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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, Dean of the Elliott School

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

10/06/2021 | The First Vietnam War featuring Shawn McHale

September 24, 2021December 9, 2021Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

12:00 PM – 1:30 PM EDT

In-Person AND Livestreamed via Zoom

Lindner Family Commons (Room 602)

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E ST NW

Washington, DC 20052

book cover with image of a soldier holding a Vietnamese flag; text: The First Vietnam War: Violence, Sovereignty, and the Fracture of the South, 1945–1956 by Shawn McHale

Why did the communist-led resistance in Vietnam win the anticolonial war against France everywhere except the south? Join us for a lecture.

In The First Vietnam War, Shawn McHale explores why the communist-led resistance in Vietnam won the anticolonial war against France (1945–54), except in the south. He shows how broad swaths of Vietnamese people were uneasily united in 1945 under the Viet Minh Resistance banner. The unstable union eventually shattered in 1947, and from this point on, the war in the south turned into an overt civil war wrapped up in a war against France. Based on extensive archival research in four countries and in three languages, this is the first substantive English-language book focused on southern Vietnam’s transition from colonialism to independence.

Author

Shawn McHale is an Associate Professor of History and International Affairs at the Elliott School. He has worked and taught extensively on issues surrounding Vietnam, Southeast Asian history, history and memory, and colonialism’s impact and legacy. His other research interests include Buddhism, Confucianism, communism, gender, memory, civil war and violence. He spent the 2007-08 academic year as a Fulbright-Hays fellow in Vietnam and France, and formerly directed the Sigur Center for Asian Studies. He holds a Ph.D. in Southeast Asian History from Cornell University.

Moderator

Alyssa Ayres is the Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. 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. She holds a Ph.D. in South Asian Languages and Literatures from the University of Chicago.

book cover of guns, guerillas, and the great leader on a white background

10/25/2021 | Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World

September 22, 2021November 2, 2021Archives & RecordingsLeave a Comment

Monday, October 25, 2021

4:00 PM – 5:30 PM EDT

Zoom Event

Space in the Zoom webinar is available on a first-come first-serve basis and fills up very quickly. If you are unable to join the session or receive an error message, you can still watch the event on the Wilson Center RSVP page or on the NHC’s Facebook Page once the event begins.

Far from always having been an isolated nation and a pariah state in the international community, North Korea exercised significant influence among Third World nations during the Cold War era. With one foot in the socialist Second World and the other in the anticolonial Third World, North Korea occupied a unique position as both a postcolonial nation and a Soviet client state, and sent advisors to assist African liberation movements, trained anti-imperialist guerilla fighters, and completed building projects in developing countries.

Speaker

Benjamin R. Young is an Assistant Professor of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness at VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University). He is the author of Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World (Stanford University Press, 2021). He received his Ph.D. from The George Washington University in 2018. He has previously taught at the U.S Naval War College and Dakota State University. He has published peer-reviewed articles on North Korean history and politics in a number of scholarly journals and is a regular contributor to NKNews.org.

Moderators

Dr. Christian F. Ostermann is the director of the History and Public Policy Program (Cold War International History Project/North Korea Documentation Project/Nuclear Proliferation History Project) of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a Research Fellow at the National Security Archive. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in modern and medieval history from the University of Cologne (Germany). He has received scholarships and awards from the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo (1999), the Harry S. Truman Library Institute (1995-1996), the Institute for the Study of World Politics (1995), the German Historical Institutes in London (1994) and Washington (1991-1992), the Gerda-Henkel Foundation for Historical Scholarship in Duesseldorf (1993-1994), the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at the Free University of Berlin (1992-1993), and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (1974-1991), among others. He is the author of Uprising in East Germany, 1953, (CEU Press, 2001), a National Security Archive Documents Reader, and most recently Between Containment and Rollback: The United States and the Cold War in Germany (Stanford, 2021).

