A graphic for "Dust Child" with the name, date, and location of the event

3/28/2023 | Book Talk: Dust Child with Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

January 25, 2023April 25, 2023Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

4:00 PM – 5:30 PM EDT

Lindner Family Commons

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

From the internationally bestselling author of The Mountains Sing, a suspenseful and moving novel that tells the intertwined stories of an American GI, two Vietnamese bargirls, and an Amerasian man—all of whom are forced to grapple with secrets they kept during and after the Việt Nam War.

In 1969, Trang and Quỳnh, young Vietnamese sisters, are desperate to find a way to help their parents pay off medical bills and debts. They leave their rural village and become “bar girls” in Sài Gòn, drinking, flirting (and more) with American GIs in return for money. As the war moves closer to the city, the once-innocent Trang gets swept up in an irresistible romance with a young American helicopter pilot. Decades later, Sài Gòn is a changed city, bustling, open to tourists, but also still full of bụi đời, the “dust of life,” Amerasians born to U.S. GIs and Vietnamese women, scorned and abandoned as children of the enemy. In 2016, one such man, Phong, the son of a Black American soldier and an unknown Vietnamese mother, embarks on a search to find both his parents and a way out of Vietnam. At the same time, Dan, an American Vietnam vet, lands in Sài Gòn with his wife, Linda, hoping to find a way to heal from his PTSD—but he has been harboring a secret for decades: when his tour ended he had abandoned his Vietnamese girlfriend, Kim, who was pregnant with his child. Once he returns to Viet Nam, he can no longer avoid his memories and questions. Had Kim and their child survived the war? Could they still be somewhere in the city after all these years?

Past and present converge as all these characters confront decisions made during a time of war—decisions that force them to look deep within themselves and others, across race, generation, culture, and language. Suspenseful, satisfying, and poetic, Dust Child tells an important and immersive story of war, love, and healing.

Speaker

Born and raised in Việt Nam, Dr. Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai (pronounced ŋwiən fα:n kwe mai) is the author of the international bestseller The Mountains Sing, runner-up for the 2021 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, winner of the 2020 BookBrowse Best Debut Award, the 2021 International Book Awards, the 2021 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, and the 2020 Lannan Literary Award Fellowship for Fiction. She has published twelve books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction in Vietnamese and English and has received some of the top literary prizes in Việt Nam including the Poetry of the Year 2010 from the Hà Nội Writers Association. Her writing has been translated into twenty languages and has appeared in major publications including the New York Times. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. She was named by Forbes Vietnam as one of 20 inspiring women of 2021. Her second novel in English, Dust Child, is forthcoming in March 2023.

Quế Mai is passionate about empowering others. In her voluntary roles, she is a Peace Advocate for PeaceTree Việt Nam, an editor of DVAN’s publishing series, an Author Advocate for Room to Read, Advisor for Stories of Vietnam, and Founder and Head of Advisory Committee of Chắp Cánh Ước Mơ Volunteer Group.

Moderator

Professor Linda J. Yarr is Research Professor of International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs and Director of Partnerships for International Strategies in Asia (PISA). She began her work for PISA in 1995, when PISA was located within the American Council for Learned Societies. PISA promotes international affairs education training and research in cooperation with leading agencies and universities in Asia. Prof. Yarr has secured foundation grants and private donations to underwrite all of PISA’s activities and designed its collaborative and path-breaking programs in Asia. Prof. Yarr taught at American University, Friends World College, the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the University of Denver. She has held visiting scholar appointments at the University of Helsinki, the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, the Institute for Malaysian and International Studies of the National University of Malaysia, the School of International Service of American University, and the Rocky Mountain Women’s Institute. She serves on the board of directors of Critical Asian Studies and is a member of the National Committee on North Korea.

[3/28/23] NBAS: Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People’s Republic with Mike Chinoy

January 6, 2023March 30, 2023Archives & Recordings, High Profile Events, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

5:00 PM – 6:00 PM ET

City View Room

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

Reporting on China has long been one of the most challenging and crucial of journalistic assignments. Foreign correspondents have confronted war, revolution, isolation, internal upheaval, and onerous government restrictions as well as barriers of language, culture, and politics. Nonetheless, American media coverage of China has profoundly influenced U.S. government policy and shaped public opinion not only domestically but also, given the clout and reach of U.S. news organizations, around the world.

