Category Archives: Conference Preview

Celebrating 50 Years of Asian American Literary History at UW Press for AAAS 2024

We are delighted to welcome the Association for Asian American Studies and its members to Seattle for AAAS 2024. This year marks fifty years of contributions to Asian American literary history here at the University of Washington Press and whether or not you’re attending the conference, we have lots in store to celebrate, including author talks and readings that are open to all.

Read on for information about upcoming events and new and forthcoming releases, and visit our virtual exhibit to discover more notable books in Asian American studies. We are pleased to offer AAAS members a 30% discount on all orders to US addresses with promo code WAAAS24 at checkout on our website through May 31, 2024.

New & Forthcoming Books

Island X: Taiwanese Student Migrants, Campus Spies, and Cold War Activism by Wendy Cheng

Public author talk on April 24, 3:30–5:00 pm

“A fascinating, lively account of the Taiwanese diaspora’s surprising influence on America—and America’s furtive investment in their fates, as well.”
—Hua Hsu, author of Stay True: A Memoir

Transpacific, Undisciplined ed. by Lily Wong, Christopher B. Patterson and Chien-ting Lin

AAAS panel on April 25, 10:00–11:30 am

“This superb collection deepens and necessarily challenges our understanding of the ’transpacific.’”
—Crystal Mun-Hye Baik, author of Reencounters: On the Korean War and Diasporic Memory Critique

Dancer Dawkins and the California Kid by Willyce Kim

Public event on April 26, 7:00–8:30 pm
AAAS panel: The Legacies of Aiiieeeee! on April 27, 1:00–2:30 pm

The newest release in the Classics of Asian American Literature series, “Willyce Kim’s groundbreaking debut novel . . . returns to us now in this beautiful new edition, a new home to these iconoclastic rebel lesbians, giving back to us a much-needed queer classic“ (Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel).

The Unknown Great: Stories of Japanese Americans at the Margins of History by Greg Robinson with Jonathan van Harmelen

Public author talk on April 25, 6:00 pm
AAAS Roundtable in Honor of Roger Daniels on April 26, 1:00–2:30 pm

“Greg Robinson is the foremost chronicler of not only the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, but also an eminent historian of the life of the community before and after. With a depth of research unlikely to be rivaled . . . he [offers] a glimpse into the fullness of humanity that otherwise would be obscured or forgotten.“
—Frank H. Wu, coauthor of The Good Citizen

Exiled to Motown: A Community History of Japanese Americans in Detroit by Detroit JACL History Project Committee

Drawing from a community-based oral history and archiving project, Exiled to Motown captures the compelling stories of Japanese Americans in the Midwest, filling in overlooked aspects of the Asian American experience.

Resisting the Nuclear: Art and Activism across the Pacific ed. by Elyssa Faison and Alison Fields

“Essential reading—informative, insightful, revealing, and timely. An important invitation to remember lives lost and impacted by nuclear disasters and to pause and review the ways nuclear power has been mobilized in relation to US imperialism and racial-settler capitalism.” —Susette Min, author of Unnamable: The Ends of Asian American Art

Upcoming Public Events

Island X: Taiwanese Student Migrants, Campus Spies, and Cold War Activism Author Talk
Wednesday, April 24, 3:30 pm at UW, Thomson Hall Room 317
Drawing on interviews with student activists and extensive archival research, Wendy Cheng documents how Taiwanese Americans developed tight-knit social networks as infrastructures for identity formation, consciousness development, and anticolonial activism. This free event will be held in person and streamed online. For more information and to register, visit the event page here.

The Unknown Great: Stories of Japanese Americans at the Margins of History Author Talk
Thursday, April 25, 6:00 pm at Densho
Through stories of remarkable people in Japanese American history, The Unknown Great illuminates the diversity of the Nikkei experience from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day. Acclaimed historian and journalist Greg Robinson, along with his collaborator Jonathan van Harmeen, examines the longstanding interactions between African Americans and Japanese Americans, the history of LGBTQ+ Japanese Americans, mixed-race performers and political figures, and much more. Robinson and van Harmelen will be joined in conversation with Nina Wallace, Densho Media and Outreach Manager, as they shine a spotlight on lesser-known stories and unheralded figures from Japanese American history.

This event will be held in person at Densho and is free to attend, but registration is required as there will be limited seating. For more information and to register, visit the event page here.

