TransAsia & the World

David Rennie, current geopolitics editor at The Economist, shared how he stumbled into journalism as well as stories that have stayed with him over 20 years of reporting during his return to Wisconsin to deliver the CEAS Professional Lecture. He also delved into how both the US and China share some similarities despite their conflicting political ideologies, the intricacies of Chinese and American perceptions of their respective political leaderships, and the future of US and East Asia alliances.

Nick Lardy, nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), offered a brief origin story of his entry into the field of Chinese Economics, which involved an interesting piece of local Madison political engagement. He discussed his illustrious career across academia and think thanks, and gave us a breakdown on the ebbs and flows of the role of the private sector in China's historic economic growth. Offering a corrective to misconceptions of China's slowed growth and fundamental untrustworthiness, he also outlines how an increasingly hardline U.S. policy towards this rising global power could force it towards self-sufficiency in ways that would be detrimental to the U.S. economy.

John Fitzgerald, Senior Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra, discussed his professional journey and his work on the development of Chinese nationalism. His foray into this field of study was a result of “serendipity and opportunity” involving an interesting convergence with a piece of UW-Madison history. He argues for the necessity of looking at the development of Chinese nationalism from a comparative perspective and the importance of continued U.S. engagement in the region. This episode was edited and mastered by Nate Gass.

Sarah Mellors Rodriguez, then Associate Professor of History at Missouri State University, joined David Fields, CEAS Associate Director, for a discussion on reproductive policies in the PRC. She shared the genesis of her first book, Reproductive Realities in Modern China: Birth Control and Abortion, 1911-2021 (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and explored the uneven trajectory of abortion from a banned practice to a staple reproductive healthcare service in China today. Listen to the full episode for a sneak peek of her current project and insights into conducting research in China! Check out Rodriguez's earlier episode with the East Asia Now podcast from 2018: https://soundcloud.com/eastasianow/sarah-mellors-on-birth-control-in-china This episode was edited and mastered by Nate Gass.

In this episode, Jean-François di Meglio, the President of Asia Centre, discussed EU-China relations and his professional experiences in international finance with David Fields, CEAS Associate Director. Asia Centre is a Paris-based independent research institute which focuses on international and economic relations with countries in the Asia Pacific region, as well as the area's sociopolitical developments. He offered an overview of the European approach to China, which is both similar and different to the US approach, and the ways it needs to adapt to preserve the interests of all parties and reduce conflict. Head to www.asiacentre.eu for a deeper dive into related topics, as well as information on an upcoming podcast and other projects.

Kaiser Kuo, the host of the Sinica Podcast, sat down with CEAS's David Fields during his visit to the UW campus. He discussed how he became interested in the political climate surrounding US & China relations, what drew him away from graduate school, and how his personal history influenced his desire to shed a light on information coming out of China. He asks that the listeners be cautious of anyone who calls themselves and "China expert" and that rather than the highly polarized viewpoints, consider things from multiple angles. Kaiser also recommends the best episodes from the Sinica backlog to get an newly interested party started.

Professor Aaron Skabelund of Brigham Young University discusses his path to Japanese history through his love for reading and opportunities to live in Japan. During his time at Columbia he found an interest in Japanese history, empire, and animals, which produced his first book, "Empire of Dogs." His new book, "Inglorious, Illegal Bastards," discusses the creation and acceptance of the Japanese Self-Defense Force starting in the 1950s through the Cold War.

Professor Maura Dykstra discusses her journey to become a historian of "boring things." Her research, however, is anything but boring. She delves into the world of Qing bureaucracy and how the systematic reports created a sense of decline in the Qing government's imagination. Her book, Uncertainty in the Empire of Routine, follows the long history of the Qing government discovering more problems, and trying to correct these issues, only to find even more problems.

On this episode of the East Asia Now podcast, Professor Brian Dott of Whitman College discusses how he got into studying Chinese history through his father's colleagues and how he decided to study the history of chile pepper in China. He discusses his book, The Chile Pepper in China: A Cultural Biography, and how difficult it is to trace how an American-originating food became integral to Chinese food. Along with it being a flavor, he reveals how the chile pepper became important to Chinese cultural practices and class identity.

