Asian Studies
Through a Nuclear Lens
Examines the increasingly reciprocal nature of Franco-Japanese cultural exchange through films that center on nuclear issues.
Myth and the Making of History
Sheds new light on the relationship between myth and history in ancient China and the central role they have played in shaping early Chinese thought.
Unlocking the Chinese Gate
Offers an innovative analysis of gates—as architectural components, visual images, and mental constructs—in early Chinese thought and material culture.
Narrative Devices in the Shiji
Provides a new model for reading the Shiji and other early Chinese historical texts.
Freedom's Frailty
Draws on Guo Xiang's commentary on the Zhuangzi to construct an account of freedom that is both metaphysical and political.
The Origins of Chinese Literary Hermeneutics
Explores how China’s oldest poetry collection was interpreted in a Confucian exegetical text—the Mao Commentary—in the mid-second century BCE.
Li Dazhao
Biography of a major figure in modern Chinese history.
Awakening a Living World on a Kūṭiyāṭṭam Stage
Explores the cultural dynamics of this ancient form of Sanskrit theater.
The China Race
An analysis of the China Race—the global competition for leadership and world order between the US-led West and the People's Republic of China.
The Sound of Vultures' Wings
Explores the music of the Tibetan Chöd tradition.
Hokkaido Dairy Farm
Argues that the dairy industry in Japan has always been entwined with notions of Otherness and security seeking, notably in terms of frontiers.
I, Yantra
Argues that ancient yantra (robot) tales reveal how their Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain authors thought about the nature of humanity and our role in a cosmos filled with divine and natural forces.
Ethical Theory in Global Perspective
A straightforward, accessible introduction to core theories in normative ethics from Western and non-Western philosophy suitable for the classroom.
Confucian Iconoclasm
Challenges deep-seated assumptions about the traditionalist nature of Confucianism by providing a new interpretation of the emergence of modern Confucianism in Republican China.
The Literary Life of Yājñavalkya
A literary and historical investigation into an ancient Indian religious thinker, tracing his rise in importance in the Hindu tradition.
Wonder in South Asia
A comparative study of wonder in South Asian religions.
Curses of the Kingdom of Xixia
Reality merges with illusion in this novel of northwestern China.
Writing Early China
Considers what unearthed documents reveal about the creation and transmission of knowledge in ancient China.
The Ethnography of Tantra
Presents Tantra from an ethnographic vantage point, through a series of case studies grounded in diverse settings across contemporary Asia.
A Sourcebook in Classical Confucian Philosophy
Applies a method of comparative cultural hermeneutics to let the tradition speak on its own terms.
Daoism, Dandyism, and Political Correctness
Argues that Daoism and dandyism, linked by likeminded philosophies of “carefree wandering,” deconstruct the puritanism and political correctness sought by Confucianism, Victorianism, and contemporary neoliberal culture.
An American Girl in India
Offers a portrait of India as seen through the eyes of a sensitive, sharp-eyed, and witty young scholar in the early 1960s.
The Annotated Laozi
A clear translation and helpful explanations illuminate this ancient classic of self-cultivation for a modern audience.
The Philosophy of Change
An analysis of the philosophy of the Yijing in comparison to modern Western philosophies.
From Metaphysical Representations to Aesthetic Life
Reevaluates Western and Chinese philosophical traditions to question the boundaries of entrenched conceptual frameworks.
The Craft of Oblivion
Examines the intersections between forgetting and remembering in classical Chinese civilization.
The Festival of Indra
Details the textual and performative history of the South Asian festival of Indra and its role in the development of classical Hinduism.
Negotiation Dynamics to Denuclearize North Korea
Comprehensive examination of the goals, strategies, and motives of the six parties involved in North Korea denuclearization talks through the lens of negotiation theory.
The Humanist Ethics of Li Zehou
Presents Li Zehou's culminating views on ethics in a series of works that highlight the importance of Confucian philosophy today.
The Chinese Love Story from the Tenth to the Fourteenth Century
Traces the development of the Chinese love story during the Song and Yuan dynasties.
Introduction to Buddhist East Asia
Offers a variety of pedagogical and theoretical essays designed to assist professors in introducing undergraduate students to Buddhism in China, Korea, and Japan.
Searching for Ashoka
Reveals how the persona of India's most famous emperor was constantly reinvented in ancient times to suit a variety of social visions, political agendas, and moral purposes.
China and Its Small Neighbors
Analyzes the nature, processes, and political consequences of the asymmetrical relationships between China and its six small neighbors in Asia.