50 Years of Asian American Literary History at the University of Washington Press
Friday, April 26, 7:00 pm at the Seattle Public Library, Central Library
From the seminal anthology Aiiieeeee! and Carlos Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart to the most recent publication, Willyce Kim’s Dancer Dawkins and the California Kid, join us for a celebration of the UW Press’ contribution to Asian American literature in bringing classic works back into print and championing new writing. Hosted by Shawn Wong and featuring readings from Willyce Kim, Ching-In Chen, and Yanyi, with a Q&A moderated by Eunsong Kim. Books will be available from Elliott Bay Book Company.
This event is free, and registration is not required.

Welcome to Seattle, Association for Asian Studies and Scholars

The Association for Asian Studies annual conference draws thousands of scholars for multiple days of dynamic sessions, events, and a lively book exhibition. This year, the University of Washington Press is excited to welcome AAS 2024 to Seattle from March 14 to 17.

If you’re attending in person, visit us at booth 806 to browse selected and award-winning books in Asian studies, Asian art and art history, and more. Our virtual exhibit is open now, featuring a similarly wide array of new and notable books. AAS members can use code WAAS24 at checkout for a 30% discount and free shipping on all orders placed on our website through April 19, 2024.

Award-Winning Books in Asian Studies

We are thrilled to share that Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan: Elite Graffiti in Premodern Korea received an Honorable Mention for the 2024 James B. Palais Prize for English-language scholarly books published on Korea.

Congratulations to author Maya K. H. Stiller and all the honorees in this year’s prize competition.

“Stiller’s work provides a wealth of valuable insights into the history of social status, travel, and cultural production in mid- to late Chosŏn Dynasty Korea.”
—Asian Studies Review

AAS 2024 Events

Meet the Contributors: China’s Hidden Century
Friday, March 15, 1:00–2:00 pm at the UW Press Booth (806)

Stop by the UW Press booth to meet Anne Gerritsen, Steve Platt, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, and Chia-ling Yang, contributors of China’s Hidden Century. Copublished with the British Museum in conjunction with the critically acclaimed exhibition of the same name, this lavishly illustrated catalog is the first genre-spanning study of how Chinese cultural creativity flourished during the long final century of the Qing empire.

“The exhibition catalog’s seven essays . . . are a guide to this re-reading of the past, threading the relics on display into a rich tapestry of what life entailed under the last century of Manchu reign.”
—Mekong Review

University of Washington Asian Studies Reception
Friday, March 15, 7:30–9:30 pm in Room Willow B, Sheraton Grand Seattle

Join the University of Washington Asian studies community for a reception. Light appetizers will be served, and beverage tickets will be issued to the first 100 attendees (one per person) and may be used for cocktails, beer, wine, or soft drinks. Additional beverages will be available for purchase.

7:30 pm | Doors open
7:50 pm | Welcome from Danny Hoffman, Director of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies
8:00 pm | UW Press tribute to Lorri Hagman
9:30 pm | Doors close

Hosted by the UW Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, Department of Asian Languages & Literature, China Studies Program, UW Japan Studies Program, Center for Korea Studies, Taiwan Studies Program, East Asia Resource Center, UW Press, Tateuchi East Asia Library, Center for Southeast Asia and its Diasporas, East Asia Center, and South Asia Center.

Introducing the ‘Taiwan and the World’ Series

UW Press is proud to introduce our newest series in Asian studies, Taiwan and the World.

“The dynamic, emerging, and interdisciplinary field of Taiwan studies is in need of scholarly, book-length inquiries into themes germane to Taiwan’s history and society,” says series coeditor James Lin. “Among these are the island’s consecutive colonizations, rapid economic growth, maturing democracy, evolving national identity, race and ethnicity, indigenous peoples, social and cultural change, and contested international position in the shadow of a rising China. This new series will highlight these themes and more, as they affect interactions between Taiwan and the larger world.”

The first release in the series, Taiwan Lives: A Social and Political History by Niki J. P. Alsford, is now available and will be followed by the publication of Good Wife, Wise Mother: Educating Han Taiwanese Girls under Japanese Rule by Fang Yu Hu in September.

We welcome innovative works that will advance the teaching of Taiwan studies, inform policy discussions, and interest general readers. Inquiries and proposals can be directed to acquisitions editor Caitlin Tyler-Richards at ctylerri@uw.edu.

The Role of the Arts and Artists in Social Justice Movements: Editor Laura Kina on the Critical Ethnic Studies and Visual Culture Series

The Critical Ethnic Studies and Visual Culture series encourages innovative interdisciplinary antiracist work that challenges and transforms our understandings of race, ethnicity, and the visual.

