Discussions of China’s 21st-century ‘rise’ often focus on the country’s dazzling megacities and the dizzying pace of urbanization which has propelled their development over the past 30 years. But how and why all these cities have grown in the ways and the places that they have is not always an easy question to answer in a place as large and diverse as China. ... 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
Jul 2021
Jacob Lederman, "Chasing World-Class Urbanism: Global Policy Versus Everyday Survival in Buenos Aires" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
What makes some cities world class? Increasingly, that designation reflects the use of a toolkit of urban planning practices and policies that circulates around the globe. These strategies—establishing creative districts dedicated to technology and design, “greening” the streets, ... Show More
53m 25s
Oct 2020
Andrew Demshuk, "Bowling for Communism: Urban Ingenuity at the End of East Germany" (Cornell UP, 2020)
Bowling for Communism: Urban Ingenuity at the End of East Germany (Cornell University Press, 2020) illuminates how civic life functioned in Leipzig, East Germany's second-largest city, on the eve of the 1989 revolution by exploring acts of urban ingenuity amid catastrophic urban ... Show More
56m 49s
Jun 2023
A Few Thousand Years of Chinese Foreign Policy (In a Nutshell)
In his latest article, "A Few Thousand Years of Chinese Foreign Policy (In a Nutshell)," Joe unravels China's diplomatic legacy from its cultural origins to the rise of the Chinese Communist Party, debunking popular misconceptions and delivering a rich historical context to under ... Show More
1h 19m
Dec 2020
Kelly A. Hammond, "China's Muslims and Japan's Empire: Centering Islam in World War II" (UNC Press, 2020)
The 1930s-40s expansion of the Japanese empire was marked by significant interest among Japan-based scholars and policy-makers in China’s Muslim population and how best to write them into a new pan-Asian story. At the very same time, as Kelly Hammond shows in China's Muslims and ... Show More
59m 34s
Mar 2021
Christina Schwenkel, "Building Socialism: The Afterlife of East German Architecture in Urban Vietnam" (Duke UP, 2020)
Following a decade of U.S. bombing campaigns that obliterated northern Vietnam, East Germany helped Vietnam rebuild in an act of socialist solidarity. In Building Socialism: The Afterlife of East German Architecture in Urban Vietnam (Duke UP, 2020) Christina Schwenkel examines th ... Show More
55m 56s
Apr 2020
Christopher Houston, "Istanbul, City of the Fearless: Urban Activism, Coup D’Etat, and Memory in Turkey" (U California Press, 2020)
Based on extensive field research in Turkey, Istanbul, Christopher Houston's new book Istanbul, City of the Fearless: Urban Activism, Coup D’Etat, and Memory in Turkey (University of California Press, 2020) explores social movements and the broader practices of civil society in I ... Show More
1h 3m
Apr 2024
Alexander Statman, "A Global Enlightenment: Western Progress and Chinese Science" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Alexander Statman's book A Global Enlightenment: Western Progress and Chinese Science (U Chicago Press, 2023) is a revisionist history of the idea of progress reveals an unknown story about European engagement with Chinese science.
The Enlightenment gave rise not only to new idea ... Show More
50m 2s
Jun 2020
How we can build sustainable, equitable cities after the pandemic | Vishaan Chakrabarti
<p>Cities are engines of culture, commerce, knowledge and community, but they're also centers of inequality and poverty. As the world rebuilds from the coronavirus pandemic, can we transform cities into bastions of equity and sustainability? Architect and educator Vishaan Chakrab ... Show More
18m 32s