This book tells the story of how American journalists have covered China—from the civil war of the 1940s through the COVID-19 pandemic—in their own words. Mike Chinoy assembles a remarkable collection of personal accounts from eminent journalists, including Stanley Karnow, Seymour Topping, Barbara Walters, Dan Rather, Melinda Liu, Nicholas Kristof, Joseph Kahn, Evan Osnos, David Barboza, Amy Qin, and Megha Rajagopalan, among dozens of others. They share behind-the-scenes stories of reporting on historic moments such as Richard Nixon’s groundbreaking visit in 1972, China’s opening up to the outside world and its emergence as a global superpower, and the crackdowns in Tiananmen Square and Xinjiang. Journalists detail the challenges of covering a complex and secretive society and offer insight into eight decades of tumultuous political, economic, and social change.

At a time of crisis in Sino-American relations, understanding the people who have covered China for the American media and how they have done so is crucial to understanding the news. Through the personal accounts of multiple generations of China correspondents, Assignment China provides that understanding.

Guests can purchase the book from Columbia University Press. Copies will be sold by the George Washington University Bookstore at the event.

Registration is free and open to the public.

This event will be recorded and will be available on the Sigur Center YouTube channel after the event.

Speaker

Mike Chinoy is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the U.S.-China Institute at the University of Southern California. He spent 24 years as a foreign correspondent for CNN, serving as the network’s first Beijing bureau chief and senior Asia correspondent. Before joining CNN, Chinoy worked for CBS News and NBC News. He has won Emmy, Dupont, and Peabody awards for his journalism. Assignment China is his fifth book.

Moderator

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. He previously served in the Department of State and on the National Security Council staff during the Carter administration (1977-1979). From 1996-2016 he was also a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at The Brookings Institution. Professor Shambaugh was previously Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and Reader in Chinese Politics at the University of London’s School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), 1987-1996, where he also served as Editor of The China Quarterly. He has served on the Board of Directors of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, Advisory Board of the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), East-West Center Fellowship Board, is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and member of its Board of Studies, is a participant in the Aspen Strategy Group, and other public policy and scholarly organizations. An active public intellectual and frequent commentator in the international media, he also serves on numerous editorial boards, and has been a consultant to governments, research institutions, foundations, universities, corporations, banks, and investment funds.

He has been selected for numerous awards and grants, including as a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Senior Scholar by the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and a Senior Fulbright Scholar (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences). He has received research grants from the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, German Marshall Fund, Hinrich Foundation, the British Academy, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and has been a visiting scholar or professor at universities in Australia, China, Denmark, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, and he has lectured all over the world.

As an author, Professor Shambaugh has published more than 30 books, including most recently International Relations of Asia (third edition, 2022); China’s Leaders: From Mao to Now (2021); Where Great Powers Meet: America & China in Southeast Asia (2021); and China & the World (2020). Other books include The China Reader: Rising Power (2016); Tangled Titans: The United States and China (2012); China’s Communist Party: Atrophy & Adaptation (2008); Power Shift: China & Asia’s New Dynamics (2005); and Modernizing China’s Military (2002); Making China Policy (2001); The Modern Chinese State (2000); Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory & Practice (1994); American Studies of Contemporary China (1993); and Beautiful Imperialist (1991). He has also authored numerous reports, scholarly articles and chapters, newspaper op-eds, and book reviews. He is reasonably fluent in Chinese, and has some French, German, and Spanish.

A graphic for "A Continent Erupts" featuring an image of the speaker, the title, the event take, and location

10/28/2022 | New Books in Asian Studies: A Continent Erupts with Prof. Ronald H. Spector

October 13, 2022February 16, 2023Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Friday, October 28, 2022

2:00 PM – 3:30 PM EDT

Online via Zoom

As part of our New Books in Asia Series, the Sigur Center for Asian Studies will host a talk by Professor Emeritus of History and International Affairs, Ronald H. Spector about his new book A Continent Erupts: Decolonization, Civil War, and Massacre in Post-War Asia, 1945-1955. Sigur Center Director Gregg A. Brazinsky will moderate the event.

The end of World War II led to the United States’ emergence as a global superpower. For war-ravaged Western Europe it marked the beginning of decades of unprecedented cooperation and prosperity that one historian has labeled “the long peace.” Yet half a world away, in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Korea, and Malaya—the fighting never really stopped, as these regions sought to completely sever the yoke of imperialism and colonialism with all-too-violent consequences.

