Duke University Press Log

Duke Authors at the Asian Studies Association Meeting

It was fun to sell books and meet authors at the 2013 annual meeting of the Asian Studies Association in San Diego last week.

Akhil Gupta and his book Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India. Gupta is also the author of Postcolonial Developments and co-editor of Culture, Power, Place.

 

 

Eleana J. Kim, author of Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging.

 

 

William Marotti,author of Money, Trains, and Guillotines: Art and Revolution in 1960s Japan.

 

 

David Novak, author of Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation (out in June).

 

Eric Tagliacozzo, co-editor of Chinese Circulations: Capital, Commodities, and Networks in Southeast Asia and The Indonesia Reader: History, Culture, Politics.

 

Thanks to staffer Emily Estelle Lawrence for the pictures!

 

 

Is K-Pop the Next Big Thing?

With the near ubiquity of Korean rapper Psy's video and song "Gangnam Style," most Americans have now had some exposure to the phenomenon of K-Pop, or Korean pop culture. Although K-Pop has been popular and influential in Asia for decades, many Korean artists have had trouble breaking into the US market. In this article in Spin, Kyung Hyun Kim, author of Virtual Hallyu: Korean Cinema of the Global Era, comments on PSY's ability to break into the U.S. market without sacrificing his Koreanness. "The tendency and thinking so far seems to have been that you have to erase Korean identity somehow to achieve success in the U.S. or overseas," he told Spin. "But I think that's been proven wrong with PSY's success. He's engaged in satirical humor — that I didn't know would translate, but apparently it does — and a kind of grotesque body humor, as well, that I always found outrageously funny when I saw him on [Korean] television over the years. I actually didn't even know he was a musician and a producer and a composer himself because he was just a funny face."

Kim is also the editor, with Youngmin Choe, of the forthcoming book The Korean Popular Culture Reader, which we are publishing in October 2013. The comprehensive and richly illustrated book of original essays will go well beyond current K-Pop phenoms like PSY to cover music, film, television, travel, and food. Contributors include Boduerae Kwon, Michelle Cho, Katarzyna J. Cwiertka, Sohl Lee, and Rachel Miyung Joo. The essays are fun and accessible and the book is suitable for courses as well as for fans of K-Pop. Check out an excerpt from the introduction on our Tumblr. We hope you'll keep an eye out for the book next year. 

Asian pop culture fans will also want to check out Rachel Miyung Joo's recent book Transnational Sport: Gender, Media, and Global Korea; and two books coming out this spring: Christine R. Yano's Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty's Trek across the Pacific and Ian Condry's The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan's Media Success Story. 

 

Congratulations to Our Award-Winning Authors

At this weekend's Latin American Studies Association conference, several of our books were honored with awards. Michelle Bigenho's Intimate Distance: Andean Music in Japan has won the Book Award from the LASA Section for Asia and the Americas. Paul Eiss has been awarded the LASA Mexico Section Book Award for his book In the Name of El Pueblo: Place, Community, and the Politics of History in Yucatan. Jerry Dávila's Hotel Trópico: Brazil and the Challenge of African Decolonization, 1950-1980 has won the LASA Brazil Section Book Award. The Brazil section also awared Amy Chazkel Honorable Mention for her book Laws of Chance: Brazil's Clandestine Lottery and the Making of Urban Public Life. And Kathryn Burns received Honorable Mention for the LASA Bryce Wood Award for her book Into the Archive: Writing and Power in Colonial Peru. 

Our authors were also honored at the Association of Asian Studies conference in March. Eleana Kim won the James Palais book prize from the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies for her book Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging. Yomi Braester's Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract was awarded the AAS China and Inner Asia Council (CIAC) Levenson Prize for Books in Chinese Studies. And Karen Strassler's Refracted Visions: Popular Photography and National Modernity in Java has won the AAS Southeast Asia Council Harry J. Benda Prize in Southeast Asian Studies. 

We also congratulate Carolyn Dean for winning the Association for Latin American Art Book Award for her book A Culture of Stone: Inka Perspectives on Rock. And Lauren Berlant's Cruel Optimism has won the 2012 René Wellek Prize from the American Comparative Literature Association. The 2012 Joel Gregory Prize from the Canadian Association of African Studies was awarded to Vinh-Kim Nguyen for his book The Republic of Therapy: Triage and Sovereignty in West Africa's Time of AIDS. And Sukanya Banerjee's Becoming Imperial Citizens: Indians in the Late Victorian Empire has won the Northeast Victorian Studies Association Sonya Rudikoff Award for the best Victorian book by a first-time author.

Congratulations to all our award-winning authors!

