (PAPER)

Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF Now Available in Paperback

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Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF“Laurel Kendall has written a study of contemporary Korean shamans that is both entertaining and enlightening. Most studies of the topic treat shamans as an anachronistic remnant of the past. Kendall challenges that approach, drawing on several decades of close observation of shamans in action to reveal how shamanism is constantly evolving. It is an important work that will appeal to a wide audience.” —Don Baker, University of British Columbia

“With the publication of Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF, Laurel Kendall opens a new chapter in the study not only of shamanism in Korea, but also in many societies undergoing the process of industrialization and modernization. It is distinguished by its rich ethnographic data and novel theoretical approach to the field of Korean popular religion. One of its many merits is that, unlike conventional studies that focus on ‘authentic’ shaman ritual performances, it reveals a wide spectrum of shamans and rituals within a grand system of practice.” —Kwang Ok Kim, Seoul National University

“Laurel Kendall’s sympathetic and lucid writing consistently leads from vivid narratives to penetrating theoretical insights. In her hands the IMF becomes a brilliant trope for the interplay between magical causality and the bewildering modernity which moulds our lives, as it does the lives of her shamans’ clients.” — Piers Vitebsky, University of Cambridge

August 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3398-5 / $24.00 (PAPER)

Making Transcendents Receives Award for Excellence

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Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China, by Robert Ford Campany, has been selected to receive the American Academy of Religion’s Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion (historical studies category). The award will be presented during the 2010 AAR Annual Meeting in Atlanta, on October 30–November 1, 2010.

“If one day we arrive at a more profound understanding of the hidden agendas behind so much of Chinese writing, hagiographical as well as historical, Making Transcendents will undoubtedly have played a significant role in that process.” —Journal of Asian Studies

“Invaluable for anyone who wishes to understand the phenomenon of sanctity in general and the Chinese cult of xian in particular.” —Religious Studies Review

Discourses of Ch’angguk

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In Search of Traditional Korean OperaIn Search of Korean Traditional Opera: Discourses of Ch’angguk, by Andrew Killick, is the first book on Korean opera in a language other than Korean. Ch’angguk is a form of musical theater that has developed over the last hundred years from the older narrative singing tradition of p’ansori. Killick examines the history and current practice of ch’angguk as an ongoing attempt to invent a traditional Korean opera form to compare with those of neighboring China and Japan. In this, the work addresses a growing interest within the fields of ethnomusicology and Asian studies in the adaptation of traditional arts to conditions in the modern world.

August 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3290-2 / $48.00 (CLOTH)
A Study of the International Center for Korean Studies, Research Institute of Korean Studies, Korea University

Luo Guanzhong’s Comic Novel of the Ming Dynasty in Song Masquerade

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The Three SuiThe twenty-chapter novel The Three Sui Quash the Demons’ Revolt, is traditionally attributed to Luo Guanzhong (d. after 1364?), the alleged author of two of China’s most famous and beloved works of fiction, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and The Water Margin. The Three Sui tells the story of the uprising of adherents of the Maitreya Buddha led by Wang Ze in 1047–1048. Wang Ze was eventually executed and all future heterodox activity outlawed. Paradoxically, The Three Sui treats the rebellion as an occasion for slapstick, baggy-pants humor in which facts are distorted and wildly mixed with fiction.

“Lois Fusek’s annotated translation of this neglected work of traditional Chinese vernacular fiction makes a significant contribution to our understanding and appreciation of that important body of work. Her work is of the very highest order and in draft form has invariably met with an enthusiastic response from students in my courses on Chinese literature at the University of Chicago. There is a wonderful lighthearted insouciance about this text that makes it virtually unique in the history of Chinese fiction, and it should attract not only students of the subject but anyone interested in narratology, the history of fiction, or a good read.” —David T. Roy, professor emeritus of Chinese literature at the University of Chicago and translator of the Chin P’ing Mei (titled The Plum in the Golden Vase)

August 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3406-7 / $49.00 (CLOTH)

New Edition of Integrated Korean: Beginning 2

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KLEAR Beginning 2 TextThis is a thoroughly revised edition of Integrated Korean: Beginning 2, the second volume of the best-selling series developed collaboratively by leading classroom teachers and linguists of Korean. In response to comments from hundreds of students and instructors of the first edition, the new edition features a more attractive two-color design with all new photos and drawings and an additional lesson and vocabulary exercises. Lessons are now organized into two main sections, each containing a conversational text (with its own vocabulary list) and a reading passage. The accompanying workbook, newly written, provides students with extensive skill-using activities based on the skills learned in the main text.

Integrated Korean series
August 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3515-6 / $28.00 (PAPER)

Audio files for both the textbook and workbook may be downloaded in MP3 format at http://www.kleartextbook.com.

Cries of Joy, Songs of Sorrow Now Available in Paperback

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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.

August 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3422-7 / $24.00 (PAPER)

New Translation of Ise monogatari

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The Ise StoriesIse monogatari is one of classical Japan’s most important texts. It influenced other literary court romances like The Tale of Genji and inspired artists, playwrights, and poets throughout Japanese history and to the present day. In a series of 125 loosely connected episodes, the Ise tells the story of a famous lover, Captain Ariwara no Narihira (825–880), and his romantic encounters with women throughout Japan. Each episode centers on an exchange of love poems designed to demonstrate wit, sensitivity, and “courtliness.”

In The Ise Stories, Joshua Mostow and Royall Tyler present a fresh, contemporary translation of this classic work, together with a substantial commentary for each episode.

July 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3451-7 / $19.00 (PAPER)

New in the Hawaii Studies on Korea Series

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Soldiers on the Cultural Front
Soldiers on the Cultural Front: Developments in the Early History of North Korean Literature and Literary Policy, by Tatiana Gabroussenko, presents the first consistent research on the early history of North Korea’s literature and literary policy in Western scholarship. It traces the introduction and development of Soviet-organized conventions in North Korean literary propaganda and investigates why the “romance with Moscow” was destined to be short lived. It reconstructs the biographies and worldviews of major personalities who shaped North Korean literature and teases these historical figures out of popular scholarly myth and misconception. The book also investigates the specific forms of control over intellectuals and literary matters in North Korea.

July 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3396-1 / $49.00 (CLOTH)
Hawai‘i Studies on Korea
Published in association with the Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawai‘i

Media in Reform-Era China

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Mainstream Culture RefocusedSerialized television drama (dianshiju), perhaps the most popular and influential cultural form in China over the past three decades, offers a wide and penetrating look at the tensions and contradictions of the post-revolutionary and pro-market period. Zhong Xueping’s Mainstream Culture Refocused: Television Drama, Society, and the Production of Meaning in Reform-Era China draws attention to the multiple cultural and historical legacies that coexist and challenge each other within this dominant form of story telling. Although scholars tend to focus their attention on elite cultural trends and avant garde movements in literature and film, Zhong argues for recognizing the complexity of dianshiju’s melodramatic mode and its various subgenres, in effect “refocusing” mainstream Chinese culture.

“This is a very timely and original work that fills a significant gap in studies on contemporary Chinese culture. It does a compelling job in showing how and why these dramas on the small screen both dramatize and mediate the social and political transformations taking place in China today. The book will contribute significantly to Chinese media studies and cultural studies and, because many TV dramas are adapted from literary works, to debates on the changing status of Chinese literature and literary studies in an era infused with commercialism and visuality. This will be a path-breaking study.” —Zhen Zhang, New York University

July 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3469-2 / $27.00 (PAPER)

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