Episodios

  • Fang Yu Hu, "Good Wife, Wise Mother: Educating Han Taiwanese Girls Under Japanese Rule" (U Washington Press, 2024)

    Fang Yu Hu, "Good Wife, Wise Mother: Educating Han Taiwanese Girls Under Japanese Rule" (U Washington Press, 2024)
    Nov 6 2025
    In Good Wife, Wise Mother: Educating Han Taiwanese Girls Under Japanese Rule (U Washington Press, 2024), female education and citizenship serve as a lens through which to examine Taiwan’s uniqueness as a colonial crossroads between Chinese and Japanese ideas and practices. A latecomer to the age of imperialism, Japan used modernization efforts in Taiwan to cast itself as a benevolent force among its colonial subjects and imperial competitors. In contrast to most European colonies, where only elites received an education, in Taiwan Japan built elementary schools intended for the entire population, including girls. In 1897 it developed a program known as “Good Wife, Wise Mother” that sought to transform Han Taiwanese girls into modern Japanese female citizens. Drawing on Japanese and Chinese newspapers, textbooks, oral interviews, and fiction, Fang Yu Hu illustrates how this seemingly progressive project advanced a particular Japanese vision of modernity, womanhood, and citizenship, to which the colonized Han Taiwanese people responded with varying degrees of collaboration, resistance, adaptation, and adoption. Hu also assesses the program’s impact on Taiwan’s class structure, male-female interactions, and political identity both during and after the end of Japanese occupation in 1945. Good Wife, Wise Mother expands the study of Taiwanese history by contributing important gendered and nonelite perspectives. It will be of interest to any historian concerned with questions of modernity, hybridity, and colonial nostalgia. Fang Yu Hu is assistant professor of History at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona who specializes in modern East Asian history, with a focus on Taiwan, gender, colonialism, and cross-border flows. She has published in the journals ERAS of Monash University and Twentieth-Century China. Her current research focuses on Taiwanese migrants to mainland China and Southeast Asia in the first half of the 20th century. Li-Ping Chen is a visiting scholar in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts. Relevant Link: NBN interview for Indoctrinating the Youth: Secondary Education in Wartime China and Postwar Taiwan, 1937-1960 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day
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    1 h y 1 m
  • Christopher Nelson, "When the Bones Speak: The Living, the Dead, and the Sacrifice of Contemporary Okinawa" (Duke UP, 2025)

    Christopher Nelson, "When the Bones Speak: The Living, the Dead, and the Sacrifice of Contemporary Okinawa" (Duke UP, 2025)
    Nov 5 2025
    Haunted by the past, ordinary Okinawans struggle to live with the unbearable legacies of war, Japanese nationalism, and American imperialism. They are caught up in a web of people and practices--living and dead, visible and immaterial--that exert powerful forces often beyond their control. In When the Bones Speak, Christopher T. Nelson examines the myriad ways contemporary Okinawans experience, remember, and contest sacrifice. He attends to the voices of those who find their vocation in service to others, from shamans, fortune tellers, laborers, and artists to dead soldiers, war survivors, antiwar activists, and Christian missionaries. Nelson shows how the memories of past sacrifices, atrocities, and exploitation as well as residual trauma shape modern life in Okinawa and the possibility and hope for creative action grounded in the everyday. Offering new understandings of colonial transformation, wartime violence, and military occupation, Nelson writes from the intersection of temporalities and possibilities, where the hard finality of the past may be broken open to reveal a "not yet" that has always remained just beyond reach. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day
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    1 h y 8 m
  • Joshua Castellino, "Calibrating Colonial Crime: Reparations and The Crime of Unjust Enrichment" (Policy Press, 2025)

    Joshua Castellino, "Calibrating Colonial Crime: Reparations and The Crime of Unjust Enrichment" (Policy Press, 2025)
    Nov 4 2025
    While decolonization liberated territories, it left the root causes of historical injustice unaddressed. Governance change did not address past wrongs and transferred injustice through political and financial architectures. In Calibrating Colonial Crime: Reparations and The Crime of Unjust Enrichment (Bristol University Press/Policy Press, 2024) Dr. Joshua Castellino presents a five-point plan aimed at system redress through reparations that addresses the colonially induced climate crisis through equitable and sustainable means. In highlighting the structural legacy of colonial crimes, Dr. Castellino provides insights into the complexities of contemporary societies, showing how legal frameworks could foster a fairer, more just world. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day
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    53 m
  • Rebecca van Laer, "Cat" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