Duke Press at the Association for Asian Studies Meeting

The annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies took place in Toronto March 15-18. Editorial Director Ken Wissoker and Sales Manager Michael McCullough attended for the Press. We enjoyed selling books and meeting our authors.

Yomi Braester, author of Painting the City Red.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ian Condry, author of Hip-Hop Japan and The Soul of Anime (forthcoming Spring 2013). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kyung Hyun Kim, author of Virtual Hallyu. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madeleine Yue Dong, co-editor of The Modern Girl around the World.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yasmin Saikia, author of Women, War, and the Making of Bangladesh and Fragmented Memories.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robin Visser, author of Cities Surround the Countryside.

Eben Kirksey Calls on Obama to Do the Right Thing in West Papua

Guest post by Eben Kirksey, author of Freedom in Entangled Worlds: West Papua and the Architecture of Global Power.

Barack Obama meeting with President Yudhoyono of Indonesia.

Today five indigenous leaders in West Papua, the half of New Guinea under Indonesian rule, were charged with “treason.”  Hours ago they were each sentenced to three years in prison for peacefully protesting the government.  Barack Obama raised the issue of human rights in West Papua last November when he met with President Yudhoyono of Indonesia.  It is time for the President to once again raise his voice to support human rights in this seemingly remote territory.    

    

Obama’s interest West Papua stems, in part, from personal experiences growing up in Indonesia with his mother, Ann Dunham Soetoro, a cultural anthropologist.  In his autobiography,Dreams from My Father, he recalls a conversation with his step-father, Lolo Soetoro, who had just returned home after a tour of duty with the Indonesian military in West Papua.  Obama asked his step-father: “Have you ever seen a man killed?” Lolo responded affirmatively, recounting the bloody death of “weak” men.  West Papuan intellectuals and political activists, kin of the “weak” men killed by Lolo Soetoro, have read Obama’s autobiography with keen interest.  Even as many Americans have lost hope in their President, many West Papuans still embrace the message from the 2008 campaign, “Yes We Can.”  

Taking inspiration from the people of Tunisia who rose up to depose President Ben Ali last year, and the populist spirit that spread out from Tunisia with the Arab Spring, West Papuans are harboring seemingly impossible dreams.  After 50 years of living under a brutal Indonesian military occupation, West Papuans are hoping to reach a peaceful political solution to this conflict.  

 

 

    Forkorus  Yaboisembut moments before he was arrested.

One West Papuan leader, Forkorus Yaboisembut, remains hopeful against all odds.  He was detained last October, moments after being elected President during the Papuan People’s Congress, and is among the men who were convicted today for “treason.” Thousands rallied behind him, demanding independence from Indonesia, at this event that was peaceful by all accounts. As the Congress was concluding, the delegates were surrounded by some 500 Indonesian police and military personnel with a cordon of armored cars.  Scores of my friends, people who I know from working as a cultural anthropologist in West Papua, were in the crowd.  I had a sleepless night as I monitored Facebook and text messages from the other side of the world, following the developments in real time.  Markus Haluk, the leader of a Papuan youth group, sent a text message saying “in these next few moments we might see a massacre and a bloodbath.”

Videos circulating on YouTube show Indonesian troops firing assault rifles into a crowd from armored personnel carriers, while others pistol whip and kick delegates.  Unarmed civilians desperately tried to clamber into their cars while uniformed police officers and plain clothes thugs beat them.   In 1998 I witnessed a massacre in West Papua that killed upwards of 150 civilians, so I feared the worst. 

When the dead were counted from the violent crackdown at the Papuan People’s Congress, I was relieved to learn that the carnage was minor by local standards.  Human Rights Watch concluded that three civilians were shot dead by Indonesian police on October 19th, 2011. Over 300 delegates to the Papuan People’s Congress were initially detained by Indonesian security forces.  On the heels of these arbitrary detentions, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced alarm. She said that the United States has “very directly raised our concerns about the violence and the abuse of human rights” in West Papua. 

Most of the delegates to the Papuan People’s Congress were quickly released, except for five leaders who were charged with inciting rebellion.  Forkorus Yaboisembut is among these five, along with Edison Waromi, the newly elected Prime Minister.  Today they joined upwards of 90 West Papuans in Indonesian jails who have been identified by Amnesty International as prisoners of conscience. Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the world.  The United States regards Indonesia as a “Strategic Partner” and has considerable influence in the country’s political, economic, and strategic affairs.

Clearly tales of Indonesia’s ongoing war in West Papua troubled Barack Obama as a young man.  Now, as an adult, he is in a position to support the “weak” power of non-violent resistance with a few carefully chosen words.  President Obama should join Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch in calling for the unconditional release of West Papuan political prisoners.