The China Record
Detailed assessment of the People's Republic of China as an alternative mode of political system and as a distinctive model of socioeconomic development.
A Walk in the Night with Zhuangzi
A complete translation and analysis of "All Things Flow into Form" (Fan wu liu xing), a recently discovered manuscript from the Warring States period (481–221 BCE).
Crossing Boundaries and Confounding Identity
Examines literary, historical, and cultural portrayals of Chinese women, across centuries and continents.
Confucian Liberalism
Offers a renovated form of Confucian liberalism that forges a reconciliation between the two extremes of anti-Confucian liberalism and anti-liberal Confucianism.
The Future of China's Past
Addresses the question of China's rise and what it portends for the future.
Cinema of Discontent
Uses popular films to reveal the tensions generated during Japan’s postwar "economic miracle," challenging the prevailing view that it was a story of great national success.
The Many Lives of Yang Zhu
Presents the most important portrayals of the Daoist master Yang Zhu throughout Chinese history, from the Warring States period until today.
New Perspectives in Modern Korean Buddhism
Offers alternative approaches to the study of colonial and postcolonial Korean Buddhism, suggesting new directions for scholarship.
Early Buddhist Society
A richly scholarly yet accessible and imaginative account of society in the time of the Buddha.
Approaches to Chan, Sŏn, and Zen Studies
A comprehensive treatment of the shared traditions of Chan, Sŏn, and Zen in dynamic interaction across East Asia, acknowledging the changing and growing parameters of the field of Zen studies.
A Conceptual Lexicon for Classical Confucian Philosophy
Uses a comparative hermeneutical method to explain the most important terms in the classical Confucian philosophical texts, in an effort to allow the tradition to speak on its own terms.
Honeymoon Couples and Jurassic Babies
Contextualizes Sabha Theatre historically, politically, and aesthetically, revealing how it expresses a Tamil Brahmin identity that is at once traditional and modern.
Religion and Empire in Portuguese India
Examines the colonization of Goa in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the durability of Portuguese rule.
Adventures in Chinese Realism
Relates Chinese Realism to contemporary political and ethical challenges, such as in international relations and the morality of the public sector.
The Truths and Lies of Nationalism as Narrated by Charvak
Rejects Hindu nationalism and pluralist secularism in favor of a revitalized politics of Indian federalism.
Orienting Italy
Explores Italian filmmakers' representations of China and the Chinese, both at home and abroad.
Hindutva and Violence
Examines the place of history in the political thought of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, one of the key architects of modern Hindu nationalism.
Persons Emerging
Offers three neo-Confucian understandings of broadening the Way as broadening oneself, through an ongoing process of removing self-boundaries.
Christianity and Politics in Tribal India
Chronicles the astonishing and counterintuitive spread of Christianity among a group of previously isolated tribes in a remote and hilly part of Northeastern India.
Crisis Narratives, Institutional Change, and the Transformation of the Japanese State
Looking at Japan, traces crisis narratives across three decades and ten policy fields, with the aim of disentangling discursively manufactured crises from actual policy failures.
Technical Arts in the Han Histories
The first concerted attempt to analyze how the histories Shiji and Hanshu described the technical arts as they were applied in vital areas of the administration of pre-Han and Han China.
When Does History Begin?
Documents how the premodern techniques of narrating the past in South Asia were deeply transformed by colonial modernity, resulting in newer forms of truth-telling within the Sikh community.
Lore and Verse
Explores how poetry was used to disseminate and interpret history in early medieval China.
A Postcolonial Relationship
Offers an Asian immigrant perspective on US racial relations and explores the unique situations and challenges facing Asian immigrants in the United States.
Nine Nights of Power
Explores the rich diversity of narratives, rituals, and participants connected with one of the most important celebrations for Hindus in South Asia and in the diaspora.
Amnesia
Describes the profound social impact of the overthrow of the Thai absolute monarchy in 1932, and explains the importance of democracy in a country long known for authoritarian politics.
Art Activism for an Anticolonial Future
Analyzes socially engaged art practices worldwide, linking them to decolonial struggle and critique.
The Emergence of Word-Meaning in Early China
Posits the origin of a specifically Chinese concept of “word-meaning,” and sheds new light on the linguistic ideas in early Chinese philosophical texts.
Cognition and Practice
Explores the aesthetic theory of one of China's most important and influential contemporary philosophers.
Self-Cultivation in Early China
An introduction to ancient Chinese ideas on how to live a good life.
Singing the Goddess into Place
Explores how a folk ballad in southern India transforms the landscape and embeds the deities that are its subject within the social worlds of their devotees.
