From March 22-25, we will be attending the 2018 Association for Asian Studies (AAS) annual conference in Washington, DC.

Executive editor Lorri Hagman and advancement and grants manager Beth Fuget will be representing the Press at the conference. Come see us in the exhibit hall at booths 413 and 415, join us and NUS Press for a special book signing of Mediating Islam by Janet Steele, and follow along with the meeting on social media at #AAS2018.

We are thrilled to celebrate new and recent books across the range of our Asian Studies lists including volumes in our Global South Asia series, the Critical Dialogues in Southeast Asian Studies series, books in the Mellon-funded collaborative Modern Language Initiative (MLI), and recent book prize winners:

Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan: Commentary on the “Spring and Autumn Annals” translated by Stephen Durrant, Wai-Yee Li, and David Schaberg is winner of the 2018 Patrick D. Hanan Book Prize for Translation (China and Inner Asia) from the Association for Asian Studies. Read an excerpt from the volumes on Scribd.

Book signing with Janet Steele:

Saturday, March 24 at 5:15 p.m.

Mediating Islam: Cosmopolitan Journalisms in Muslim Southeast Asia
By Janet Steele
Critical Dialogues in Southeast Asian Studies

Broadening an overly narrow definition of Islamic journalism, Janet Steele examines day-to-day reporting practices of Muslim professionals, from conservative scripturalists to pluralist cosmopolitans, at five exemplary news organizations in Malaysia and Indonesia.

New and Forthcoming in Asian Studies

The Art of Resistance: Painting by Candlelight in Mao’s China
Shelley Drake Hawks
Art History Publication Initiative Books

The Art of Resistance surveys the lives of seven painters during China’s Cultural Revolution (1966– 1976), a time when they were considered counter- revolutionary and were forbidden to paint. Drawing on interviews with the artists and their families and on materials collected during her visits to China, Shelley Drake Hawks examines their painting styles, political outlooks, and life experiences.

Shanghai Sacred: The Religious Landscape of a Global City
By Benoit Vermander, Liz Hingley, and Liang Zhang
Forthcoming April 2018

Shanghai Sacred demonstrates how religions are lived, constructed, and thus inscribed into the social imaginary of the metropolis. Evocative photographs by Liz Hingley enrich and interact with the narrative, making the book an innovative contribution to religious visual ethnography.

Sexuality in China: Histories of Power and Pleasure
Edited by Howard Chiang
Forthcoming June 2018

Ranging from imperial times through the post-Mao era, chapters examine an array of topics, including polygamy, crimes of passion, homosexuality, and sex work. Collectively, they reconsider Western categorizations and explore Chinese understandings of sexuality and erotic orientation.

Living Sharia: Law and Practice in Malaysia
By Timothy P. Daniels
Critical Dialogues in Southeast Asian Studies

This book traces the contested implementation of Islamic family and criminal laws and sharia economics to provide cultural frameworks for understanding sharia among Muslims and non-Muslims.

Down with Traitors: Justice and Nationalism in Wartime China
By Yun Xia

Down with Traitors reveals how the hanjian were punished in both legal and extralegal ways and how the anti-hanjian campaigns captured the national crisis, political struggle, roaring nationalism, and social tension of China’s eventful decades from the 1930s through the 1950s.

Medicine and Memory in Tibet: Amchi Physicians in an Age of Reform
By Theresia Hofer
Studies on Ethnic Groups in China

Medicine and Memory in Tibet examines medical revivalism on the geographic and sociopolitical margins both of China and of Tibet’s medical establishment in Lhasa, exploring the work of medical practitioners, or amchi, and of Medical Houses in the west-central region of Tsang.

Slapping the Table in Amazement: A Ming Dynasty Story Collection
By Ling Mengchu
Translated by Shuhui Yang and Yunqin Yang
Introduction by Robert E. Hegel

Slapping the Table in Amazement is the unabridged English translation of the famous story collection Pai’an jingqi by Ling Mengchu (1580-1644), originally published in 1628. It includes translations of verse and prologue stories as well as marginal and interlinear comments.