East and Southeast Asia quickly became the most turbulent regions of the globe. Within weeks of the famous surrender ceremony aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, civil war, communal clashes, and insurgency engulfed the continent, from Southeast Asia to the Soviet border. By early 1947, full-scale wars were raging in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam, with growing guerrilla conflicts in Korea and Malaya. Within a decade after the Japanese surrender, almost all of the countries of South, East, and Southeast Asia that had formerly been conquests of the Japanese or colonies of the European powers experienced wars and upheavals that resulted in the deaths of at least 2.5 million combatants and millions of civilians.

With A Continent Erupts, acclaimed military historian Ronald H. Spector draws on letters, diaries, and international archives to provide, for the first time, a comprehensive military history and analysis of these little-known but decisive events. Far from being simply offshoots of the Cold War, as they have often been portrayed, these shockingly violent conflicts forever changed the shape of Asia, and the world as we know it today.

A Continent Erupts can be purchased from W. W. Norton. This event is free, on the record, and open to the public.

Speaker

picture of ronald spector in professional attire

Ronald H. Spector is an award-winning Professor Emeritus of History and International Affairs in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. He received his B.A. from Johns Hopkins and his MA and Ph.D. from Yale. He is the author of seven books, including Eagle Against the Sun and In the Ruins of Empire.

He has served in various government positions and on active duty in the Marine Corps from 1967-69 and 1983-84, and was the first civilian to become Director of Naval History and the head of the Naval Historical Center. He has served on the faculties of LSU, Alabama, and Princeton and has been a senior Fulbright lecturer in India and Israel. In 1995-96 he was Distinguished Visiting Professor of Strategy at the National War College and was the Distinguished Guest Professor at Keio University, Tokyo in 2000.

Moderator

portrait of Gregg Brazinsky in professional attire

Gregg A. Brazinsky works on U.S.-East Asian relations and East Asian international history. He is interested in the flow of commerce, ideas, and culture among Asian countries and across the Pacific. He is proficient in Mandarin Chinese and Korean. He is the author of two books: Winning the Third World (2017), which focuses on Sino-American Rivalry in the Third World and Nation Building in South Korea (2007), which explores U.S.-South Korean relations during the Cold War. Currently, he is working on two other book projects. The first examines American nation-building in Asia during the Cold War. The second explores Sino-North Korean relations between 1949 and 1992 and focuses specifically on the development of cultural and economic ties between the two countries. He has received numerous fellowships to support his research including the Kluge Fellowship from the Library of Congress, the Smith Richardson Foundation junior faculty fellowship, and a fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Center. Professor Brazinsky also currently serves as the director of the George Washington Cold War Group.

As director of the Asian Studies Program, Professor Brazinsky has attracted some of the brightest students from around the country and the world who share a commitment to pursuing careers related to Asia. He helped to launch a special mentoring program for Asian Studies MA students and has worked to expand fellowship and professional opportunities for students in the program.

Opening Remarks

Alyssa Ayres, Dean of the Elliott School

Alyssa Ayres was appointed dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs and professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University effective February 1, 2021. She is the first woman to serve in the role of permanent dean at the school. Ayres is a foreign policy practitioner and award-winning author with senior experience in the government, nonprofit, and private sectors. From 2013 to 2021, she was senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where she remains an adjunct senior fellow.

Her work focuses primarily on India’s role in the world and on U.S. relations with South Asia in the larger Indo-Pacific. Her book about India’s rise on the world stage, Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World, was published by Oxford University Press in January 2018 and was selected by the Financial Times for its “Summer 2018: Politics” list. An updated paperback edition was released in 2019. Ayres is also interested in the emergence of subnational engagement in foreign policy, particularly the growth of international city networks, and her current book project (working title, “Bright Lights, Biggest Cities: The Urban Challenge to India’s Future,” under contract with Oxford University Press) examines India’s urban transformation and its international implications.

From 2010 to 2013 Ayres served as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia. During her tenure at the State Department in the Barack Obama administration, she covered all issues across a dynamic region of 1.3 billion people at the time (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) and provided policy direction for four U.S. embassies and four consulates. Before serving in the Obama administration, Ayres was founding director of the India and South Asia practice at McLarty Associates, the Washington-based international strategic advisory firm, from 2008 to 2010, and served as a part-time senior advisor to the firm from 2014 to 2021. From 2007 to 2008, she served as special assistant to the undersecretary of state for political affairs as a CFR international affairs fellow. Prior to that she worked at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Advanced Study of India and at the Asia Society in New York.