As we prepare for the College Art Association (CAA) annual conference, taking place in Chicago from February 14 to 17, we are pleased to announce the inaugural series publications: Resisting the Nuclear: Art and Activism across the Pacific, edited by Elyssa Faison and Alison Fields, an interdisciplinary collection featuring historians, anthropologists, artists, and activists who explore the multifaceted forms of resistance to nuclear regimes; and Queer World Making: Contemporary Middle Eastern Diasporic Art by Andrew Gayed, building on global art histories and transnational queer theory to illuminate contemporary understandings of queer sexuality in the Middle Eastern diaspora.

Below, series editor Laura Kina shares more about what critical ethnic studies brings to the study of art and visual culture and how books in the series explore the role of the arts and artists in social justice movements, as well as the kinds of projects that will be considered and how to get in touch.

I am trained as an MFA visual artist—a painter who has been working in Asian American/Asian diasporic arts communities for over thirty years where the dividing line between artist, curator, activist, organizer, and community historian has long been blurred.

My entry to writing and editing grew organically through curating shows of fellow artists and working on public scholarship and archival work with my DePaul students for the Asian American Art Oral History Project and the Virtual Asian American Art Museum. I have since had the privilege of working with the University of Washington Press for two co-edited anthologies—with Wei Ming Dariotis, War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art, and with Jan Christian Bernabe, Queering Contemporary Asian American Art.

How can we decolonize artistic practices, pedagogy, curatorial, and art history? How can we use the arts to work towards land back; rematriation; reparations; abolition; and boycott, divest, and sanction movements? What should be made visible and what must remain opaque or only shared within specific communities? . . . These are some the challenges critical ethnic studies brings to the study of art and visual culture and that we look forward to exploring in the series.
Laura Kina

Coming out of community arts that center collaboration, I began to see intersectional and interdisciplinary scholarship on art and visual culture from social justice movement building and BIPOC knowledge making its way into the academy and popular culture. For example, terms such as settler colonialism, anti-Black-racism, structural racism, and decolonization have entered our everyday lexicon through diverse political movements including the 2016–17 #NoDPL Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, the 2020 racial reckoning in the US led by Black Lives Matter, and the current protests against the occupation of Palestine and the war in Gaza. In the last few months, Palestinian symbols of resistance—like the kufiyah, watermelon, and white kite—have also entered mainstream visual vocabulary. In the art world, questions of labor rights, censorship of artists, and questions of who is behind funding art institutions and their accountability has made headlines.

How, where, when, and who tells the stories of these complex histories through the arts? How can we decolonize artistic practices, pedagogy, curatorial, and art history? How can we use the arts to work towards land back, rematriation, reparations, abolition, and boycott, divest, and sanction movements? What should be made visible and what must remain opaque or only shared within specific communities? How do we engage visibility without falling into the trap of neoliberal visibility politics?

These are some of the challenges critical ethnic studies brings to the study of art and visual culture that we look forward to exploring in the series.

The first two works in the series, Resisting the Nuclear: Art and Activism across the Pacific and Queer World Making: Contemporary Middle Eastern Diasporic Art, reflect the goal, as outlined in our 2020 call for book proposals, to focus on art, new media, art history, visual anthropology, visual culture, craft, fashion, and other forms of cultural expression that brings together works that take up decolonization and social justice with an interdisciplinary and intersectional emphasis on race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, disability, and gender.

The series is committed to featuring books that center visual arts and media by, for, and about people of color, with themes of anti-capitalism, reparations, abolition, sovereignty, and the afterlife of slavery. Books in this series will feature critical work on white supremacy, settler colonialism, land dispossession, resource extraction, and cultural appropriation.

Aligned with the dynamic character of critical ethnic studies, the books in this series engage themes of borders, migration, diasporas, and transnationalism, and the relationship of the visual to these movements.

We welcome books that highlight not only the work of artist-activists and the role of the arts in social justice movements but books that bring together art with critical work about artistic practice. We especially encourage single-authored books, including monographs and accessibly written books that cross disciplines and reach out to wider audiences, including artists, students, and other readers interested in visual topics. We will also consider well-crafted and innovative anthologies and edited volumes.

Please send book proposals to Larin McLaughlin at lmclaugh@uw.edu.