    Rebecca van Laer, "Cat" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
    Nov 3 2025
    Dr. Rebecca van Laer and her partner purchase a home and move in with their senior cats, Toby and Gus. Their loved ones see this as a step toward an inevitable future-first comes the house, then a dog, then a child. But what if they are just cat people?Moving between memoir, philosophy, and pop culture, Cat (Bloomsbury, 2025) is a playful and tender meditation on cats and their people, part of the Object Lessons series. Van Laer considers cats' role in her personal narrative, where they are mascots of laziness and lawlessness, and in cultural narratives, where they appear as feminine, anarchic, and maladapted, especially in comparison to dogs.From the stereotype of the 'crazy cat lady' to the joy of cat memes to the grief of pet loss, van Laer demonstrates that the cat-person relationship is free of the discipline and dependence required by parenting (and dog-parenting), creating a less hierarchical intimacy that offers a different model for love. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day
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    28 m
  • James Elwick, "Making a Grade: Victorian Examinations and the Rise of Standardized Testing" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

    James Elwick, "Making a Grade: Victorian Examinations and the Rise of Standardized Testing" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
    Nov 2 2025
    Making a Grade: Victorian Examinations and the Rise of Standardized Testing (U Toronto Press, 2025) takes historiographic and sociological perspectives developed to understand large-scale scientific and technical systems and uses them to highlight the standardization that went into "standardized testing." Starting in the 1850s achievement tests became standardized in the British Isles, and were administered on an industrial scale. By the end of the century more than two million people had written mass exams, particularly in science, technology, and mathematics. Some candidates responded to this standardization by cramming or cheating; others embraced the hope that such tests rewarded not only knowledge but also merit. Written with humour, Making a Grade looks at how standardized testing practices quietly appeared, and then spread worldwide. This book situates mass exams, marks, and credentials in an emerging paper-based meritocracy, arguing that such exams often first appeared as "cameras" to neutrally record achievement, and then became "engines" to change education as people tailored their behaviour to fit these tests. Taking the perspectives of both examiners and examinees, Making a Grade claims that our own culture’s desire for accountability through objective testing has a long history. James Elwick is Associate Professor at the Department of Science, Technology and Society, for which he is also Chair. He has written on the history of the life sciences and scientists including John Tyndall, Herbert Spencer, and T.H. Huxley, and is currently writing a history of academic integrity, viewed through the lens of students who cheat on their tests and other school assessments. Jacob Ward is a historian at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He has written in the history of science and technology, environmental history, business and financial history, and political history. He recently published Visions of a Digital Nation: Market and Monopoly in British Telecommunications (MIT Press, 2024) and he’s currently working on a history of futurology in the United Kingdom and Europe from 1945 to the present day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day
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    1 h y 3 m
  • Rachel Myrick, "Polarization and International Politics: How Extreme Partisanship Threatens Global Stability" (Princeton UP, 2025)

    Rachel Myrick, "Polarization and International Politics: How Extreme Partisanship Threatens Global Stability" (Princeton UP, 2025)
    Nov 1 2025
    Polarization is a defining feature of politics in the United States and many other democracies. Yet although there is much research focusing on the effects of polarization on domestic politics, little is known about how polarization influences international cooperation and conflict. Democracies are thought to have advantages over nondemocratic nations in international relations, including the ability to keep foreign policy stable across time, credibly signal information to adversaries, and maintain commitments to allies. Does domestic polarization affect these “democratic advantages”? These are the questions that Rachel Myrick tackles in her new book, “Polarization and International Politics: How Extreme Partisanship Threatens Global Stability” (Princeton UP, 2025) In this timely book, Myrick argues that polarization reshapes the nature of constraints on democratic leaders, which in turn erodes the advantages democracies have in foreign affairs. Drawing on a range of evidence, including cross-national analyses, observational and experimental public opinion research, descriptive data on the behavior of politicians, and interviews with policymakers, Myrick develops metrics that explain the effect of extreme polarization on international politics and traces the pathways by which polarization undermines each of the democratic advantages. Turning to the case of contemporary US foreign policy, Myrick shows that as its political leaders become less responsive to the public and less accountable to political opposition, the United States loses both reliability as an ally and credibility as an adversary. Myrick’s account links the effects of polarization on democratic governance to theories of international relations, integrating work across the fields of international relations, comparative politics, and American politics to explore how patterns of domestic polarization shape the international system. Our guest is Rachel Myrick, the Douglas & Ellen Lowey Associate Professor of Political Science at Duke University. Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day
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    26 m
  • Pablo Meninato and Gregory Marinic, "Urban Labyrinths: Informal Settlements, Architecture, and Social Change in Latin America" (Routledge, 2025)