Eric Arnesen is the James R. Hoffa Teamsters Professor of Modern American Labor History and Vice Dean for Faculty and Administration in GW’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. His scholarly work focuses on issues of race, labor, politics, and civil rights. In his book, Brotherhoods of Color, he explored traditions of black trade unionism and labor activism, white union racial ideologies and practices, and workplace race relations. In various essays, he has debated the uses of the concept of “whiteness” in American history, the character of black anti-communism, and the utility of the “long civil rights movement” framework. His current project is a political biography of the civil rights and labor leader A. Philip Randolph. A former president of The Historical Society, Professor Arnesen teaches courses on modern U.S. history, American labor history, and race and public policy. His reviews have appeared in The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and The Boston Globe and his review essays have appeared in The New Republic, Dissent, and Historically Speaking. In 2006, he held the Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the Swedish Institute for North American Studies at Uppsala University in Sweden and in 2011-2012 he was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is currently co-chair of the Washington History Seminar at the Wilson Center.

Gregg Brazinsky 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.

Panelists

Jean H. Lee is a veteran foreign correspondent and expert on North Korea. Lee led the Associated Press news agency’s coverage of the Korean Peninsula as bureau chief from 2008 to 2013. In 2011, she became the first American reporter granted extensive access on the ground in North Korea, and in January 2012 opened AP’s Pyongyang bureau, the only U.S. text/photo news bureau based in the North Korean capital. Lee served as a Wilson Center Public Policy Scholar and Global Fellow before joining the Asia Program as Korea Center program director. She has contributed commentary and feature stories to the New York Times Sunday Review, Esquire magazine, the New Republic and other publications. She appears as an analyst for CNN, BBC, NPR, PRI and other media, and serves frequently as a guest speaker on Korea-related topics. She is a member of the National Committee on North Korea, the Council of Korean Americans, the Asian American Journalists Association, the Pacific Council. She serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on the Korean Peninsula. She is co-host of the Lazarus Heist podcast on the BBC World Service.

Professor Hazel Smith’s publications include ‘Nutrition and Health in North Korea: What’s New, What’s Changed and Why It Matters’, North Korean Review, Vol. 12 No. 1, Spring 2016, pp. 7-34; North Korea: Markets and Military Rule (Cambridge University Press, 2015), ‘Crimes against Humanity? Unpacking the North Korean Human Rights Debate’, Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 46 No. 1, 2014, pp. 127-143; [joint edited] Reframing North Korean Human Rights; Critical Asian Studies, December 2013/ March 2014, Reconstituting Korean Security (2007); Hungry for Peace: International Security, Humanitarian Assistance and Social Change in the DPRK (2005) and [joint-edited] North Korea in the New World Order (1996). Professor Smith received her PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics in 1993 has held prestigious competitive fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2012/2013), the East-West Center, Honolulu (2008 and 2015), Kyushu University (2010), the United States Institute of Peace (2001/2002) and was a Fulbright scholar at Stanford University (1994/1995). Professor Smith is regularly called on to advise governments, including the UK and the US and is a frequent broadcaster for the global media on North Korea, where she lived and worked for United Nations humanitarian organisations for two years and from where she earned a (still valid!) North Korean driving license.

event title next to graphics of tiger and dragon; text: The Tiger Leading the Dragon

09/30/2021 | The Tiger Leading the Dragon: How Taiwan Propelled China’s Economic Rise featuring Shelley Rigger

September 17, 2021November 2, 2021Archives & Recordings, New Books in Asian StudiesLeave a Comment

Thursday, September 30, 2021

11:30 AM – 12:45 PM EDT

WebEx Events

book cover of the tiger leading the dragon on a background of an image of the taipei skyline

The Sigur Center for Asian Studies will host Dr. Shelley Rigger to launch her new book, The Tiger Leading the Dragon: How Taiwan Propelled China’s Economic Rise as the sixth edition of the 2021 New Books in Asian Studies series. This event will also feature Bruce Dickson, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at GW, as a discussant, and Richard Haddock, Program Associate at the East Asia National Resource Center, as a moderator. The webinar begins at 11:30 AM EDT.

