Jennifer Dixon’s Dark Pasts: Changing the State’s Story in Turkey and Japan (Cornell University Press, 2018), investigates the Japanese and Turkish states’ narratives of their “dark pasts,” the Nanjing Massacre (1937-38) and Armenian Genocide (1915-17), respectively. The official version of history initially advocated by both states was similar in its adhere ... Show More
Nov 21
Yanqiu Zheng, "In Search of Admiration and Respect: Chinese Cultural Diplomacy in the United States, 1875–1974" (U Michigan Press, 2024)
What does it mean for a country to seek admiration — and what kinds of institutions try to make that admiration possible?
Yanqiu Zheng’s In Search of Admiration and Respect: Chinese Cultural Diplomacy in the United States, 1875–1974 (U Michigan Press, 2024) traces how China atte ... Show More
1h 12m
Nov 15
Jennifer Yip, "Grains of Conflict: The Struggle for Food in China’s Total War, 1937-1945" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
How did China’s Nationalists feed their armies during the long war against Japan? In her new book, Grains of Conflict: The Struggle for Food in China’s Total War, 1937-1945 (Cambridge UP, 2025), Jennifer Yip (National University of Singapore) looks at China’s military grain syste ... Show More
55m 40s
Nov 8
Yunxiang Gao, "Arise Africa, Roar China: Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century" (UNC Press, 2021)
Arise Africa, Roar China: Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2021) explores the close relationships between three of the most famous twentieth-century African Americans, W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Langsto ... Show More
56m 8s
Mar 2021
Sarah Kovner, "Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps" (Harvard UP, 2020)
Sarah Kovner’s Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps (Harvard UP, 2020) is a nuanced look at the experiences, narratives―and the popular/historical memories of those experiences and narratives―of World War II-era Allied POWs in Japanese custody, especially in the Eng ... Show More
51m 15s
Jan 2022
David Leupold, "Embattled Dreamlands: The Politics of Contesting Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish Memory" (Routledge, 2020)
Embattled Dreamlands: The Politics of Contesting Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish Memory (Routledge, 2020) explores the complex relationship between competing national myths, imagined boundaries and local memories in the threefold-contested geography referred to as Eastern Turkey, W ... Show More
51m 21s
May 2021
Jenny White, "Turkish Kaleidoscope: Fractured Lives in a Time of Violence" (Princeton UP, 2021)
The scene is Turkey in the mid-to-late Seventies. A young male college student hops onto a bus. He sits next to a cute female student from his class, but before they can strike up a conversation, they see a right-wing passenger, walk up to another passenger and hit him on the hea ... Show More
42m 54s
Feb 2014
H. Glenn Penny, “Kindred by Choice: Germans and American Indians since 1800” (UNC Press, 2013)
If you have spent a bit of time in Germany or with German friends, you may have noticed the deep interest and affinity many Germans have for American Indians. What are the origins of this striking and enduring fascination? In many ways, it might be said to go back to Tacitus’ Ger ... Show More
50m 38s
Oct 2015
Vicken Cheterian, "Open Wounds: Armenians, Turks, and a Century of Genocide" (Oxford UP, 2015)
The assassination of the Armenian-Turkish activist Hrant Dink in 2007 raised uncomfortable questions about a historical tragedy that the leaders of the Turkish Republic would like people to forget: the Armenian genocide. In his new book Open Wounds: Armenians, Turks, and a Centur ... Show More
1h 33m
Feb 2024
Alp Yenen and Erik-Jan Zürcher, "A Hundred Years of Republican Turkey: A History in a Hundred Fragments" (Leiden UP, 2023)
The Republic of Turkey was founded a hundred years ago on 29 October 1923. Turkey holds a unique position between Europe and the Middle East. It continues to captivate international attention, evoking hopes and fears in the hearts and minds of contemporary observers. As a critica ... Show More
57m 26s
May 2024
Vartan Matiossian, "The Politics of Naming the Armenian Genocide: Language, History and 'Medz Yeghern'" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
The Politics of Naming the Armenian Genocide: Language, History and 'Medz Yeghern' (Bloomsbury, 2021) explores the genealogy of the concept of 'Medz Yeghern' ('Great Crime'), the Armenian term for the mass murder and ethnic cleansing of the Armenian ethno-religious group in the O ... Show More
1h 12m