On this episode of the East Asia Now podcast, Professor Melissa Macauley of Northwestern University discusses her interest in Chinese history and its connection to Southeast Asian history. In her book, Distant Shores: Colonial Encounters on China's Maritime Frontier, she argues against the narrative that China lacked expansion and resources in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Following the lives of the overseas Chaozhouese, who settled in places like Siam and Indonesia and created a translocal economy and informal institutions to maintain their settlements.

Lawrence University's Professor Brigid Vance discusses her background that led to her studying the intellectual and socio-cultural history of Ming Dynasty China. Her current research focuses on the legacy and cultural import of dreams and dream divination in late imperial China, including dream interpretation and how knowledge about dreams are disseminated. Along with the historical aspects, she talks about how dreams are discussed in modern China.

In this episode CEAS Associate Director David Fields and Tokyo-based author Matt Alt discuss "fantasy delivery devices," the first karaoke machine and Alt's new book Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World. For more on Matt Alt and to purchase a copy of the book visit https://www.mattalt.com/.

In this episode CEAS Associate Director David Fields speaks with Junko Habu, professor of Anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley. Habu discusses her interest in food security in Jomon Japan and what lessons prehistoric societies can teach us in our own quest for sustainability.

This episode features a talk given by Jean-Pierre Cabestan on his recent book China Tomorrow: Democracy or Dictatorship? Cabestan is a political scientist at Hong Kong Baptist University. This talk was given in Madison in fall 2019.

This episode features a talk given by Toshihiro Nakayama titled “"How Japan Handled the ‘Trump Shock’ and learned to Live with it: Understanding Japan-US Relations from a Japanese Perspective." Nakayama is a prominent Japanese public intellectual, a Professor of American Politics and Foreign Policy at Keio University in Tokyo, and a journalist.

We are excited to announce that TransAsia and the World is transitioning to East Asia Now an outreach initiative of the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. We look forward to continuing to bring you programming touching on a wide range of topics in East Asian Studies and on issues connecting East Asia and the United States, including lectures, interviews, and discussions. Please look for new episodes in the coming weeks.

Episode 15 - Justin Tse discusses the trans-Pacific lives of Cantonese Protestants, his approach to the study of Asian American history and religion, and the 2014 Hong Kong Umbrella Movement.

Galen Poor and Joshua Tan interview Joseph Ho about his intersecting interests in the modern history of Christianity in China and the history of photography. Learn about cultural encounters between Americans and China in the early twentieth century, the unique position of American missionaries in early twentieth century China, the history of photography and film-making in China, and how photographs and other visual materials are a rich and unique archival source to do history. Joseph Ho is an Assistant Professor of History at Albion College. He completed his PhD in history from the University of Michigan in 2017. Ho is the co-editor of War and Occupation in China: The Letters of an American Missionary from Hangzhou, 1937-1938.

Episode 13 - Philip Cerepak and Galen Poor interview PhD candidate Kathleen Gutierrez of the University of California-Berkeley about the politics of nomenclature and binomial naming systems for plants in the Philippines during the early twentieth century. Learn about colonialism and science, the relationship between local and Western naming systems, and how Filipino scientists attuned themselves to global naming conventions for plants.

Episode 12 - Galen Poor and Aijie Shi interview Tom Mullaney, Professor of Chinese History at Stanford University. He discusses how thinking about technology changes how we understand Asian and global history. Learn about grand narratives in the history of science, the importance of studying low-impact inventions, and how systems of knowledge, practice and politics are embodied in everyday technologies.

Episode 11 - Galen Poor and Phillip Cerepak interview Lin Li, a PhD Candidate at UW-Madison. She discusses the politics of historical memory around Comfort Women in East Asia. Learn how the efforts of Comfort Women activists have always crossed national boundaries, flummoxing ideas like national tragedy and memory.