Dr. Rigger’s new book discusses how the once-secretive, isolated People’s Republic of China became the factory to the world. Dr. Rigger convincingly demonstrates that the answer is Taiwan. She follows the evolution of Taiwan’s influence from the period when Deng Xiaoping lifted Mao’s prohibitions on business in the late 1970s, allowing investors from Taiwan to collaborate with local officials in the PRC to transform mainland China into a manufacturing powerhouse. After World War II, Taiwan’s fleet-footed export-oriented manufacturing firms became essential links in global supply chains. In the late 1980s, Taiwanese firms seized the opportunity to lower production costs by moving to the PRC, which was seeking foreign investment to fuel its industrial rise. Within a few years, Taiwan’s traditional manufacturing had largely relocated to the PRC, opening space for a wave of new business creation in information technology. The Tiger Leading the Dragon traces the development of the cross-Taiwan Strait economic relationship and explores how Taiwanese firms and individuals transformed Chinese business practices. It also reveals their contributions to Chinese consumer behavior, philanthropy, religion, popular culture, and law.

For this month’s book giveaway: Attend with the name you registered as and submit a question to be entered to win. Advance questions can be sent to gsigur@gwu.edu with subject “NBAS: The Tiger Leading the Dragon” or directly posted in the live Q&A. The Sigur Center will purchase the book from a local DC bookstore and pay for shipping. The contest is open to U.S. addresses only. 1 entry per person regardless of the number of questions submitted.

Registration closes at 11:30 am on September 29th. Registered guests will receive an email with instructions for joining WebEx prior to the event. 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.

The Tiger Leading the Dragon: How Taiwan Propelled China’s Economic Rise is available from Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Use promo code RLFANDF30 for a 30% discount!

Shelley Rigger speaking at an event with hand gestures

Shelley Rigger is the Brown Professor of East Asian Politics at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina. She has a PhD in Government from Harvard University and a BA in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University. She has been a visiting researcher at National Chengchi University in Taiwan (2005) and a visiting professor at Fudan University in Shanghai (2006). Rigger is the author of two books on Taiwan’s domestic politics: Politics in Taiwan: Voting for Democracy (Routledge 1999) and From Opposition to Power: Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (Lynne Rienner Publishers 2001). She has published articles on Taiwan’s domestic politics, the national identity issue in Taiwan-China relations and related topics. Her current research studies the effects of cross-strait economic interactions on Taiwan people’s perceptions of Mainland China. Her monograph, “Taiwan’s Rising Rationalism: Generations, Politics and ‘Taiwan Nationalism’” was published by the East West Center in Washington in November 2006.

Bruce Dickson received his B.A. in political science and English literature, his M.A. in Chinese Studies, and his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan. He joined the faculty of The George Washington University and the Elliott School in 1993. Professor Dickson’s research and teaching focus on political dynamics in China, especially the adaptability of the Chinese Communist Party and the regime it governs. In addition to courses on China, he also teaches on comparative politics and authoritarianism. His current research examines the political consequences of economic reform in China, the Chinese Communist Party’s evolving strategy for survival, and the changing relationship between state and society. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the US Institute of Peace, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Richard J. Haddock is currently the Program Associate for the East Asia National Resource Center (NRC), which is supported by a Title VI grant from the U.S. Department of Education. In this role, Mr. Haddock is primarily responsible for East Asia learning content development, strategic planning and grant management, liaising with key community and educational stakeholders, and reporting to the Department of Education. He is also a member of the UC Berkeley U.S.-Taiwan Next Generation Working Group, where he is conducting a research project on the current state and future prospects of Taiwan Studies in the United States. He has held positions at the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, the National Democratic Institute’s Asia team, the American Institute in Taiwan’s Public Diplomacy Section, and the U.S. Department of State. Mr. Haddock is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Public Administration at The George Washington University, focusing on digital democracy and e-governance development in the Asia-Pacific. He holds an M.A. in Asian Studies from the Elliott School, with a concentration on domestic politics and foreign policy of East Asia. He graduated from the University of Central Florida with a B.A. in Political Science and minors in Asian Studies and Diplomacy.