New Books in Asian Studies – Page 4 – Sigur Center for Asian Studies

Book cover with eyeball in the middle merging with a red circle; text: Special Duty by Richard J. Samuels

11/18/2020: Special Duty with author Richard Samuels

October 7, 2020May 12, 2021Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

4:30 PM – 6:00 PM EDT

Live book launch via WebEx

Orange cover with superimposed images of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Join us for the sixth edition of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies‘ latest series, New Books in Asian Studies, where we will host Richard J. Samuels, Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for International Studies at MIT, to discuss his book Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community with Mike Mochizuki, Director of the B.S. and B.A. in International Affairs programs at GW’s Elliott School of International Affairs.

Intelligence communities are everywhere and always in motion. Japan’s has been no exception, often shifting in response to dramatic analytical and organizational failures, changes in the regional and global balance, and sudden technological developments. In the first half of the 20th century, Japan had a full spectrum intelligence apparatus. This came apart with defeat in WWII and subordination to the United States. After the Cold War, shifts in the security environment and major intelligence failures stimulated rethinking by Tokyo. Following a period of half-hearted and incomplete reforms, the Japanese government began to enhance its collection and analysis capabilities, and to tackle in earnest the dysfunctional stovepipes and leak-prone practices hampering its intelligence system. Where do matters stand today?

Book cover is a sketch of men on horseback in a mountainous area during a rainstorm. Text: Ruling the Savage Periphery: Frontier Governance and the Making of the Modern State by Benjamin D. Hopkins

09/30/2020: Ruling the Savage Periphery with author Benjamin D. Hopkins

September 4, 2020May 12, 2021Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

2:00 PM – 3:30 PM EDT

Webex

The Elliott School Book Launch Series and the Sigur Center for Asian Studies are proud to present a lecture by Associate Professor of History and International Affairs Dr. Benjamin D. Hopkins on his latest book, Ruling the Savage Periphery: Frontier Governance and the Making of the Modern State. The talk will be followed by a live Q&A with the audience moderated by GW Professor of History, Dr. Dane Kennedy.

From the Afghan frontier with British India, to the pampas of Argentina and the deserts of Arizona, nineteenth-century empires drew borders with an eye toward placing indigenous people just on the edge of the interior. They were too nomadic and communal to incorporate in the state, yet their labor was too valuable to displace entirely. Dr. Hopkins argues that empires sought to keep the “savage” just close enough to take advantage of, with lasting ramifications for the global nation-state order.

Books can be purchased from Harvard University Press.

About the Speakers:

Benjamin D. Hopkins is a historian of modern South Asia, specializing in the history of Afghanistan and British imperialism on the Indian subcontinent. He has authored, co-authored, and co-edited numerous books on the region, including The Making of Modern Afghanistan, Fragments of the Afghan Frontier, and Beyond Swat: History, Society and Economy along the Afghanistan-Pakistan Frontier. His new book, Ruling the Savage Periphery: Frontier Governance and the Making of the Modern State, presents a global history of how the limits of today’s state-based political order were organized in the late nineteenth century, with lasting effects to the present day. He is currently working on A Concise History of Afghanistan for Cambridge University Press, as well as a manuscript about the continuing war in Afghanistan provisionally entitled, The War that Destroyed America.

Professor Hopkins’ research has been funded by Trinity College, Cambridge, the Nuffield Foundation (UK), the British Academy, the American Institute of Iranian Studies, as well as the Leverhulme Trust. He has received fellowships from the Council on Foreign Relations, the National University of Singapore, the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington DC. Writing for the public, Professor Hopkins has been featured in The New York Times, The National Interest, and the BBC. He regularly teaches courses on South Asian history, the geopolitics of South and Central Asia, as well as World history and the legacies of violence and memory in Asia. Professor Hopkins has directed the Sigur Center for Asian Studies since 2016.

Dane Kennedy teaches courses in British imperial, modern British, and world history. He is the author of six books, the most recent being The Imperial History Wars: Debating the British Empire (2018), Decolonization: A Very Short Introduction (2016), and The Last Blank Spaces: Exploring Africa and Australia (2013), and editor or co-editor of three others, including How Empire Shaped Us (2016) and Reinterpreting Exploration: The West in the World (2013). Kennedy was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003-04 and a National Humanities Center Fellowship in 2010-11. He was president of the North American Conference of British Studies from 2011-13. He currently directs the National History Center.

This event is on the record and open to the public.