Originally trained as a cultural historian, Ayres has carried out research on both India and Pakistan. Her book on nationalism, culture, and politics in Pakistan, Speaking Like a State, was published worldwide by Cambridge University Press in 2009 and received an American Institute of Pakistan Studies book prize for 2011–2012. She has coedited three books on India and Indian foreign policy: Power Realignments in Asia; India Briefing: Takeoff at Last?; and India Briefing: Quickening the Pace of Change.

Ayres has been awarded numerous fellowships and has received four group or individual Superior Honor Awards for her work at the State Department. She speaks Hindi and Urdu, and in the mid-1990s worked as an interpreter for the International Committee of the Red Cross. She received an AB from Harvard College and an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago. She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, a member of the Halifax International Security Forum’s agenda working group, and a member of the Women’s Foreign Policy Group board of directors. In 2021 and 2022, the Washingtonian included her as one of their “most influential people shaping policy.”

event banner for book launch with Robert Sutter

4/14/2022 | Congress, Ukraine and US Hardening Against China – Book Launch of U.S.-China Relations: Perilous Past, Uncertain Present

March 31, 2022April 25, 2022Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

The Elliott School of International Affairs New Book Launch Series

The Sigur Center for Asian Studies

The East Asia National Resource Center

Presents

Book Launch: U.S.-China Relations: Perilous Past, Uncertain Present

Thursday, April 14th, 2022

12:00 pm – 1:15 pm EDT

1957 E ST NW Room 505 and Online via Zoom

NOTE: All non-GW affiliated attendees attending the event IN-PERSON must comply with GW’s COVID-19 policy in order to attend this event, including showing proof of vaccination and masking indoors. For frequently asked questions, please refer to GW’s guidance.

Join us for a book talk with Professor Robert Sutter on his book “U.S.-China Relations: Perilous Past, Uncertain Present“

About

The extensively revised fourth edition of Sutter’s major text US-China Relations: Perilous Past, Uncertain Present explains in detail the critical role of American domestic politics in hardening US policy toward China over the past five years. Bi-partisan majorities in Congress seek to defend America against an onslaught of malign Chinese government advances in broad areas of international security, economic statecraft and global governance. Congress exerts unprecedented influence on US China policy. The bi-partisan majorities are much steadier than erratic Donald Trump and Joseph Biden shifting from past disparaging China’s threat to a current tough posture in line with congressional majorities.

Sutter will discuss these findings, reinforced by China’s recent support for Russia in the Ukraine war, as well as some important shortcomings in current American strategy toward China.

Registration

The event is open to the public.

Speaker

Robert Sutter, Professor of Practice in International Affairs, The George Washington University

Opening Remarks

Alyssa Ayes, Dean, The Elliott of International Affairs at The George Washington University

Moderator

John W. Tai, Professorial Lecturer, The George Washington University

Speaker

Robert Sutter is Professor of Practice of International Affairs at the Elliott School of George Washington University (2011-Present). He also served as Director of the School’s main undergraduate program involving over 2,000 students from 2013-2019. His earlier full-time position was Visiting Professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University (2001-2011). A Ph.D. graduate in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University, Sutter 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 Chinese Foreign Relations: Power and Policy of an Emerging Global Force, Fifth Edition (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021). 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 US 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.

Opening Remarks

Alyssa Ayres was appointed dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs and professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University effective February 1, 2021. Ayres is a foreign policy practitioner and award-winning author with senior experience in the government, nonprofit, and private sectors. From 2013 to 2021, she was senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where she remains an adjunct senior fellow. Ayres has been awarded numerous fellowships and has received four group or individual Superior Honor Awards for her work at the State Department. She speaks Hindi and Urdu, and in the mid-1990s worked as an interpreter for the International Committee of the Red Cross. She received an AB from Harvard College and an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago. She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Halifax International Security Forum’s agenda working group, and a member of the Women’s Foreign Policy Group board of directors.

Moderator

John W. Tai, Ph.D., is a professorial lecturer at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. He is also an instructor at the Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State, and a senior language analyst at Leidos, providing support to the U.S. Government. He is a specialist on China’s political developments, science and technology developments, and foreign relations. He also specializes in Taiwan’s internal developments and external relations and teaches a graduate seminar on this subject at the Elliott School. He is the author of various articles and commentaries on Chinese and Taiwan politics and foreign relations, including the book Building Civil Society in Authoritarian China (2015).