Episode 10 - Galen Poor and Joy Block interview Madihah Akhter, a Ph.D Candidate in History at Stanford University. Akhter shares a fascinating set of stories about the Begum of Bhopal, Shah Jahan - a powerful female sultan of one of India's princely states. As Indians across the British Empire conceptualized independence for India, the Begum offered a vision that prioritized Islamic femininity and princely power.

Episode 09 - Galen Poor & Joy Block interview Professor Sarah Mellors, Assistant Professor of History at Missouri State University. Mellors discusses birth control in China during the Republican and early Communist eras. Learn how Chinese families thought about and practiced birth control before the One-Child Policy.

Episode 08 - Our Gender series kicks off as Sam Timinsky interviews Ayako Kano, Professor of Japanese Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania. Their wide ranging discussion covers gender, family, labor, and the current Abe administration's policies in Japan. Kano explains the ways in which gender penetrates nearly every aspect of an individual's life and claims that activism or policy-making related to gender strike at the heart of a society's culture and politics.

Episode 7 - Joy Block and Galen Poor talk with William Noseworthy, Assistant Professor of History at McNeese State University. A specialist in Southeast Asian History, Noseworthy compares the political violence in Indonesia under Suharto and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Noseworthy looks into how both events pursued policies of genocide. Whether directed against communists or non-communists ostensibly, violence in both countries held strong ethnic and sometimes religious components.

Episode 6 - Our series on Political Violence opens up our transnational perspective to consider how humanitarian organizations and political parties in Germany built strategies around reactions to leftwing violence in South America. These leftist groups sometimes associated with violent Maoism. In today's podcast Felix walks us through the complex relationship between political violence abroad and domestic political struggles in Germany. Join Sam Timinsky and Galen Poor as they talk with Felix Jiménez Botta, recent PhD graduate in History from Boston College.

Episode 05 - Sam Timinsky and Joy Block talk with Alex Macartney, teaching fellow in Japanese & German History at Georgetown University. Also listen to excerpts of a talk he gave about two "Red Army" movements that helped define international Left-wing violence in the 1960s - one in Japan and the other in West Germany. Macartney discusses the logic that made both groups choose to practice political violence, and draws attention to global developments, transnational connections, and gendered violence.

Episode 04 - Sam Timinsky interviews William Marotti, associate professor at UCLA, about why non-governmental groups resort to political violence. Listen to today's conversation, as Marotti defines "political violence" and explains why political groups - such as the Japanese New Left in the late 1960s - used violence as a strategy of political protest and activism.

Episode 03b - Joy Block and Galen Poor interview David Fields, deputy director of the Center for the Study of the American Constitution who earned his PhD studying the division of Korea. Enjoy our conversation with him as we look back at the historical context of our North Korea moment and the significance of the past year of developments in North Korean affairs.

Episode 03a - On September 22, 2017, scholars from the University of Wisconsin-Madison held a roundtable discussion about what they called the “North Korea Crisis.” In the months previous, North Korea had reached several milestones in nuclear weapon development, and breakdowns in diplomacy between North Korea and the United States threatened war. The panel included Eunsook Jung (Political Science), Louise Young (History), and Andrew Kydd (Political Science). Hosted by the Center for East Asian Studies.

Episode 02 -Sam Timinsky interviews Viren Murthy, associate professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. A specialist in philosophy and politics of modern East Asia, Murthy studies how intellectuals dealt with transformations of the modern world, Buddhists and Marxists alike. From this intellectual history perspective, Murthy gives his answer to our question “What is transnational history.”

Episode 01 - Galen Poor and Evan Wells interview Shelly Chan, associate professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. A specialist in modern and global China, Chan’s work uncovers the history of Chinese emigres across the South China Sea. From her perspective on diaspora studies, Shelly Chan answers our question: “What is transnational history?”

Episode 00 - Join the founding TransAsiaPod editors – Sam Timinsky, Joy Block, Evan Wells, and Galen Poor – for a conversation about transnationalism and the importance of combining studies of Asian and world history. We’ll also introduce you to who we are and what you can expect from upcoming podcast episodes.