Two Uyghur women on a street with book title underneath; text: The War on the Uyghurs: China's Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority by Sean Roberts

10/22/2020: The War on the Uyghurs with author Sean R. Roberts

August 26, 2020May 12, 2021Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Logos of the International Development Studies Program and the Sigur Center for Asian Studies

Thursday, October 22, 2020

2:00 PM – 3:30 PM EDT

Live book launch via WebEx

The Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the International Development Studies Program (IDS) at the Elliott School of International Affairs bring you this webinar book launch with Sigur affiliated faculty members: IDS Director Sean R. Roberts and moderator Eric Schluessel, Assistant Professor of modern Chinese history. Roberts’ first book, The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority (Princeton University Press, September 2020), is a gripping and moving account of the humanitarian catastrophe that China does not want you to know about. In the fifth edition of the Sigur Center’s latest research initiative, New Books in Asian Studies, attendees will learn about Roberts’ own in-depth interviews with the Uyghurs, thus enabling their voices to be heard.

Within weeks of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the Chinese government warned that it faced a serious terrorist threat from its Uyghur ethnic minority, who are largely Muslim. In this explosive book, Sean Roberts reveals how China has been using the US-led global war on terror as international cover for its increasingly brutal suppression of the Uyghurs, and how the war’s targeting of an undefined enemy has emboldened states around the globe to persecute ethnic minorities and severely repress domestic opposition in the name of combatting terrorism. Of the eleven million Uyghurs living in China today, more than one million are now being held in so-called reeducation camps, victims of what has become the largest program of mass detention and surveillance in the world. Roberts argues that the reframing of Uyghur domestic dissent as international terrorism provided justification and inspiration for a systematic campaign to erase Uyghur identity, and that a nominal Uyghur militant threat only emerged after more than a decade of Chinese suppression in the name of counterterrorism—which has served to justify further state repression.

Colorful drawing of military and court members meeting as the cover of the book; text: The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier by Benno Weiner

09/24/2020: The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier with author Benno Weiner

August 26, 2020May 12, 2021Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Thursday, September 24, 2020

2:00 PM – 3:30 PM EDT

Live book launch via WebEx

The Sigur Center kicks off the new school year and the fourth edition of our latest research series, New Books in Asian Studies with Carnegie Mellon University’s Benno Weiner, Associate Profesor of History and author of The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier. The book launch will be moderated by GW’s Sean R. Roberts, Director of the International Development Studies (IDS) program.

The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier is among the first in-depth studies of an ethnic minority region during the first decade of the People’s Republic of China: the Amdo region in the Sino-Tibetan borderland. Dr. Weiner demonstrates that the Communist Party’s goal in 1950s Amdo was not just state-building, but also nation-building. Such an objective required the construction of narratives and policies capable of convincing Tibetans of their membership in a wider political community. Rather than immediately implementing socialist reforms in the ethnocultural frontier region of Amdo after its “liberation” in 1949, the CCP pursued relatively moderate United Front policies meant to “gradually” persuade Tibetans and Amdo’s other non-Han inhabitants of their membership into the new Chinese nation. At the outset of 1958’s Great Leap Forward, however, United Front gradualism was jettisoned in favor of rapid collectivization. This led to large-scale rebellion, overwhelming state repression, and widespread famine; there was no “voluntary” and “organic” transformation for Amdo. Instead, the region was incorporated through the widespread and often indiscriminate deployment of state violence.

In this talk followed by an extended audience Q&A with Dr. Roberts, Dr. Weiner discusses 1958’s Amdo Rebellion and explores the ways in which the violence of 1958 and its aftermath continues to hamper the state’s efforts to integrate Tibetans into the modern Chinese nation-state.

Orange cover with superimposed images of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi; text: Modi and the Reinvention of Indian Foreign Policy by Ian Hall

08/20/2020: Modi and The Reinvention of Indian Foreign Policy with author Ian Hall

August 5, 2020May 12, 2021Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Thursday, August 20, 2020

7:00 PM – 8:15 PM EDT

Live book launch via WebEx

In the third edition of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies‘ latest series, New Books in Asian Studies, we will host Griffith Asia Institute (Australia)’s Deputy Director of Research Ian Hall to discuss Modi and The Reinvention of Indian Foreign Policy with Director of the Rising Powers Initiative Deepa M. Ollapally.

In the campaign that led to his landslide victory in India’s 2014 general election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi scarcely mentioned his foreign policy ideas. Once in power, however, Modi moved rapidly to boost India’s reputation as a significant actor in global affairs and to assert his leadership with a frenetic bout of personal diplomacy. In this book, Ian Hall reveals the major changes made by Modi’s government, from strengthening relations with other South Asian states in addition to the United States, Israel, and Japan to taking stronger action against Pakistani-sponsored militancy and adopting a more robust stance towards China. Hall examines how Modi and his supporters have also tried to supply new intellectual underpinnings for Indian foreign policy, aiming to change how the world sees India. He compares Modi’s attempted reinvention with the postcolonial policy of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, tracing the evolution of Hindu nationalist thinking on international relations and locating Modi’s thought within that tradition.