3/22/2022 | “The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping’s China” with the Honorable Kevin Rudd

March 11, 2022April 26, 2022Archives & Recordings, High Profile EventsLeave a Comment

Kevin Rudd speaking at the podium in front of Sigur Center banner

Kevin Rudd and David Shambaugh talking and laughing

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

4:00 PM – 6:00 PM EDT

Lindner Family Commons

1957 E ST NW Room 602

AND Zoom

You are invited to a presentation at GW by Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of Australia and current President and CEO of the Asia Society, on his new book, The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping’s China.

Elliott School Dean Alyssa Ayres will provide welcome remarks. The presentation will be followed by a conversation between the Honorable Kevin Rudd and David Shambaugh, the Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science, and International Affairs at GW. The event will conclude with an extensive Q&A with the audience.

Those attending this hybrid event in person will have the opportunity to have the Honorable Kevin Rudd sign a copy of his new book.

Speaker

portrait of Kevin Rudd in professional attire

Kevin Rudd is a former Prime Minister of Australia and current President and CEO of the Asia Society. He became President and CEO of Asia Society in January 2021 and has been president of the Asia Society Policy Institute since January 2015. He served as Australia’s 26th Prime Minister from 2007 to 2010, then as Foreign Minister from 2010 to 2012, before returning as Prime Minister in 2013. He is also a leading international authority on China. He began his career as a China scholar, serving as an Australian diplomat in Beijing before entering Australian politics.

Moderator

David Shambaugh is 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. Before joining the GW faculty, Professor Shambaugh taught Chinese politics at the University of London’s School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) and was editor of The China Quarterly.

He also worked at the U.S. Department of State and National Security Council. He served on the board of directors of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. Asia-Pacific Council, and other public policy and scholarly organizations. A frequent commentator in the international media, he sits on numerous editorial boards, and has been a consultant to governments, research institutions, foundations, universities, corporations, banks, and investment funds. Professor Shambaugh has published more than 30 books and 300 articles.

Dr. Shambaugh received his bachelor’s degree in East Asian studies from George Washington University, his master’s degree in international affairs from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and his doctorate in political science from the University of Michigan.

Opening Remarks

Alyssa Ayres is Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Dean Ayres is a foreign policy practitioner and award-winning author with senior experience in the government, nonprofit, and private sectors. She was Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where she remains an adjunct senior fellow. From 2010 to 2013 Ayres served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia in the Barack Obama administration, where she covered all issues across a dynamic region of 1.3 billion people at the time (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) and provided policy direction for four U.S. embassies and four consulates. Her work focuses primarily on India’s role in the world and on U.S. relations with South Asia in the larger Indo-Pacific. Her last book is, Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World (OUP, 2018). She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

book cover of the sound of salvation next to title of event

1/31/2022 | New Books in Asian Studies: The Sound of Salvation with Guangtian Ha

January 10, 2022February 4, 2022Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Monday, January 31, 2022

12:00 PM – 1:15 PM EST

WebEx Event

In this upcoming edition of the 2022 New Books in Asian Studies series, the Sigur Center will host a discussion of The Sound of Salvation: Voice, Gender, and the Sufi Mediascape in China with author Guangtian Ha, Assistant Professor of Religion at Haverford College. The event will be moderated by Eric Schluessel, Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs at GW.

The Jahriyya Sufis—a primarily Sinophone order of Naqshbandiyya Sufism in northwestern China—inhabit a unique religious soundscape. The hallmark of their spiritual practice is the “loud” (jahr) remembrance of God in liturgical rituals featuring distinctive melodic vocal chants.

The first ethnography of this order in any language, The Sound of Salvation draws on nearly a decade of fieldwork to reveal the intricacies and importance of Jahriyya vocal recitation. Guangtian Ha examines how the use of voice in liturgy helps the Jahriyya to sustain their faith and the ways it has enabled them to endure political persecution over the past two and a half centuries. He situates the Jahriyya in a global multilingual network of Sufis and shows how their characteristic soundscapes result from transcultural interactions among Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and Chinese Muslim communities. Ha argues that the resilience of Jahriyya Sufism stems from the diversity and multiplicity of liturgical practice, which he shows to be rooted in notions of Sufi sainthood. He considers the movement of Jahriyya vocal recitation to new media forms and foregrounds the gendered opposition of male voices and female silence that structures the group’s rituals.

Spanning diverse disciplines—including anthropology, ethnomusicology, Islamic studies, sound studies, and media studies—and using Arabic, Persian, and Chinese sources, The Sound of Salvation offers new perspectives on the importance of sound to religious practice, the role of gender in Chinese Islam, and the links connecting Chinese Muslims to the broader Islamic world.