Laura Kina is an artist and a Vincent de Paul Professor in The Art School at DePaul University. She is the coeditor of War Baby / Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art and Queering Contemporary Asian American Art.

The Critical Ethnic Studies and Visual Cultures series advisory board includes: Iyoko Day, Mount Holyoke College; Sarita See, University of California, Riverside; Guisela Latorre, The Ohio State University; and Amy Lonetree, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Related Books

From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California: Q&A with Kaitlin Reed, author of Settler Cannabis

The newest book in our Indigenous Confluences series, Settler Cannabis offers a groundbreaking analysis of the environmental consequences of cannabis cultivation in California that foregrounds Indigenous voices, experiences, and histories. Below, Reed shares about the ongoing effects of resource rushing in the state and how this history can inform the path toward an alternative future, one that starts with the return of land to Indigenous stewardship and rejects the commodification and control of nature for profit.

Can you tell us about your background and how your research for Settler Cannabis took shape?

It was never my plan to write a book about cannabis. Thinking back, my scholarly entanglements with cannabis began within the first few days of my freshmen year of college. Gathered in the hallway of our dorm building, my cohort and I exchanged introductions and pleasantries. I shared that I was a member of the Yurok Tribe in northwestern California—as soon as the word “Humboldt” left my lips, eyes lit up. I pondered: How had this commodified plant relative made its way over three thousand miles from Yurok ancestral territory to the Eastern Seaboard? And who was really paying the price? These questions would take a backseat for the next few years.

In 2014, I was an inexperienced intern working for the Yurok Tribe Environmental Program (now referred to as the Yurok Tribe Environmental Department). One July morning, I was drinking coffee at my desk. I opened my inbox to see a Los Angeles Times article that had been forwarded to all Yurok tribal employees. The headline read: “Massive Raid to Help Yurok Tribe Combat Illegal Pot Grows.” This has come to be known as Operation Yurok. While I sat safely in my office, other tribal members and employees, accompanied by dozens of law enforcement officers clad in camouflage and carrying assault rifles, made their way upriver. Their goal that morning was to eradicate cannabis cultivation and document the resulting environmental damages, both within and beyond the boundary of the Yurok Indian Reservation.

The health of ecosystems is directly connected to the vitality of Indigenous peoples.
Kaitlin Reed

That summer, and several summers to follow, the Yurok Tribe was under siege from illicit trespass cultivation. Illegal and unregulated water diversions were running our streams dry. Chemical pollution and human waste dramatically degraded our water quality. Our wildlife were intentionally and accidentally poisoned. Our traditional gatherers and basketweavers faced threats, physical violence, and intimidation from cannabis cultivators. And yet, all the while, the experiences of California Indian people were largely left out from mainstream cannabis discourse. For me, it became very important to document the ecological and cultural impacts of cannabis cultivation for Indigenous peoples not as a new phenomenon but as a continuation of settler-colonial resource extraction.

Can you share a brief overview of resource rushing in California and describe how this history connects to cannabis cultivation in the state today?

The book aims to connect the historical and ecological dots from the gold rush to the green rush. I argue that resource rushing, or the “rush” mentality, is a violent settler-colonial pattern of resource extraction that must be repeatedly played out—first gold, then timber, then fish, and now cannabis. While it may have started with gold, resource rushing did not end with gold. Resource rushing in California has always been less about the specific resource/relative in question and more about access and control over lands and the ability to assert ecological managerial authority. The real gold is not gold, after all, but the land itself. In Northern California a pattern of resource rushing has left a toxic legacy that shapes the historic context of emerging industries in the state. From the widespread use of mercury during the gold rush and its disproportionate impact on Indigenous fishing communities to the aerial spraying of atrazine over Yurok forests as late as 2013, the use of toxics within settler resource rushing has negatively impacted tribal peoples since invasion. California Indians have watched this pattern play out over and over again.

How does settler-colonial violence against the landscape correlate to violence on Indigenous bodies and cultures?

We are a part of the land, and the land is us. We mean that quite literally. When a group of people live in the same place for thousands of years, our ancestors become the soil, they become the Earth. The gifts we receive from Creator—Salmon, Elk, and Acorns—nourish us and become part of our bodies. In caring for the land, gathering the plants, dancing for the Salmon, we engage in an ancient relationship with our land bases, rooted in a connection and reciprocity that has developed over millennia. Additionally, the health of ecosystems is directly connected to the vitality of Indigenous peoples. For example, Yurok elders have said that as long as our River is sick, our people will never be healthy. This includes the Salmon people swimming upriver to spawn, the Tree people dependent on the marine nutrients their Salmon relatives will deliver to the forest, and, of course, the neediest of the bunch, the human people. Our health and vitality are tied to the health and vitality of our landscapes. If the River is sick, everything that depends upon the River will not flourish.

