Asian Ethnology Podcast

In this episode, we speak with Jin Feng, Professor of literature at Grinnell College, Iowa, and author of a new book on Chinese foodways. Jin discusses how the experience of leading a study trip to China and Russia helped shape her personal interest in food into a research program, how she expanded her circle of foodie friends into a professional network of chefs and restaurant entrepreneurs, and how themes of gender and nostalgia recur across centuries of writing about food.

Publications discussed in this episode:

Feng, Jin. Tasting Paradise on Earth: Jiangnan Foodways (University of Washington Press, 2019).

Currid-Halkett, Elizabeth. The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class (Princeton University Press, 2017)

Music used with kind permission of guqin performer Yan Yiqiao.

Copyright 2020 by Asian Ethnology Podcast

This episode features Mark Bookman, a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania and a visiting researcher at the university of Tokyo. Mark is completing his doctoral dissertation on the history of disability policy and related social movements in Japan. Mark discusses his personal challenges researching while using a wheelchair, changing research topics from Buddhism to disability in Japan, and accessibility issues related to COVID-19, including “transnational accessibility.”

Discussed in this episode:

Bookman, Mark, and Michael Gillan Peckitt. “Facing the COVID-19 crisis in Japan with a disability.” Japan Times, 30 March 2020.

Bookman, Mark. “Paralympics as Possibility.” TEDxFulbrightTokyo, March 2019.

This episode features historian Thomas David DuBois, who is currently Professor of Humanities at Beijing Normal University. Thomas discusses his original reasons for studying China, the application of historical anthropology in his work, his interest and work in Chinese food, the effect of the death of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain had on his thinking about human relations and food, and finally thoughts on living under the current circumstances of coronavirus and quarantine in Beijing. 

Publications discussed in this episode:

DuBois, Thomas David. Empire and the Meaning of Religion in Northeast Asia: Manchuria 1900–1945 (Cambridge, 2017).

DuBois, Thomas David, and Jan Kiely, eds. Fieldwork in Modern Chinese History: A Research Guide (Routledge, 2019).

Feng, Jin. Tasting Paradise on Earth: Jiangnan Foodways (University of Washington Press, 2019).

In this episode of Asian Ethnology Podcast, McComas Taylor, Associate Professor and Reader in Sanskrit at the Australian National University, discusses how his research lies at the intersection of contemporary critical theory and Sanskrit narrative texts. What makes these texts powerful? What makes them authoritative? What makes them worth copying out by hand century after century?

In exploring these questions, he discusses how he applied an ethnographical approach to working on The Bhagavatapurana, interviewing audiences and performers and applying performance theory (published as Seven Days of Nectar: Contemporary Oral Performance of the Bhagavatapurana, Oxford University Press, 2016). He also talks about teaching Sanskrit as a living tradition, and teaching the language online.

Publication discussed in this episode

Taylor, McComas. Seven Days of Nectar: Contemporary Oral Performance of the Bhagavatapurana. Oxford University Press, 2016.  

Music used with kind permission of the performer, shamisen master Koji Yamaguchi.

Copyright 2020 by Asian Ethnology Podcast

This Asian Ethnology Podcast episode features Roald Maliangkay of the Korea Institute at the ANU College of Asia & the Pacific. In this episode, Roald talks about  his interest in anti-Japanese folksongs in Korea during the colonial period as well as K-Pop and the contemporary scene. He discusses about his monograph, Broken Voices: Postcolonial Entanglements and the Preservation of Korea's Central Folksong Traditions (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2017), and how Japanese colonial rule affected cultural policy, the system of preservation, and the way in which music is conceived and performed. He also talks about how he  applies the concept of “cultural cringe” in the context of Korean society.  

This episode’s guest is Tom Bauerle, the author of Kanashibari: True Encounters with the Paranormal in Japan. Although this is not an academic work, the author discusses the folkloric elements of ghost stories, in addition to presenting some of the content of his book. 

Interviewer: Ben Dorman, co-editor Asian Ethnology

Recorded 22 March 2018, Washington D.C.

This episode's guest is Guha Shankar, Folklife Specialist at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. He is a member of the Asian Ethnology Editorial Board.

Episode Summary

Intro :32

Association with Frank Korom, co-editor of Asian Ethnology 3:50

The story behind the film Hosay Trinidad 6:20

Graduate studies in anthropology 11:06

Work at the American Folklife Center; how the Center has evolved 16:15

Resources at the Center 28:00 

Publications and films discussed in this episode

Film

Bishop, John and Korom, Frank J. Hosay Trinidad. Watertown, MA: Documentary Educational Resources, 1999.

Music used with kind permission of the performer, shamisen master Koji Yamaguchi.

Copyright 2019 by Asian Ethnology Podcast

Intro :35

Religion in contemporary Japan since the publication of Religion in Contemporary Japan (1991) 4:15

Lack of evidence concerning “new spirituality movements”; the importance of considering decline in popularity of religion 5:45

Revisiting Agonshū since the death of the founder; work with religious studies scholar Erica Baffelli 11:39

Transformation of Agonshū founder and leader Kiriyama into “the second Buddha”; the aging of Agonshū 13:40

Problems with the category of Japanese “new religions” 15:15

Issues related to succession after the death of the founder; commemoration, veneration, and implicit nationalism in Agonshū 19:50

Work on Aum Shinrikyō and the impact of the Aum affair of 1995; religion and violence 25:05

Religions, mind control, and the “anti-cult” movement in Japan 28:08

Outro 28:36

This episode's guests are Ian Reader, professor emeritus of The University of Manchester, and Erica Baffelli, senior lecturer in Japanese Studies who is also at The University of Manchester. Ian Reader's work on Aum Shinrikyō is widely known in Japan and overseas. Erica Baffelli is also well-known for her work on media and post-Aum religions (Aleph and Hikari no Wa) as well as work with former Aum members. The interviews were conducted on 6 July, 2018, the day the Japanese government released news of the executions of the leader of Aum Shinrikyō, Asahara Shōkō, and 6 other major figures in the organization.

This episode's guest is Erica Baffelli, senior lecturer in Japanese Studies at The University of Manchester. Erica’s research interests include religion in contemporary Japan, new religions, religion and media, and religion, women and violence. She discusses her work interviewing members of Japanese new religions and the issues researchers face while producing research on these groups.