Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Buying American, Ron Javers

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

When New York rumors began flying about fresh talks between Newsweek and The Daily Beast over Tina Brown’s taking over the editorship of the venerable but now reeling newsweekly I found myself wondering what Xiang Xi in Guangzhou thought of all that.

Looking At China From Across The Pacific And Across The Himalayas, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to focus on Japan?”

A New Book On Mao: A Quick Q & A With Author Rebecca Karl, Rebecca Karl

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Rebecca Karl, who teaches at New York University and is known in Chinese studies circles as the author of important studies of nationalism during the final years of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) and the development of Marxist thought between the 1920s and the present, has a new book coming out soon. Titled Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World: A Concise History, it’s being published (simultaneously in paperback and hardback editions) by Duke University Press. The publisher promises that it will provide readers with a “lively and concise historical account of Mao Zedong’s life and thought,” and it comes …

In Case You Missed It: Dreaming In Chinese, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Each time my three Chinese I classmates and I complained that we had chosen a language that was simply too hard to learn, our professor had an answer at the ready.

Liu Xiaobo And The Nobel Peace Prize: More Readings

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It has now been a little more than one month since the announcement of Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize win, with the December 10 award ceremony a bit less than a month away. Here are a few links we’ve come across recently in our search for updates on the story:

Touring With A Book (Vs. Touring With A Band)

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

My “book tour,” which has had me adding a lot of miles to my frequent flyer account,has finally started winding down. I’ve got some things still to come, including an upcoming event in this area with Ian Johnson in June and then during the summer some book-related talks across the Pacific, including several Shanghai gigs (details to follow in a future post) and a July 24 presentation at the Suzhou branch of the Bookworm bookstore, and so on. Still, the pace has slowed down, which put me in a reflective mood and gave me time to finish writing a piece …

New Release: Coming To Terms With The Nation

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

On Monday, China’s decennial census began, sending six million census workers door-to-door in a quest to record and count the country’s population over the course of only ten days. A key issue in this census, according to some observers, will be placing China’s population in terms of place of residence. One thing analysts are waiting to find out, for example, is how many citizens of the PRC are described as living in cities rather than villages, as this census, which comes after a period of massive rural-to-urban migration, is supposed to describe where people physically live and work, not their …

As China Goes, So Goes The World

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Karl Gerth is a tutor and fellow at Merton College and a historian of modern China at Oxford University. His new book is As China Goes, So Goes the World: How Chinese Consumers are Transforming Everything (Hill & Wang, 2010). (See this review by Christina Larson at the Washington Monthly and this oneat Kirkus Reviews for more on Gerth’s book.) Below, an excerpt from chapter 1 of As China Goes, which takes a look at one of the most notable phenomena of 21st-century Chinese life: the sudden boom in car ownership and its far-reaching consequences.

You Can’T Make An Omelette With Only One Egg, Vignesh Pillai

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In her book Egg on Mao, Denise Chong chronicles the life of Lu Decheng, a seemingly ordinary man who committed the very extraordinary act of vandalizing Mao Zedong’s portrait during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. At the heart of the book is an exploration of morality under Communist rule in the Hunanese village of Liuyang, beginning with the lead-up to Lu’s birth in 1963, his formative years, his involvement in the 1989 protests, and his incarceration. Chong draws her narrative both from interviews with Lu, who now lives in Canada, and from interviews she conducted in China in April and …

Why I Support Liu Xiaobo’S Nobel Peace Prize, Wang Chaohua

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

What does a Nobel Peace Prize stand for politically? We probably can’t take the written words of Alfred Nobel himself and of the awarding committee at face value. In the past century, the prize has stirred up numerous controversies. For example, a war-mongering, coup-conspiring politician like Henry Kissinger was chosen to be honored, leaving the rest of the world with jaws dropped and the winner himself reluctant to revisit the moment in public. After all, the prize was decided and awarded by a committee of five retired politicians. In addition, no matter how politically balanced each of the actual committee …

A House Museum Café: Part 2, Leksa Chmielewski

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As I chat with the librarian-cum-barista, a Shanghainese family comes in and starts looking over the menu. They order three different kinds of imported coffee and as the librarian lights the flame percolator, I ask her whether there are differences between Shanghainese visitors and those from other areas of China.

Links, Links, And More Links

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

• The Economic Observer has started a new column that provides a roundup of the commentary and op-ed pieces contained in each week’s newspaper and also a few of the opinion pieces that appear on the EO‘s website. The most recent column can be found here. The EO has also begun providing abstracts of its monthly Book Review; check out September’s lineup here.

Symbols: Liu Xiaobo’S Nobel Peace Prize, Paulina Hartono

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Liu Xiaobo is, and now is probably much more so after Friday’s announcement, one of China’s most well-known dissidents—or activists, depending on the term you prefer. Most people who have heard of him know about his hand in penning part of Charter 08, a manifesto based on Charter 77, which advocates broad democratic political reform and human rights protections in China. Those who are more familiar with Liu’s name know of him for his hunger strike in Tian’anmen, or his prolific number of essays published in print and on the Internet.