Bringing Whales Ashore: Oceans and the Environment of Early Modern Japan
By Jakobina K. Arch
Foreword by Paul S. Sutter
Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books

Drawing on a wide range of sources, from whaling ledgers to recipe books and gravestones for fetal whales, Jakobina Arch traces how the images of whales and byproducts of commercial whaling were woven into the lives of people throughout Japan.

Buddhas and Ancestors: Religion and Wealth in Fourteenth-Century Korea
By Juhn Y. Ahn
Korean Studies of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies
Forthcoming June 2018

Two issues central to the transition from the Kory to the Choson dynasty in fourteenth-century Korea were social differences in ruling elites and the decline of Buddhism, which had been the state religion. In this revisionist history, Juhn Ahn challenges the long-accepted Confucian critique that Buddhism had become so powerful and corrupt that the state had to suppress it.

New and Forthcoming from Modern Language Initiative Books

Transforming Monkey: Adaptation and Representation of a Chinese Epic
By Hongmei Sun

At the intersection of Chinese studies, Asian American studies, film studies, and translation and adaptation studies, Transforming Monkey provides a renewed understanding of the Monkey King character as a rebel and trickster, and demonstrates his impact on the Chinese self-conception of national identity as he travels through time and across borders.

Forming the Early Chinese Court: Rituals, Spaces, Roles
By Luke Habberstad

Forming the Early Chinese Court builds on new directions in comparative studies of royal courts in the ancient world to present a pioneering study of early Chinese court culture. Rejecting divides between literary, political, and administrative texts, Luke Habberstad examines sources from the Qin, Western Han, and Xin periods (221 BCE-23 CE) for insights into court society and ritual, rank, the development of the bureaucracy, and the role of the emperor.

Many Faces of Mulian: The Precious Scrolls of Late Imperial China
By Rostislav Berezkin

In exploring the evolution of the Mulian story, Rostislav Berezkin illuminates changes in the literary and religious characteristics of the baojuan (precious scrolls) genre as a type of performance literature that had its foundations in multiple literary traditions.

New and Forthcoming from the Global South Asia series

High-Tech Housewives: Indian IT Workers, Gendered Labor, and Transmigration
By Amy Bhatt
Forthcoming May 2018

In this revealing ethnography, Amy Bhatt shines a spotlight on Indian IT migrants and their struggles to navigate career paths, citizenship, and belonging as they move between South Asia and the United States.

Making New Nepal: From Student Activists to Mainstream Politics
By Amanda Thérèse Snellinger

Based on extensive ethnographic research between 2003 and 2015, Making New Nepal provides a snapshot of an activist generation’s political coming-of-age during a decade of civil war and ongoing democratic street protests.

Mobilizing Krishna’s World: The Writings of Prince Savant Singh of Kishangarh
By Heidi R. M. Pauwels

Through an examination of Savant Singh’s life and works, Heidi Pauwels explores the circulation of ideas and culture in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries in north India, revealing how Singh mobilized soldiers but also used myths, songs, and stories about saints in order to cope with his personal and political crisis.

The Rebirth of Bodh Gaya: Buddhism and the Making of a World Heritage Site
By David Geary

This study of Buddhism’s most famous pilgrimage site examines the modern revival of Buddhism in India, the colonial and postcolonial dynamics surrounding archaeological heritage and sacred space, and the role of tourism and urban development in India.

Banaras Reconstructed: Architecture and Sacred Space in a Hindu Holy City
By Madhuri Desai

Desai examines the confluences, as well as the tensions, that have shaped this complex and remarkable city. In so doing, she raises issues central to historical as well as contemporary Indian identity and delves into larger questions about religious urban environments in South Asia.

Displaying Time: The Many Temporalities of the Festival of India
By Rebecca M. Brown

Using extensive archival research and interviews with artists, curators, diplomats, and visitors, Brown analyzes a selection of museum shows that were part of the Festival of India to unfurl new exhibitionary modes: the time of transformation, of interruption, of potential and the future, as well as the contemporary and the now.

Now Available in Paperback