Chinese Studies

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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.

Curses of the Kingdom of Xixia

By Xue Mo
Translated by Fan Pen Li Chen
Subjects: General Interest
Series: Excelsior Editions

Reality merges with illusion in this novel of northwestern China.

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.

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).

The Future of China's Past

Addresses the question of China's rise and what it portends for the future.

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.

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.

Persons Emerging

Offers three neo-Confucian understandings of broadening the Way as broadening oneself, through an ongoing process of removing self-boundaries.

Lore and Verse

Explores how poetry was used to disseminate and interpret history in early medieval China.

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.

The Chinese Liberal Spirit

By Xu Fuguan
Edited and translated by David Elstein
Subjects: Asian Studies
Series: SUNY series, Translating China

The first English-language translation of an important figure in modern Confucian thought.

The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism

Brings early Daoist writings into conversation with contemporary contemplative 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.

Convenient Criticism

By Dan Chen
Subjects: Communication

Explains why and how local critical reporting can exist in China despite the kinds of media control that are the hallmarks of authoritarian rule.

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.

Hu Feng

A study of Hu Feng as a literary critic and case study on how intellectual work can respond to political pressure.

Abolishing Boundaries

Offers new perspectives on modern Chinese political thought.

Revealing/Reveiling Shanghai

Examines Shanghai both as a real city and an imaginary locale, from diverse cultural and disciplinary perspectives.

Confucian Role Ethics

Argues that the only way to understand the Confucian vision of the consummate moral life is to take the tradition on its own terms.

The Politics of People

Explores the cultural dimensions of protest and dissent in China, focusing on dramatic forms of bodily, spatial, strategic, and artistic performativity.

In Pursuit of the Great Peace

Examines the Great Peace (taiping), one of the first utopian visions in Chinese history, and its impact on literati lives in Han China.

Imagining China in Tokugawa Japan

By Wai-ming Ng
Subjects: Asian Studies

Pioneering study of the localization of Chinese culture in early modern Japan, using legends, classics, and historical terms as case studies.

Literate Community in Early Imperial China

Through an examination of archaeologically recovered texts from China’s northwestern border regions, argues for widespread interaction with texts in the Han period.

Following His Own Path

Critically introduces the philosophical system of Li Zehou, one of the most significant modern scholars of Chinese history and culture.

Heaven Is Empty

Offers a new perspective on the relationship between religion and the creation of the first Chinese empires.

Found in Transition

Presents an updated account of Hong Kong and its culture two decades after its reversion to China.

The Gender Legacy of the Mao Era

By Xin Huang
Subjects: Asian Studies

Shows that the feminist interventions of the Mao era (1949–1976) continue to influence contemporary Chinese women.

Appreciating the Chinese Difference

A wide-ranging exploration and critical assessment of the work of a major figure in Chinese and comparative philosophy.

Reading for the Moral

Reassesses didacticism in seventeenth-century Chinese vernacular fiction and challenges the view that the late Ming was a notoriously immoral time.

Having a Word with Angus Graham

Critical reflections on the work of Angus Charles Graham, renowned Western scholar of Chinese philosophy and sinology.

Bodies in China

Engages with Chinese philosophy to offer new conceptual models for reframing gender, bodies, and aesthetics.

Intimate Memory

Sheds new light on pre-modern Chinese gender relationships in the context of marriage, male Confucian literati self-presentation, and social networks.

Language as Bodily Practice in Early China

Challenges the idea held by many prominent twentieth-century Sinologists that early China experienced a “language crisis. ”

Birth in Ancient China

Reveals cultural paradigms and historical prejudices regarding the role of birthing and women in the reproduction of society.

Between History and Philosophy

Analyzes the use of anecdotes as an essential rhetorical tool and form of persuasion in various literary genres in early China.

The China Order

Examines the rising power of China and Chinese foreign policy through a revisionist analysis of Chinese civilization.

Expressing the Heart's Intent

Using Li Zehou’s theories of aesthetics, argues for the importance of the arts to philosophy.

Journey of a Goddess

Edited and translated by Fan Pen Li Chen
Introduction by Fan Pen Li Chen
Subjects: Asian Studies

First English translations of a novel and two play excerpts based on tales of the goddess Chen Jinggu, an eighth-century shaman and present-day cult deity.

Military Thought in Early China

Provides a systematic and comprehensive survey of writings on military philosophy in early China.

Forget Chineseness

Critiques the idea of a Chinese cultural identity and argues that such identities are instead determined by geopolitical and economic forces.

China's Lonely Revolution

Presents a new view of the Chinese revolution through the lens of the local Communist movement in Hainan between 1926 and 1956.