Planning To Write A China Book? Just Say No, Jonathan Watts

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We wrote to Jonathan Watts to ask him to write a commentary on the book tour he’s been on to promote When a Billion Chinese Jump, which included a stop at UC Irvine, but he said he was too busy being whisked from champagne receptions to meetings with Hollywood directors seeking to buy the film rights to the book to craft something suitable. Watts was, however, good enough to offer us permission to run (in slightly trimmed-down form) a piece he wrote—with tongue firmly in cheek—for a 2009 issue of the newsletter of the Beijing Foreign Correspondents’ Club. Composed while …

China By The Numbers: The Chinese Professor And The Red Emperor, Charles W. Hayford

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Remember those jailbirds who know all of each others’ jokes? They don’t tell the whole joke, just shout out the number from the jokebook. Our public discourse on China has something of the same quality. Instead of shouting out a number, however, somebody “shouts out” a word or an image which evokes a whole China story. These stories can be persuasive, poetic, or insightful, but when we only “shout out” the number, then we don’t have the chance to examine the whole story. Painful facts or challenges to venerable beliefs can be papered over when the story is a misleading …

“Life, It’S Been Said, Is One Big Book…”: One Hundred Years Of Qian Zhongshu, Christopher Rea

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Headlines about China have been looking the same for some time now. “The China story” always seems to be political: labor riots and their suppression; sabre-rattling over Taiwan and cultural erasure in Tibet; catastrophic earthquakes and official ineptitude; internet censorship and jailed dissidents (the latest being Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo). Even ostensibly good news, such as the Chinese government’s investment in wind power, becomes yet another story about how China is going to eat our lunch.

A Bitter Pill For Prime Minister Kan, James Farrer

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It was a bitter pill for the Democratic Party of Japan, no matter how they swallowed it. By releasing a Chinese fishing boat captain detained by Japan without a trial, Prime Minster Kan Naoto was clearly bowing under Chinese pressure. The captain had been arrested by the Japanese coast guard for allegedly ramming his boat into Japanese coast guard vessels while in territorial waters claimed both by China and Japan. The Japanese government appeared to buckle and released the captain to China on Saturday. According to an unnamed official in the prime minister’s office quoted in the Asahi Shinbun on …

Inequities Of Contemporary French Women, Olivia Kuhlman

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis is an analysis of the current situation of women in contemporary France. It analyzes the current situation of French women in education, the work force, politics, and French society, with the intent of uncovering the gender inequalities French women encounter in contemporary France.

Short Term Strategies For Long Term Power: The Rise And Potential Fall Of Hugo Chávez, Linden E.S. Schult

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explores the route to power of Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez and the methods by which he has remained in power throughout his presidency. Also, it explores the potential for Chávez to lose power, given the current economic and political situation in Venezuela. The importance of the oil industry, Chávez's suppression of the opposition and control of the media, and constitutional changes and reforms are all discussed as keys to Chávez's continuance in power.

The Sources Of International Law: Some Philosophical Reflections, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

It seems only natural to begin the study of international law with a description of its sources. After all, whether as practitioner or scholar a person cannot begin to ask or answer questions about international law until he or she has some sense of what the law is. This requires in turn a basic grasp of the processes whereby international legal norms and regimes come to exist. Thus students of international law must engage immediately with some of the most basic questions in the philosophy of law: what is law, and what is a legal order or system.

These questions …

Selling Its Future Short: Armenia's Economic And Security Relations With Russia, Ian J. Mcginnity

CMC Senior Theses

It is necessary and desirable for Armenia to retain close relations with Russia in both the short and long term. However, recent concessions to Russia for good relations in the short term may have potentially harmful repercussions for Armenia in the future. These concessions have in part resulted in the Russian dominance in the economic sector, over-dependence on Russia for Armenia’s energy needs, and the perpetuation of Armenian submissiveness to Russian interests. Armenia should, therefore, maintain good relations with Russia while simultaneously securing long-term paths that focus on actual strategic partnership and not dependence. In short, Armenia should return to …

Arab/American Relations And Human Security, Post-9/11: A Political Narrative Inquiry, Charlotte Moats-Gallagher

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study explored eighteen women's views and experiences in the arena of Arab/American relations, post-9/11. The study engaged three groups of women: Arab women in Qatar, Arab American women in the U.S., and non-Arab women in the U.S. Qualitative narrative inquiry methodology was used complemented by an innovative use of freewriting to help prepare participants for interviews. Clarke’s (2005a) situational analysis was used to open up and analyze the data. Findings surfaced around the interconnected themes of identity, racism, discrimination and Othering, the role of the media, and how these ultimately influence a collective sense of and experience of human …

"Who Is My Mother? Family, Nation, Discipleship And Debates On Immigration", Michael Budde

Michael Budde

Forthcoming!

Turkey's Rising Role In Africa, Mehmet Ozkan

Mehmet OZKAN

No abstract provided.

Cemil Aydin, The Politics Of Anti-Westernism In Asia, Visions Of World Order In Pan-Islamic And Pan-Asian Thoughts, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007, 299 Pp), Mehmet Ozkan

Mehmet OZKAN

No abstract provided.

Turkey's Darfur Policy: Convergences And Differentiations From The Muslim World (With Birol Akgun), Mehmet Ozkan

Mehmet OZKAN

No abstract provided.