Is sustainable cannabis production possible? What might that look like?

While working on this book project, I received several invitations to speak at academic gatherings. This question comes up a lot. I tell these folks what I tell my students: here in California, our land was stolen only 170 years ago. Before that, our ecosystems thrived. The Salmon runs were so huge, our elders say you could walk across the River on their backs. To us, 170 years is not very long ago. For a people who have been here for tens of thousands of years—and, by the way, some argue over 100,000 years—170 years is a blink, a flash. So, my sustainable vision of cannabis production, then, is not focused on preserving folks’ ability to continue to cultivate for-profit cannabis.

As a result of the legacy of the settler state’s toxic relationship with lands and waters, coupled with the impacts of climate change, our River systems are reaching their breaking points. Our Rivers are choked and contaminated, yet more is demanded from them every day. Our River systems need time to heal, to recover. Demanding water allocations for yet another industry is like asking your relative, still in the intensive care unit recovering from a heart attack, to help you move your furniture. This is not to say that the cannabis industry, specifically, is the cause of this problem. Rather, it is a worldview that considers our water systems as resources to be plundered for export-based agriculture and other industries. My sustainable vision is land return. Decolonization. Ecologically speaking, I argue this is the only path forward. We need to operate within a framework of radical relationality that rejects the commodification and control of nature for wealth accumulation.

Kaitlin Reed (Yurok/Hupa/Oneida) is assistant professor of Native American studies at Humboldt State University.

Discover More Books in the Indigenous Confluences Series

See All Indigenous Confluences Books

New and Award-Winning in Asian American Studies for AAAS 2023

We look forward to connecting with everyone at the 2023 Association for Asian American Studies conference in Long Beach, California from April 6–8.

Browse new and forthcoming books in Asian American Studies by visiting our virtual exhibit. We are pleased to offer AAAS members a 30% discount on all orders. If placing an order through our website, you can take advantage of the conference discount with promo code WAAAS23 at checkout now through May 31, 2023.

2023 AAAS Award Winner

We are thrilled that the Association for Asian American Studies has awarded Eric C. Wat an Outstanding Achievement in History for Love Your Asian Body: AIDS Activism in Los Angeles.

In this community memoir, Wats connects the deeply personal with the uncompromisingly political by telling the stories of more than thirty Asian American AIDS activists. For many, the AIDS epidemic sparked the beginning of their continued work to build multiracial coalitions and confront broader systemic inequities. Detailing the intertwined realities of race and sexuality in AIDS activism, Love Your Asian Body offers a vital portrait of a movement founded on joy.

A brilliant, gorgeous, and nuanced rendering of queer Asian American activism in the 1980s and 1990s. This is the book I have been waiting for all my life.
—Anthony Christian Ocampo, author of The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race

This book is an inspiring work that deserves to be read as it is an integral piece towards understanding the queer Asian American struggle for sexual liberation and health equity.
—International Examiner

Discover New and Notable Books

Browse all Asian American Studies titles here.

UW Press at ASEH 2023

We are looking forward to connecting with everyone at the American Society for Environmental History Annual Conference, taking place in Boston, March 22-26. We are pleased to offer ASEH members a 30% discount on all orders. Stop by our booth at Exhibit Space 12 to meet our editors, browse our latest releases, and learn about forthcoming titles. Visit our virtual exhibit for more details.

For those not attending, or when placing an order through our website, you can take advantage of the conference discount through April 30, 2023 with code WASEH23 at checkout.

Book Signing with James Morton Turner, author of Charged

Thursday, March 23, 3:00-3:30 PM

Visit our exhibit space for a signing with James Morton Turner, author of Charged, “an eminently readable, elegantly precise treatise on the topic of batteries” (Science).

Turner unpacks the history of batteries to explore why solving “the battery problem” is critical to a clean energy transition. As climate activists focus on what a clean energy future will create—sustainability, resiliency, and climate justice—the history of batteries offers a sharp reminder of what building that future will consume: lithium, graphite, nickel, and other specialized materials. With new insight on the consequences for people and communities on the frontlines, Turner draws on the past for crucial lessons that will help us build a just and clean energy future, from the ground up.

