How does music link people across time and space? How do singers modulate their repertoires to forge links with audiences both within and across local, regional and national borders? What are the consequences of these developments? In Song King: Connecting People, Places and Past in Contemporary China (University of Hawaii Press 2018), Dartmouth College Assi ... Show More
Jun 5
Lewis Ryder, "Connoisseurs and conmen: The contest for cultural authority in early twentieth-century Britain" (Manchester UP, 2026)
Connoisseurs and conmen: The contest for cultural authority in early twentieth-century Britain (Manchester University Press, 2026) by Dr. Lewis Ryder examines John Hilditch (1872-1930), a notorious collector of Chinese art who lied, hoaxed and manipulated in his struggle agains ... Show More
44m 24s
Jun 3
Weipin Tsai, "The Making of China's Post Office: Sovereignty, Modernization, and the Connection of a Nation" (Harvard UP, 2024)
How did a vast, nationwide institution like a modern postal system come into being in Qing China—right at the very end of the empire? In The Making of China’s Post Office: Sovereignty, Modernization, and the Connection of a Nation (Harvard University Press, 2024), Weipin Tsai tak ... Show More
58m 12s
May 28
Chunmei Du, "Everyday Occupation: American Soldiers and Chinese Civilians in the Aftermath of World War II" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Chunmei Du is an Associate Professor of History at Lingnan University. Her work focuses on the social and cultural history of modern China, specifically looking at cross-cultural encounters and the lived experiences of ordinary individuals during periods of profound political tra ... Show More
55m 4s
Apr 2023
Schell on The Long Arc of US-China and Long Reach of Leninism
How did Xi Jinping’s formative years influence how he views the world today? Veteran China scholar Orville Schell, the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations, looks back at decades of writing and working on China, weathering the cycles of the country opening u ... Show More
1h 19m
Apr 2016
Roshanak Kheshti, “Modernity’s Ear: Listening to Race and Gender in World Music” (NYU Press, 2015)
The origins of world music can be found in early ethnographic recordings as anthropologists and ethnomusicologists sought to record the songs of lost or dying cultures. In Modernity’s Ear: Listening to Race and Gender in World Music (NYU Press, 2015), Roshanak Kheshti explores ho ... Show More
59m 38s
Jul 2021
'Good for the ego, bad for the soul' with Manika Kaur, Ali Riaz Baqar, Gurujas Khalsa and Abi Sampa
Manika Kaur, Ali Riaz Baqar, Gurujas Khalsa and Abi Sampa discuss individual definitions of success, why you're going to offend somebody no matter what music you make, the rollercoaster effect, and what their studio spaces look like.Manika Kaur is a singer and contemporary perfor ... Show More
31m 3s
May 2024
Ian Johnson, "Sparks: China's Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Even as most contemporary states look to history in order to legitimize their existence in some way or other, the past – and narrations of it – hold particular weight in China. This is not a new phenomenon, for which pasts to elevate and which to suppress has long been a concern ... Show More
1h 6m
Apr 2021
Richard C. Jankowsky, "Ambient Sufism: Ritual Niches and the Social Work of Musical Form" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
Ambient Sufism: Ritual Niches and the Social Work of Musical Form (University of Chicago Press, 2021) by Richard C. Jankowsky (an Associate Professor of music at Tufts University) is a rich ethnographic study of the sonic and ritual landscapes of complex religious communities in ... Show More
59m 58s
May 2011
Dagmar Schaefer, “The Crafting of the 10,000 Things: Knowledge and Technology in Seventeenth-Century China” (University of Chicago Press, 2011)
In her elegant work of historical puppet theater The Crafting of the 10,000 Things: Knowledge and Technology in Seventeenth-Century China (University of Chicago Press, 2011), Dagmar Schaefer introduces us to the world of scholars and craftsmen in seventeenth-century China through ... Show More
58m 38s
Jan 2023
There’s Been a Revolution in How China Is Governed
<p>There are few stories that are more crucial to the world’s future than what’s happening in China. Take any of the most important issues of our time — climate change, geopolitics, the global economy, advanced technologies — and China is at the center of them. American politics ... Show More
1h 19m