The Sound of Salvation: Voice, Gender, and the Sufi Mediascape in China can be purchased from Columbia University Press.

Speaker

Guangtian Ha is Assistant Professor of Religion at Haverford College. Prior to joining Haverford, he was a postdoctoral research fellow and research associate at SOAS, University of London. He is the co-editor of The Contest of the Fruits (MIT, 2021; with Slavs and Tatars) and Ethnographies of Islam in China (Hawai’i, 2020; with Rachel Harris and Maria Jaschok). He received his PhD in anthropology from Columbia University.

Moderator

Eric Schluessel is a social historian of China and Central Asia, and his work focuses on Xinjiang (East Turkestan) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Land of Strangers, his first monograph, uses local archival and manuscript sources in Chinese and Chaghatay Turkic to explore the ramifications of a project undertaken in the last decades of the Qing empire to transform Xinjiang’s Turkic-speaking Muslims into Chinese-speaking Confucians. Schluessel’s current project, Exiled Gods, delves into Han Chinese settler culture and religion to illuminate the history of a diasporic community of demobilized soldiers and their descendants that spanned the Qing empire. Thanks to grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies, Schluessel is also completing a translation and critical edition of the Tārīkh-i Ḥamīdī of Mullah Mūsa Sayrāmī, which is an important Chaghatay-language chronicle of nineteenth-century Xinjiang. Ongoing research builds off of this and other manuscript, documentary, and memoir sources to reconstruct an economic history of Xinjiang from below. Schluessel previously taught at the University of Montana in Missoula and spent the 2018–2019 academic year as a Mellow Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.

event banner for murakami haruki and our years of pilgrimage book talk event

12/9/2021 | New Books in Asian Studies: Murakami Haruki and Our Years of Pilgrimage

November 29, 2021January 26, 2022Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Thursday, December 9, 2021

11:00 AM – 12:30 PM EST

WebEx Event

In this upcoming edition of the 2021 New Books in Asian Studies series, the Sigur Center will host a discussion of Murakami Haruki and Our Years of Pilgrimage, featuring insights from editors Gitte Marianne Hansen (Newcastle University, UK) and Michael Tsang (Birkbeck, University of London), and contributors Ted Goossen (York University, Canada), Jay Rubin (Harvard University), and Barbara E. Thornbury (Temple University). The discussion will be moderated by Gregg Brazinsky, Sigur Center Interim Director and Professor of History and International Affairs at GW. The webinar will take place from 11:00 AM EST to 12:30 PM EST on WebEx.

Murakami Haruki and Our Years of Pilgrimage is a timely and expansive volume on Murakami Haruki, arguably Japan’s most high-profile contemporary writer. With contributions from prominent Murakami scholars, this book approaches the works of Murakami Haruki through interdisciplinary perspectives, discussing their significance and value through the lenses of history; geography; politics; gender and sexuality; translation; and literary influence and circulation. Together the chapters provide a multifaceted assessment on Murakami’s literary oeuvre in the last four decades, vouching for its continuous importance in understanding the world and Japan in contemporary times. The book also features exclusive material that includes the cultural critic Katō Norihiro’s final work on Murakami – his chapter here is one of the few works ever translated into English – to interviews with Murakami and discussions from his translators and editors, shedding light not only on Murakami’s works as literature but as products of cross-cultural exchanges. This book will prove a valuable resource for students and scholars of Japanese studies, comparative and world literature, cultural studies, and beyond.

Registration closes at 11:00 AM EST on December 8th. Registered guests will receive an email with instructions for joining Webex prior to the event. Be sure to check your spam folder for the email. Media inquiries must be sent to gwmedia@gwu.edu in advance. If you need specific accommodations, please contact gsigur@gwu.edu with at least 3 business days’ notice.

This event is free, open to the public, and will be recorded. Questions can be sent in advance to gsigur@gwu.edu with subject “Murakami Haruki Q&A.”