Marionette Plays from Northern China

Edited and translated by Fan Pen Li Chen
Introduction by Fan Pen Li Chen
Subjects: Asian Studies

English-language translations of traditional plays from the marionette puppet theater of Northern China.

The Heir and the Sage, Revised and Expanded Edition

A comprehensive analysis of the transformations of ancient history in early Chinese texts.

Crossing the Gate

Challenges the accepted wisdom about women and gender roles in medieval China.

The Rhetoric of Hiddenness in Traditional Chinese Culture

Considers the role of hiddenness in the history of cultural production in premodern China.

Fabricating an Educational Miracle

By Jinting Wu
Subjects: Asian Studies

Illustrates the changing significance of what it means to be educated, rural, and ethnic in Southwest China.

A Great Undertaking

Explores the social disruption resulting from industrialization in a Chinese coalmining community at the turn of the twentieth century.

The Chinese Market Economy, 1000–1500

Documents the rise and fall of a market economy in China from 1000-1500.

The Creation of Wing Chun

Looks at southern Chinese martial arts traditions and how they have become important to local identity and narratives of resistance.

Daoism, Meditation, and the Wonders of Serenity

An overview of Daoist texts on passive meditation from the Latter Han through Tang periods.

In the Shadows of the Dao

Challenges standard views of the origins of the Daodejing, revealing the work’s roots in a tradition of physical cultivation.

These Bones Shall Rise Again

David N. Keightley’s seminal essays on the origins of Chinese society are brought together in one volume.

Red God

The career of communist revolutionary Wei Baqun, one of China’s “three great peasant leaders” and man of the southern frontier.

Communication and Cooperation in Early Imperial China

Challenges traditional views of the Qin dynasty as an oppressive regime by revealing cooperative aspects of its governance.

Reconstructing the Confucian Dao

Discusses how Zhou Dunyi's thought became a cornerstone of neo-Confucianism.

Chinese through Song, Second Edition

An innovative approach to teaching Chinese language and culture, using folk and popular songs.

Lost in Transition

Looks at the fate of Hong Kong’s unique culture since its reversion to China.

Music, Cosmology, and the Politics of Harmony in Early China

Explores the religious, political, and cultural significance attributed to music in early China.

Dubious Facts

An innovative approach to historical records assesses how evidence claims and policy arguments were put forth in the royal courts of early China.

The Shaman and the Heresiarch

The first book-length study in English of the Chinese classic, the Li sao (Encountering Sorrow). Includes translations of the Li sao and the Nine Songs.

China's America

A fascinating look at Chinese perceptions of the United States and the cultural and political background that informs them.

Mortality in Traditional Chinese Thought

A wide-ranging exploration of traditional Chinese views of mortality.

What Is Enlightenment

A cross-cultural work which reinvigorates the consideration of enlightenment.

When Huai Flowers Bloom

Depicts the Cultural Revolution through stories in a variety of voices.

Philosophy and Religion in Early Medieval China

An exploration of Chinese during a time of monumental change, the period after the fall of the Han dynasty.

Interpretation and Literature in Early Medieval China

Explores the new literary and interpretive milieu that emerged in the years following the decline of China’s Han dynasty.

Patronage and Community in Medieval China

A vivid portrait of the culture of a provincial military society in China’s early medieval period and its interactions with the southern imperial court.

The Making of a Family Saga

By Jin Feng
Subjects: Education

Looks at China’s Ginling College, the women’s missionary institution of higher learning that developed a discourse of family, recasting the Chinese Confucian family ideal as a female and Christian one.

Teaching the Silk Road

Advocating a global as opposed to a Eurocentric perspective in the college classroom, discusses why and how to teach about China's Silk Road.

Asian Texts — Asian Contexts

Provides an overview of some of the great texts of Asian philosophy and religion along with an exploration of the contexts in which they arose.

Expanding Process

Brings Chinese Daoist and Confucian thought into conversation with Western process, pragmatic, and naturalist philosophy and theology.

China and the International System, 1840-1949

By David Scott
Subjects: History

Examines the images, hopes, and fears that were evoked during China’s century-long subservience to external powers.

The Talent of Shu

Presents the intellectual world of early medieval Sichuan through a critical biography of historian and classicist Qiao Zhou.

Wang in Love and Bondage

By Wang Xiaobo
Translated by Hongling Zhang, Jason Sommer
Introduction by Hongling Zhang, and Jason Sommer
Subjects: Literature

The first English translation of work by Wang Xiaobo, one of the most important writers of twentieth-century China.

The Chinese and Opium under the Republic

Examines China’s attempts to control the opium economy in the early twentieth century.

Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty

A reappraisal of Emperor Yang of the Sui dynasty, finding that his legacy provided the foundation for the celebrated civilization of the Tang dynasty.

The Yijing and Chinese Politics

Discusses interpretations of the Yijing (the I Ching or Book of Changes) during the Northern Song period and how these illuminate the momentous changes in Chinese society during this era.

Chinese Discourses on the Peasant, 1900-1949

Shows how Chinese intellectuals with varying politics envisioned the peasantry and its role in changing society during the first half of the twentieth century.

Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi

A diverse collection of interpretive essays on the third-century B. C.E. Daoist classic, the Zhuangzi, which continues the long commentarial tradition on this work and underscores its relevance to our own time and place.

Surviving on the Gold Mountain

By Huping Ling
Subjects: Asian Studies

The first comprehensive work on Chinese American women's history covering the past 150 years.

State Sacrifices and Music in Ming China

Presents historical, ritual, and musical data preserved in authentic Ming documents illustrating the significance of state sacrifices in imperial China.

Lu Xun and Evolution

Lu Xun (1881-1936), China's greatest modern writer, remains important today both as an official icon and a patron saint of dissent. This book deals with Lu Xun's struggle to make sense of the "Darwinian Revolution." It illuminates not only Lu Xun's thought, but also the current crisis in Chinese thought caused by the loss of faith in Marxism.

Legitimating the Chinese Economic Reforms

Argues that the legitimacy of the Chinese government relies on two factors: the national myth of revolution and ideological orthodoxy.

From Deluge to Discourse

Proposes a sweeping theory of flood myths, applies it to a particular text, the Mu T'ien-tzu chuan, and opens up the world of Chinese fiction to an entirely new type of analysis based on a psychoanalytic theory of the symbol.

The T'ai-Chi Ch'uan Experience

The leading proponent in America of the Wu style discusses the spiritual and aesthetic meanings of t'ai chi ch'uan.

Lukang

An anthropological study of the social organization and local history in Lukang, a city in Taiwan.

Economic Transition and Political Legitimacy in Post-Mao China

By Feng Chen
Subjects: Asian Studies

Traces the role of ideas in Chinese economic reform from 1978 to the present, exploring the conversion of China's policymakers to capitalist economic thinking.

The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China

This book explores the profound cultural impact of the civil service examinations during the period when they first became the primary means of government recruitment.

China Under Jurchen Rule

This is the most extensive study of Chin dynasty history in any language. It demonstrates the importance of cultural developments in North China under the Chin (1115-1234).

Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature and Society

"Only women and inferior men are difficult to deal with." — Confucius

Two thousand years after Confucius, the contributors to this book ask if Chinese women have succeeded in changing their status as ...

Taoist Meditation

Isabelle Robinet's Taoist Meditation is the first and only scholarly study to discuss the ancient Mao-shan Taoist tradition of visionary meditation while, at the same time, helping to clarify the little ...

In Search of the Dharma

By Chen-hua
Edited by Chun-fang Yu
Introduction by Chun-fang Yu
Translated by Denis C. Mair
Subjects: Asian Studies
Series: SUNY series in Buddhist Studies

This is the first and only book in English on modern Chinese Buddhism written by a practicing Chinese monk. Chen-hua provides a rare eyewitness account of Chinese monastic life and Buddhist practices ...

Art of the Bedchamber

This is the first comprehensive anthology of the Chinese sexology classics, the world's oldest and most advanced tradition of sexual yoga. While remaining accessible to the general reader, the translation ...

Violence in China

In this volume, Lipman and Harrell explore the prevalence and ubiquity of violence in China, a society whose official norms value harmony and condemn conflict. The book investigates violence in a wide ...

Sanctioned Violence in Early China

This book provides new insight into the creation of the Chinese empire by examining the changing forms of permitted violence—warfare, hunting, sacrifice, punishments, and vengeance. It analyzes the ...

Drama in the People's Republic of China

This is the first book ever published in the West on drama in the People's Republic of China. The plays, playwrights, theories, and performances range from the play that inflamed the Cultural Revolution ...

The South China Silk District

By Alvin Y. So
Subjects: Asian Studies

The material in this book is framed and organized through the themes of world system's theory -- such as incorporation, commercialization of agriculture, industrialization, proletarianization, and the ...

Criminal Justice in Post-Mao China

Edited by Shao-chuan Len & Hungdah Chiu
Subjects: Asian Studies

The post-Mao commitment to modernization, coupled with a general revulsion against the lawlessness of the Cultural Revolution, has led to a significant law reform movement in the People's Republic of ...