This is cross-posted on Eben Kirksey's blog, where you can read more about his work and experiences in West Papua.

 

Award Winning Titles

Congratulations to our recent award-winning authors!

Paul K. Eiss has won the Mexican History Book Prize from the Conference on Latin American History for his book In the Name of El Pueblo: Place, Community, and the Politics of History in Yucatán. 

 

Julie Chu's Cosmologies of Credit: Transnational Mobility and the Politics of Destination in China was a co-winner of the American Ethnological Society's Sharon Stephens Prize. The prize is awarded to a junior scholar for their first book. It goes to a work that speaks to contemporary social issues with relevance beyond the discipline and beyond the academy. Alexander Edmonds's book Pretty Modern: Beauty, Sex, and Plastic Surgery in Brazil was granted an Honorable Mention for the award.

 

Federico Finchelstein was honored with the Best Book Prize by the New England Council of Latin American Studies for his book Transatlantic Fascism: Ideology, Violence, and the Sacred in Argentina and Italy, 1919-1945. 

 

 

African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston by Randy Weston and arranged by Willard Jenkins won the Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Excellence in the category of Best Research in Recorded Jazz Music. 

 

Duke Authors at the Association for Asian American Studies 2011 Meeting

We had a great time at the 2011 Association for Asian American Studies Conference in New Orleans, LA, May 18th-21st. Here are photos of some of the authors who stopped by our booth and from Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu's book launch party.

   

 

Margo Machida, author of Unsettled Visions: Contemporary Asian American Artists and the Social Imaginary

 

 

 

 

Eleana J. Kim, author of Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging

 

 

 

 

Junaid Rana, author of Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in the South Asian Diaspora

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu, author of The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion, at her book party sponsored by the Center for Asian American Studies at UT-Austin.

 

 

 

Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu and Nhi Lieu, author of The American Dream in Vietnamese (Minnesota), pose together at their book party.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to our editorial associate, Christine Choi, for taking these photos!

Obama's Mother and Sister in the News Again

This month's publication of President Obama's sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng's new children's book, Ladder to the Moon, brings the literary life of America's first family back into the news. It's a good time revisit our 2009 publication of the President's mother's book Surviving against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia, for which Soetoro-Ng wrote the foreword. Some greeted our publication of S. Ann Dunham's dissertation skeptically: were we just publishing it to cash in on the popularity of the new president? Was the scholarship any good? We were rewarded as the scholarly reviews came in. The book has been uniformly praised by anthropology and Asian studies journals (see them all here). Writing in Anthropology of Work Review, Jim Weil called the book "a landmark of anthropological holism." In Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Merle C. Ricklefs wrote, "This is real-world anthropology: it is authoritative, extraordinarily well documented and detailed, informed by concern for the human issues that are involved, and deeply intelligent." To learn more about Dunham's time living in Indonesia, check out today's New York Times excerpt from Janny Scott's forthcoming biography of her. Scott says that President Obama spoke of his mother in interviews with her "with fondness, humor, . . . and a hint of gentle forebearance." "“She was a very strong person in her own way," Obama told Scott. "Resilient, able to bounce back from setbacks, persistent—the fact that she ended up finishing her dissertation. But despite all those strengths, she was not a well-organized person." At Duke Press we thank editors Alice Dewey and Nancy Cooper for bringing organization to Dunham's important work and to Maya Soetoro-Ng and President Obama for allowing us to publish it.

Duke Authors at the Association for Asian Studies Conference

We had a great time at the 2011 Annual Conference of the Association for Asian Studies in Honolulu, HI, March 31st-April 3rd. Here are photos of some of the authors who stopped by our booth.

 

 

Rochona Majumdar, author of Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal

 

 

 

 

Mark Driscoll, author of Absolute Erotic, Absolute Grotesque: The Living, Dead, and Undead in Japan's Imperialism, 1895-1945

 

 

 

 

Jesook Song, author of South Koreans in the Debt Crisis: The Creation of a Neoliberal Welfare Society

 

 

 

 

Angela Ki Che Leung and Charlotte Furth, editors of Health and Hygiene in Chinese East Asia: Poliices in the Long Twentieth Century

 

 

 

Thanks to our exhibits manager, Helena Knox, for taking these photos.

University of Hawaii Honors S. Ann Dunham with Endowment Fund

We were thrilled to learn that the University of Hawaii Foundation will honor President Obama's mother, S. Ann Dunham, with an endowment fund. The fund will "will support a professorship in the UH Anthropology Department that will focus on research and teaching on Southeast Asia," the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports. Dunham, who died in 1995, received her doctorate in anthropology from the University of Hawaii and Duke University Press published her book, Surviving against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia, posthumously last year.