Speakers

portrait of Ted Goossen in professional attire

Ted Goossen is Professor of Japanese literature at York University, Canada. He was an exchange student at Waseda University in 1969 when Murakami Haruki arrived on campus, and has translated a number of Murakami’s works including his first two novels, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 as well as Killing Commendatore (the last with Philip Gabriel). His most recent translations are of Shiga Naoya’s Reconciliation (Canongate) and Kawakami Hiromi’s People from My Neighbourhood (Granta). With Motoyuki Shibata and Meg Taylor, he edits the new literary journal, Monkey: New Writing from Japan, successor to Monkey Business.

portrait of Gitte Marianne Hansen in an office space

Gitte Marianne Hansen is Senior Lecturer in Japanese studies at Newcastle University, UK. She is an AHRC Leadership Fellow and PI for the Gendering Murakami Haruki project on Murakami Haruki – an interest she first developed while working as a teaching and research assistant to Katō Norihiro at Waseda University (2004–2009). More generally, her work focuses on Japanese culture since the 1980s, especially issues related to gender and character construction. She is the author of Femininity, Self-harm and Eating Disorders in Japan: Navigating Contradiction in Narrative and Visual Culture (2016).

portrait of Jay Rubin in professional attire

Jay Rubin is Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature at Harvard University. Translator of Murakami Haruki, Natsume Sōseki, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, among others. He is the author of Injurious to Public Morals, Making Sense of Japanese, Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, The Sun Gods, and Murakami Haruki to watashi. Editor of The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories.

Barbara E. Thornbury is Professor of Japanese in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Studies at Temple University. She is the author of four books, including Mapping Tokyo in Fiction and Film (2020) and America’s Japan and Japan’s Performing Arts: Cultural Mobility and Exchange in New York, 1952–2011 (2013). She also co-edited and contributed to Tokyo: Memory, Imagination, and the City (2018).

Michael Tsang is Lecturer of Japanese Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Previously he was Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Newcastle University where he also worked on the AHRC-funded Gendering Murakami Haruki project. He researches in postcolonial and world literatures with an East Asian focus. He is the co-editor of Murakami Haruki and Our Years of Pilgrimage (Routledge 2022) and is published in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Japan Forum, Sanglap, and other volumes. He is the founding editor of the world’s first bilingual academic journal on Hong Kong, Hong Kong Studies.

Moderator

Gregg Brazinsky (he/him) is Professor of History and International Affairs. He is director of the Asian Studies Program, acting director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, and acting co-director of the East Asia National Resource Center. He is the author of two books: Nation Building in South Korea: Koreans, Americans, and the Making of a Democracy and Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry during the Cold War. His articles have appeared in numerous journals including Diplomatic History and the Journal of Korean Studies. He has written op-eds for The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune and several other media outlets. He is currently working on two books. The first explores American nation building in Asia–especially Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. The second explores Sino-North Korean relations during the Cold War.

yellow silhouettes of Chinese political figures on red background

10/27/2021 | Wilson Center – China’s Leaders: From Mao to Now

October 27, 2021November 2, 2021Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

3:00 PM – 4:00 PM EDT

Event hosted by the Wilson Center

One way to understand the twists and turns of the People’s Republic of China over the past seven decades is through the prism of its top leaders: Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping. In his new book China’s Leaders: From Mao to Now (Polity Press) Professor David Shambaugh of George Washington University provides a masterful survey of China’s leaders from 1949 to the present day. Please join us for a discussion of China’s leadership with a preeminent scholar of Chinese politics and a longtime contributor to the Wilson Center.

title and date of the event next to a cover of the book

11/16/2021 | New Books in Asian Studies: South Asian Migrations in Global History with Neilesh Bose

October 13, 2021December 6, 2021Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

2:00 PM – 3:30 PM EST

WebEx Events

The Sigur Center invites you to its upcoming 2021 New Books in Asian Studies event with author Neilesh Bose!

In this upcoming edition of the 2021 New Books in Asian Studies series, the Sigur Center will host a discussion of South Asian Migrations in Global History: Labor, Law, and Wayward Lives, featuring insights from editor Neilesh Bose (University of Victoria) and contributors Daniel Kent Carrasco (UNAM-Mexico City) and Andrea Wright (College of William & Mary), and moderated by Sigur Center Director Benjamin D. Hopkins.

South Asian migrants appear in most corners of the globe in the present day, from the cityscapes of Dubai and Singapore to the variegated landscapes of North America to the port cities of the Indian Ocean. What are the histories of the various migrations that originate in South Asia yet touch so many parts of the world? How do they relate to histories of globalization? Neilesh Bose’s edited volume South Asian Migrations in Global History: Law, Labor, and Wayward Lives explores how South Asian migrations in modern history have shaped key aspects of globalization since the 1830s. Including original research from colonial India, Fiji, Mexico, South Africa, North America and the Middle East, the essays explore indentured labor and its legacies, law as a site of regulation and historical biography.