    Pablo Meninato and Gregory Marinic, "Urban Labyrinths: Informal Settlements, Architecture, and Social Change in Latin America" (Routledge, 2025)
    Oct 31 2025
    Urban Labyrinths: Informal Settlements, Architecture, and Social Change in Latin America examines intervention initiatives in informal settlements in Latin American cities as social, spatial, architectural, and cultural processes. From the mid-20th century to the present, Latin America and other regions in the Global South have experienced a remarkable demographic trend, with millions of people moving from rural areas to cities in search of work, healthcare, and education. Without other options, these migrants have created self-built settlements mostly located on the periphery of large metropolitan areas. While the initial reaction of governments was to eliminate these communities, since the 1990s, several Latin American cities began to advance new urban intervention approaches for improving quality of life. This book examines informal settlement interventions in five Latin American cities: Rio de Janeiro, Medellín, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Tijuana. It explores the Favela-Bairro Program in Rio de Janeiro during the 1990s which sought to improve living conditions and infrastructure in favelas. It investigates projects propelled by Social Urbanism in Medellín at the beginning of the 2000s, aimed at revitalizing marginalized areas by creating a public transportation network, constructing civic buildings, and creating public spaces. Furthermore, the book examines the long-term initiatives led by SEHAB in São Paulo, which simultaneously addresses favela upgrading works, water pollution remediation strategies, and environmental stewardship. It discusses current intervention initiatives being developed in informal settlements in Buenos Aires and Tijuana, exploring the urban design strategies that address complex challenges faced by these communities. Taken together, the Latin American architects, planners, landscape architects, researchers, and stakeholders involved in these projects confirm that urbanism, architecture, and landscape design can produce positive urban and social transformations for the most underprivileged. This book will be of interest to students, researchers, and professionals in planning, urbanism, architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, urban geography, public policy, as well as other spatial design disciplines. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day
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    1 h y 17 m
  • John Blair, "Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World" (Princeton UP, 2025)

    John Blair, "Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World" (Princeton UP, 2025)
    Oct 30 2025
    Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World (Princeton UP, 2025) by Professor John Blair provides the first in-depth, global account of one of the world’s most widespread yet misunderstood forms of mass hysteria—the vampire epidemic. In a spellbinding narrative, Dr. Blair takes readers from ancient Mesopotamia to present-day Haiti to explore a macabre frontier of life and death where corpses are believed to wander or do harm from the grave, and where the vampire is a physical expression of society’s inexplicable terrors and anxieties.In 1732, the British public opened their morning papers to read of lurid happenings in eastern Europe. Serbian villagers had dug up several corpses and had found them to be undecayed and bloated with blood. Recognizing the marks of vampirism, they mutilated and burned them. Centuries earlier, the English themselves engaged in the same behavior. In fact, vampire epidemics have flared up throughout history—in ancient Assyria, China, and Rome, medieval and early modern Europe, and the Americas. Blair blends the latest findings in archaeology, anthropology, and psychology with vampire lore from literature and popular culture to show how these episodes occur at traumatic moments in societies that upend all sense of security, and how the European vampire is just one species in a larger family of predatory supernatural entities that includes the female flying demons of Southeast Asia and the lustful yoginīs of India.Richly illustrated, Killing the Dead provocatively argues that corpse-killing, far from being pathological or unhealthy, served as a therapeutic and largely harmless outlet for fear, hatred, and paranoia that would otherwise result in violence against marginalized groups and individuals. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day
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    51 m