Hall will present on his book for 20 min before we launch into a moderated discussion and audience Q&A for the rest of the event.

Red textile image with text overlay "Imagining Afghanistan"

07/23/2020: Imagining Afghanistan with author Nivi Manchanda

July 1, 2020May 12, 2021Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Thursday, July 23, 2020

2:00 PM – 3:30 PM EDT

Live book launch via WebEx

book cover of Imagining Afghanistan by Nivi Manchanda

In the second edition of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies‘ latest series, New Books in Asian Studies, we will host Queen Mary, University of London Professor Nivi Manchanda for the US book launch of Imagining Afghanistan: The History and Politics of Imperial Knowledge. Over time and across different genres, Afghanistan has been presented to the world as a potential ally, dangerous enemy, gendered space, and mysterious locale. These powerful, if competing, visions seek to make sense of Afghanistan and to render it legible. Nivi Manchanda and Sigur Center Director Benjamin D. Hopkins will lead a lively discussion and Q&A on Manchanda’s innovative postcolonial theory that is grounded in the empirically rich ‘case’ of Afghanistan.

In this book, Manchanda argues that Afghanistan occupies a distinctive place in the imperial imagination that is over-determined and under-theorized, owing largely to the particular history of imperial intervention in the region. She shares a new narrative and removes the myths surrounding the study of Afghanistan by focusing on representations of gender, state, and tribes, while providing a sustained critique of colonial forms of knowing. Manchanda utilizes a methodologically diverse toolkit to demonstrate how the development of pervasive tropes in Western conceptions of Afghanistan has enabled Western intervention, invasion, and bombing in the region from the nineteenth century to the present. Overall, the book provides an interdisciplinary framework through which to study modern Afghanistan.

Red cover of book with text overlay "The Myth of Chinese Capitalism by Dexter Roberts"

06/25/2020: The Myth of Chinese Capitalism with author Dexter T. Roberts

June 19, 2020May 12, 2021Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Thursday, May 25, 2020

2:00 PM – 3:30 PM EDT

Live book launch via WebEx

The Sigur Center for Asian Studies is launching its latest series, New Books in Asian Studies, with award-winning journalist Dexter Tiff Roberts for the inaugural book launch. The Myth of Chinese Capitalism: The Worker, the Factory, and the Future of the World is the untold story of how restrictive policies are preventing China from becoming the world’s largest economy by focusing on the people in a Guizhou village and a Guangzhou factory town. It explores the reality behind today’s financially-ascendant China and pulls the curtain back on how the Chinese manufacturing machine is actually powered. The lively book launch and Q&A will be moderated by GW Law Professor and Chinese specialist Donald Clarke. Advance registration required.

book cover with China highlighted on a globe; text: China and the World edited by David Shambaugh

02/12/2020: China and the World: Book Launch with David Shambaugh

February 5, 2020May 14, 2021Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

4:30 PM – 5:30 PM

Lindner Commons, Room 602

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW, Washington, DC 20052

A blue cover with a map of Asia is the cover, with China marked in red. Text is "China & The World" - David Shambaugh

Professor Shambaugh will introduce his newest book and give a lecture on “Future Challenges for China’s Foreign Relations.”

China & the World is the most comprehensive and up-to-date scholarly assessment of China’s relations and roles in the world. Edited by Professor David Shambaugh and including chapters by fifteen other leading international experts on China, this volume covers China’s contemporary relations with all regions of the world, with other major powers, and across multiple arenas of China’s international interactions. It also explores the sources of China’s grand strategy, how its historical experiences shape present policies, and the impact of various domestic factors on China’s external behavior.

The event will conclude with audience Q&A and a book signing (cash and credit accepted).

Light refreshments will be served. This event is free and open to the public.

David Shambaugh is an internationally recognized authority and award-winning author on contemporary China and the international relations of Asia. He is the Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science & International Affairs and the founding Director of the China Policy Program in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Professor Shambaugh is a member of a number of public policy and scholarly organizations, including the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Asia Society. He is also a frequent commentator in international media, serves on a number of editorial boards, and has been a consultant to various governments, research institutions, foundations, and private corporations. As an author, he has published more than thirty books, most recently including, The International Relations of Asia (2nd ed.), China Goes Global: The Partial Power and China’s Future (both selected by The Economist as “Best Books of the Year”), and The China Reader: Rising Power.

book cover with globe on Asia; text: “The United States and Asia: Regional Dynamics and 21st Century Relations” (2nd ed.) by Robert Sutter