Including recent scholarship on the legacy of issues such as consent, sovereignty and skilled/unskilled labor distinctions from the history of indentured labor migrations, this volume brings together a range of historical changes that can only be understood by studying South Asian migrants within a globalized world system. Centering south Asian migrations as a site of analysis in global history, the contributors offer a lens into the ongoing regulation of laborers after the abolition of slavery that intersect with histories in the Global North and Global South. The use of historical biography showcases experiences from below, as well as offers a world history of migrants outside the frameworks of empire and nation.

India and the Silk Roads: The History of a Trading World is available from Bloomsbury.

Editor

Neilesh Bose is an historian of modern South Asia and its diasporas. His research interests include religion, colonialism, decolonization, and migration. He currently holds the Tier II Canada Research Chair in Global and Comparative History at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. In addition to the work under discussion, he has published Recasting the Region: Language, Culture, and Islam in Colonial Bengal (Oxford, 2014) as well as articles in journals such as BC Studies, Modern Asian Studies, and South Asia Research.

Contributors

Daniel Kent Carrasco is a historian of South Asia, North America and the shared histories of the Third World. He teaches at UNAM, the National University in Mexico City.

Andrea Wright is an assistant professor of Anthropology and Asian & Middle Eastern Studies at William & Mary. Andrea Wright examines the histories of capitalism and its contemporary expressions in South Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. Her first book Between Dreams and Ghosts: Indian Migration and Middle Eastern Oil (Stanford University Press, November 2021) uses ethnographic and archival materials to explore labor migration as a social process that shapes global capitalism. Currently, Wright is finishing her second book, Producing Labor Hierarchies: A History of Oil in the Arabian Sea, which uncovers the process by which the lines between citizens and noncitizens were drawn and enforced in South Asia and the Middle East over the course of the twentieth century.

Moderator

Benjamin Hopkins, in professional attire against blue background

Benjamin D. Hopkins is Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies. 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. Hopkins has received fellowships from the Council on Foreign Relations, the National University of Singapore, the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, and the Wilson Center in DC. Writing for the public, he has been featured in The New York Times, The National Interest, and the BBC. Hopkins holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and BSc from the London School of Economics.

event banner with speaker and moderator portraits and book cover

10/15/2021 | China’s Leaders: From Mao to Now featuring David Shambaugh

October 4, 2021November 3, 2021Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Friday, October 15, 2021

12:30 PM – 1:30 PM EDT

Zoom Event

Recording

Join us for a talk on how modern China’s five paramount leaders have shaped the country.

The event will be held virtually, with a lecture by the author, a discussion between the two speakers, and a moderated Q&A with the audience. Please send advance questions to the Elliott School Research team at esiaresearch@email.gwu.edu.

About the Book

In China’s Leaders: From Mao to Now, renowned Sinologist David Shambaugh offers a refreshing account of China’s dramatic post-revolutionary history through the prism of those who ruled it. Exploring the persona, formative socialization, psychology, and professional experiences of each leader, he shows how their differing leadership styles and ruling tactics shaped China domestically and internationally: Mao was a populist tyrant, Deng a pragmatic Leninist, Jiang a bureaucratic politician, Hu a technocratic apparatchik, and Xi a modern emperor. Covering the full scope of these leaders’ personalities and power, this is an illuminating guide to China’s modern history and understanding how the country has become the superpower of today.

Author

David Shambaugh, pictured in professional attire

David Shambaugh is the Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science, & International Affairs at the George Washington University, and the founding Director of the China Policy Program in the Elliott School of International Affairs. He is an internationally recognized authority and award-winning author on contemporary China and the international relations of Asia. An active public intellectual and frequent commentator in the international media, he serves on numerous editorial boards, and has been a consultant to governments, research institutions, foundations, universities, corporations, banks, and investment funds. As an author, Dr. Shambaugh has published more than 30 books and 300 articles, including most recently Where Great Powers Meet (Oxford, 2020), China & the World (Oxford, 2020) and China’s Future (Polity, 2016). He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan.

Moderator

Alyssa Ayres is the Dean of the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs, with a background as a foreign policy practitioner and award-winning author with senior experience in the government, nonprofit, and private sectors. Her work focuses primarily on India’s role in the world and on U.S. relations with South Asia in the larger Indo-Pacific. Before joining the Elliott School, she was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia under the Obama administration. Her book about India’s rise on the world stage, Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World, was published by Oxford University Press in 2018. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.