Discover New and Notable Books

Visit our virtual exhibit to learn more about new and forthcoming books in environmental history.

Learn About Our Relevant Series

Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books explore human relationships with natural environments in all their variety and complexity. They seek to cast new light on the ways that natural systems affect human communities, the ways that people affect the environments of which they are a part, and the ways that different cultural conceptions of nature profoundly shape our sense of the world around us.

The Outdoors: Recreation, Environment, and Culture critically examines the dynamic social and political questions connected to outdoor experiences. While outdoor recreation provides a means to interact with nature and experience solitude or adventure, it also raises issues such as the dispossession of Indigenous lands, the exclusivity of recreational cultures, and the environmental impact of outdoor practices. This series aims to explore these tensions and the landscapes that have come to embody them.

UW Press at AAS 2023

If you’re attending the annual Association for Asian Studies conference this week in Boston, be sure to visit UW Press at Booth 415 for a 30% discount on new and notable books—from a pathbreaking study on a celebrated site of Buddhist art to an examination of wood and woodlands in Asian history. You can take advantage of our conference discount by entering code WAAS23 at checkout now through April 14.

2023 AAS Award Winners

Bei Shan Tang Monograph Prize

We are thrilled that two of our books received an inaugural Bei Shan Tang Monograph Prize, established to honor outstanding and innovative sole-authored monographs on Chinese art history.

Winner: What the Emperor Built: Architecture and Empire in the Early Ming by Aurelia Campbell. This book has also received an Honorable Mention for the Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award from the Society of Architectural Historians.

Honorable Mention: A Fashionable Century: Textile Artistry and Commerce in the Late Qing by Rachel Silberstein. This book was also awarded the 2021 Millia Davenport Publication Award, sponsored by the Costume Society of America.

Discover New and Notable Books

Learn more about these and other Asian studies titles in our virtual exhibit.

Attending CAA? Save 30% on UW Press Books

We look forward to connecting with everyone at the 2023 College Art Association annual meeting, taking place in New York City on February 15-18.

Be sure to visit UW Press in the Book and Trade Fair at booth 221 for a 30% discount on new and notable titles. We have a rich and varied catalog in Asian art, Native American and Indigenous art, visual culture, and more. Our virtual exhibit is now open, and you can take early advantage of the conference discount with code WCAA23 at checkout. The code will be valid for CAA members through March 15, 2023.

Discover New and Notable Books

Learn About Our Art and Visual Culture Series

Native Art of the Pacific Northwest: A Bill Holm Center Series

Publishing important new research on the Native art and culture of the greater Pacific Northwest, this series aims to foster appreciation of the dynamic cultural and artistic expressions of the Indigenous peoples of the region. Grounded in art history, the series encompasses investigations of historical productions and contemporary manifestations of cultural expression as well as the important intersections between time, place, technique, and viewpoint.

Critical Ethnic Studies and Visual Culture

This new book series engages insights from critical ethnic studies and visual culture, and encourages innovative interdisciplinary antiracist work that challenges and transforms our understanding of race, ethnicity, and the visual. Focusing on art, new media, art history, visual anthropology, visual culture, craft, fashion, and other forms of cultural expression, the series brings together works that engage decolonization and social justice with an intersectional emphasis on race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, disability, and gender.

See What’s New and Forthcoming from Our Publishing Partners

Welcome, ALA Midwinter!

The University of Washington Libraries and Press are pleased to welcome participants to the American Library Association’s 2019 Midwinter Meeting in Seattle. While you’re in town, we invite you to explore the city with self-guided walking tours from two recent UW Press books, Art in Seattle’s Public Spaces: From SoDo to South Lake Union and Seattle Walks: Discovering History and Nature in the City.

Excerpts from these books are freely available on the University of Washington’s instance of a new publishing platform, Manifold.

Two chapters from Seattle Walks will introduce you to a fascinating collection of clocks, gargoyles, and hatch covers stretching across the heart of the city, offering a glimpse into the histories behind them.

Hatch cover by Nathan Jackson, 1976

The chapter from Art in Seattle’s Public Spaces features extraordinary artwork in and around the Washington State Convention Center, including Games by the renowned artist Jacob Lawrence.

Games, Jacob Lawrence, 1979

Click here for information about these pieces and many more, and enjoy your walk!

New in Asian Studies for the Association for Asian Studies 2018 Annual Conference

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.