12/9/2019: “The United States and Asia: Regional Dynamics and 21st Century Relations” (2nd ed.) Book Launch with Professor Robert Sutter

November 22, 2019May 14, 2021Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Monday, December 9, 2019

1:45 PM – 3:00 PM

Lindner Commons, 602

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW, Washington, DC 20052

“The United States and Asia: Regional Dynamics and 21st Century Relations” (2nd ed.) by Robert Sutter

The Elliott School Book Launch Series, National Bureau of Asian Research, and Sigur Center for Asian Studies invite you to an event celebrating the launch of Professor Robert Sutter’s new book with Roy Kamphausen of the National Bureau of Asian Research. The discussion will be followed by a Q&A. Light refreshments will be provided.

Book signing from 1:30-1:45pm
Book sale from 1:30-1:45pm & 3-3:15pm

About the Event:
Dr. Sutter wrote the first edition of this book five years ago, discerning five major determinants of Asian regional dynamics since the end of the 20th century. They are:
– Changing power relationships — notably China’s rise
– Economic globalization
– Regional hot spots — notably North Korea
– Growing multilateralism
– US engagement and withdrawal.

He concluded that the Obama government’s re-balance policy fit regional dynamics well. This second edition explains Obama’s failure to deal effectively with expanding Chinese assertiveness, setting the stage for acute US-China rivalry that dominates regional dynamics going forward. Professor Sutter’s talk on December 9 will focus on assessing that rivalry and its growing impact on the region.

This event is free, open to the public, and on the record.

About the Speaker:
Robert Sutter has been a Professor of Practice of International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University since 2011. He also served as Director of the School’s main undergraduate program involving over 2,000 students from 2013-2019.

Before arriving at GWU, Professor Sutter was Visiting Professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University (2001-2011). A Ph.D. graduate in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University, he has published 22 books (four with multiple editions), over 300 articles and several hundred government reports dealing with contemporary East Asian and Pacific countries and their relations with the United States.

His most recent book is The United States and Asia: Regional Dynamics and Twenty-first Century Relations (2nd Edition) (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020). Sutter’s government career (1968-2001) saw service as Senior Specialist and Director of the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division of the Congressional Research Service, the National Intelligence Officer for East Asia and the Pacific at the U.S. Government’s National Intelligence Council, the China division Director at the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

About the moderator:
Roy D. Kamphausen is President of the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), where he has contributed substantially to numerous publications and conferences. Mr. Kamphausen is also the Deputy Director of the IP Commission and a Commissioner on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission

Prior to joining NBR, Mr. Kamphausen served as a career U.S. Army officer, as a China policy director in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, a China strategist for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a military attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

He has published extensively on China’s People’s Liberation Army, U.S.-China defense relations, East Asian security issues, innovation, and intellectual property protection. He is frequently cited in U.S. and international media and lectures at leading U.S. military institutions.

10/11/2019: Sino-Japanese Relations, 600-2019: Learning and Changing Places

October 11, 2019May 14, 2021Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Friday, October 11th, 2019

1:30 PM – 3:30 PM

Room B16

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street, NW, Washington, DC 20052

The East Asia National Resource Center and the Sigur Center for Asian Studies welcome you to join us for the book launch of Professor Ezra F. Vogel’s new book, China and Japan: Facing History, recently published by Harvard University Press. He will examine the following historical phases in relations between China and Japan:

· Japan Learning from China (600-838)

· Changing Places #1 (1895 when Japan defeats China)

· China Learning from Japan (1895-1937)

· China Learning from Japan (1978-1992)

· Changing Places #2 (2008-2012 when China passes Japan)

This panoramic perspective will help us better understand the context and challenges of contemporary Sino-Japanese relations.

Professor Ezra F. Vogel received his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1958 in Sociology in the Department of Social Relations and was professor at Harvard from 1967-2000. In 1973, he succeeded John Fairbank to become the second Director of Harvard’s East Asian Research Center. He served as director of the US-Japan Program, director of the Fairbank Center, and as the founding director of the Asia Center. He was the director of the undergraduate concentration in East Asian Studies from its inception in 1972 until 1991. He taught courses on Chinese society, Japanese society, and industrial East Asia. From fall 1993 to fall 1995, Vogel took a two-year leave of absence from Harvard to serve as the National Intelligence Officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council in Washington. In 1996, he chaired the American Assembly on China and edited the resulting volume, Living With China. Among his publications are: Japan As Number One, 1979, which in Japanese translation became a best seller in Japan, and Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, 2011, which in Chinese translation became a best seller in China. He lectures frequently in Asia, in both Chinese and Japanese. He has received numerous honors, including eleven honorary degrees.