Ziran
The ancient concept of spontaneous self-causation (ziran) from Daoism opens a path to understanding human action as self-organizing, attention as effortless, and art as somatic.
Post-Chineseness
Analyzes international and cultural relationships informed by "China," a category that is becoming ever more indispensable and yet unstable in everyday narratives.
The Chinese Liberal Spirit
The first English-language translation of an important figure in modern Confucian thought.
The Coming Death
Explores questions of death and mortality in several key texts of East Asian literature and cinema.
Teaching, Tenure, and Collegiality
Questions universities’ increasing reliance on market-oriented metrics to determine their strategic directions and gauge faculty productivity.
Empire News
Examines English-language Indian newspapers from the mid-nineteenth century and their role in simultaneously sustaining and probing British colonial governance.
The Hagiographer and the Avatar
Examines the key role of a hagiographer within a charismatic religious movement.
Many Mahābhāratas
A major contribution to the study of South Asian literature, offering a landmark view of Mahābhārata studies.
Friendship and Hospitality
Offers a comparative and deconstructive reading of the cross-cultural encounter between the Jesuits and their Confucian hosts in late Ming China.
The Mughals and the Sufis
Examines the relationship between Mughal political culture and the two dominant strains of Islam's Sufi traditions in South Asia: one centered around orthodoxy, the other focusing on a more accommodating and mystical spirituality.
A Philosophical Defense of Culture
Draws on two different but strikingly similar streams in our world tradition to argue for the contemporary philosophical relevance of “culture.”
The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism
Brings early Daoist writings into conversation with contemporary contemplative studies.
Moving for Marriage
Comparative, ethnographic study of women who migrate for marriage in rural north India.
South of the Future
Unique interdisciplinary analysis of gendered and racialized economies of care in South Asia and the Americas.
Abolishing Boundaries
Offers new perspectives on modern Chinese political thought.
The Science of Satyug
The first in-depth study of the All World Gayatri Pariwar, a modern Indian religious movement.
Words of Destiny
Investigates the professional practices of astrologers in urban India and their popularity among the educated middle and upper classes.
The Muslim World in Modern South Asia
Sets out the challenges presented to Muslim societies by Western dominance over the past two hundred years, and explores Muslim responses, particularly in the context of South Asia.
Buddhist Literature as Philosophy, Buddhist Philosophy as Literature
Explores the relationship between literature and philosophy in classical and contemporary Buddhist texts.
The Awakening of Modern Japanese Fiction
Argues that the role of Buddhism in modern Japanese prose literature has been significantly overlooked.
Partition's Legacies
Essays on modern Indian history and the legacy of Partition.
Till Kingdom Come
The first book to offer a detailed framework, a fine-grained history, and an analytically nuanced understanding of one of the rarest branches of Hindu worship.
Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds
Broadens the parameters of religious studies by accounting for material acts that help shape religious worlds.
Reconsidering the Life of Power
Offers a compelling intercultural perspective on body, art, self, and society.
Teardrops of Time
Investigates how the Thai poet Angkarn Kallayanapong adapts Buddhist concepts of time to create a modern Asian aesthetic imaginary.
Before Identity
Aims to introduce a greater degree of theoretical rigor to the discipline of Japan studies as a whole.
The Primary Way
A unique work on the underlying ontology, cosmology, and moral philosophy of the Yijing.
Human Becomings
Offers an in-depth exposition of the Confucian conception of persons as the starting point of Confucian ethics.
The World of Agha Shahid Ali
Critical essays on the transnational Kashmiri-American poet.
Human Beings or Human Becomings?
Argues that Confucianism and other East Asian philosophical traditions can be resources for understanding and addressing current global challenges such as climate change and hunger.
Convenient Criticism
Explains why and how local critical reporting can exist in China despite the kinds of media control that are the hallmarks of authoritarian rule.
The Other Rāma
A systematic analysis of the myth cycle of Paraśurāma (“Rāma with the Axe”), an avatára of Viṣṇu with a much darker reputation.
Hu Feng
A study of Hu Feng as a literary critic and case study on how intellectual work can respond to political pressure.
Higher Education for Democracy
Uses a cross-national comparison of Los Angeles, New Delhi, and Hong Kong to develop strategies universities should employ to strengthen democracy and resist fascism.
China in Ethiopia
Examines China’s involvement in Ethiopia as the latter embarks on modernization and economic development.
Navigating Deep River
An interdisciplinary dialogue with Shūsaku Endō’s last novel offering new perspectives on Japanese culture, Christian doctrine, Hindu spiritualities, and Buddhist worldviews.