Revised Edition of The Pacific Islands: Environment and Society Now Available

The Pacific is the last major world region to be discovered by humans. Although small in total land area, its numerous islands and archipelagoes with their startlingly diverse habitats and biotas, extend across a third of the globe. This revised edition of the popular text The Pacific Islands: Environment and Society, edited by Moshe Rapaport, explores the diverse landforms, climates, and ecosystems of the Pacific island region. Multiple chapters, written by leading specialists, cover the environment, history, culture, population, and economy. The work includes new or completely revised chapters on gender, music, logging, development, education, urbanization, health, ocean resources, and tourism. Throughout two key issues are addressed: the exceptional environmental challenges and the demographic/economic/political challenges facing the region. Although modern technology and media and waves of continental tourists are fast eroding island cultures, the continuing resilience of Pacific island populations is apparent.

May 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3586-6 / $48.00 (PAPER)

Selected Essays on Korean History, Literature, and Society from the Japanese Colonial Era

Imperatives of Culture: Selected Essays on Korean History, Literature, and Society from the Japanese Colonial Era, edited by Christopher P. Hanscom, Walter K. Lew, and Youngju Ryu, contains translations—many appearing for the first time in the English language—of major literary, critical, and historical essays from the colonial period (1910–1945) in Korea. Considered representative of the debates among and between Korean and Japanese thinkers of the colonial period, these texts shed light on relatively unexplored aspects of intellectual life and take part in current conversations around the nature of the colonial experience and its effects on post-liberation Korean society and culture.

“Imperatives of Culture is a landmark in bringing important Korean texts from the colonial period into the English-speaking world. Intellectuals and writers who were central to debates over Korean identity and culture—which in the 1930s and 1940s the Japanese were trying to eradicate—illumine with insight and often brilliance the dilemmas of an ancient nation captured by a curiously ‘late’ (or late-coming) twentieth-century imperialism. These essays also cast their reflection down to the present, as divided Korea enters its seventh decade. This book rewards multiple readings and will be most useful in the classroom.” —Bruce Cumings, Chair, Department of History, University of Chicago

Korean Classics Library: Historical Materials
May 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3821-8 / $45.00 (CLOTH)

March 2013 Author Events #3: Kerri Inglis (Ma‘i Lepera)

Two book launches are scheduled this month for UH Hilo associate professor of history Kerri A. Inglis — one in Honolulu and one in Hilo. Her newly published work, Ma‘i Lepera: Disease and Displacement in Nineteenth-Century Hawai‘i, sheds light on the Kānaka Maoli who contracted leprosy and were sent to the remote peninsula traditionally known as Makanalua, on Molokai’s northern shore. The book offers compelling evidence of how the disease and its treatment altered Hawaiian perceptions and changed the way Kānaka Maoli viewed themselves—affecting their connections to each other, their families, their islands, and their nation.

Both events are free and open to all interested in attending the talk/signing. Books will be available for purchase and complimentary refreshments will be provided.

Friday, March 15, 2013
6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
Native Books/Na Mea Hawai‘i
Join us at the newly renovated shop at the ‘ewa end of Ward Warehouse.

Thursday, March 21, 2013
12:30 to 2:00 p.m.
University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, Campus Center 301
The event is part of the monthly UHH English Department Brown Bag series of public discussions.

Next month Professor Inglis will also sign books on Wednesday, April 3, 1:00 p.m. at Basically Books in Hilo, as part of the store’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Merrie Monarch Festival. 

Chinese Maritime Policies, 1684-1757

Did China drive or resist the early wave of globalization? Some scholars insist that China contributed nothing to the rise of the global economy that began around 1500. Others have placed China at the center of global integration. Neither side, though, has paid attention to the complex story of China’s maritime policies. Drawing on sources from China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and the West, The Qing Opening to the Ocean: Chinese Maritime Policies, 1684–1757, an important new work by Gang Zhao, systematically explores the evolution of imperial Qing maritime policy and sets its findings in the context of early globalization.

“This is an important work based on impressive erudition that offers a convincing reinterpretation of Chinese attitudes toward maritime trade.” —John E. Wills, Jr., University of Southern California

Perspectives on the Global Past
February 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3643-6 / $56.00 (CLOTH)

UH Press around the Web: Hawai‘i Catch-up

Even though 2013 is undeniably well underway, reviews and stories from fall 2012 can still make good reading. Here are some we missed posting earlier.

Waves of Resistance author Isaiah Walker was interviewed by Daniel Ikaika Ito/Contrast Magazine for Raynorsurf.com, dispelling not only “the burnt-out, Hawaiian surfer stereotype” but the ivory-tower professor stereotype, as well.

The October 2012 canonization of Saint Marianne focused worldwide attention on Kalaupapa, Moloka‘i, as did this article in Syracuse, New York’s The Post-Standard that quotes Anwei Skinsnes Law, author of Kalaupapa: A Collective Memory.

Glenn Wharton’s The Painted King: Art, Activism, and Authenticity in Hawai‘i was reviewed in the new open-access eJournal of Public Affairs. Read the September 2012 review here.

West Hawai‘i Today published a wonderful review geared for Kona residents of Loulu: The Hawaiian Palm in its December 16, 2012 edition. (Note: The photo next to the review shows the plant discussed in the second article appearing on the page.)

Honolulu Weekly‘s Winter Book Issue served up reviews worth repeating of several UHP titles.
• “How ‘Bout Gabe?” on If It Swings, It’s Music: The Autobiography of Hawai‘i’s Gabe Baltazar Jr.

• “Strumming Histories” on The ‘Ukulele: A History

• “Under Western Eyes” on An American Girl in the Hawaiian Islands: Letters of Carrie Prudence Winter, 1890-1893

• “Exiles at Home” on Kalaupapa: A Collective Memory

• “Lit Up by Language” on Sky Lanterns: New Poetry from China, Formosa, and Beyond

OK. Onward from here!

New Books in East Asian Studies Podcasts

Listen to the latest New Books Network podcasts featuring interviews with Press authors Kevin Carr, Barbara Ambros, and Luke Roberts.

Previous podcasts featured authors Hank Glassman, Bryan Cuevas, Lori Meeks, and Daniel Veidlinger.

The New Books Network “is a consortium of podcasts dedicated to raising the level of public discourse by introducing serious authors to serious audiences.”

Politics, Personality, and Literary Production in the Life of Nun Abutsu

Rewriting Medieval Japanese Women: Politics, Personality, and Literary Production in the Life of Nun Abutsu, by Christina Laffin, explores the world of thirteenth-century Japan through the life of a prolific noblewoman known as Nun Abutsu (1225–1283). Abutsu crossed gender and genre barriers by writing the first career guide for Japanese noblewomen, the first female-authored poetry treatise, and the first poetic travelogue by a woman—all despite the increasingly limited social mobility for women during the Kamakura era (1185–1336). Capitalizing on her literary talent and political prowess, Abutsu rose from middling origins and single-motherhood to a prestigious marriage and membership in an esteemed literary lineage.

“Laffin draws on an impressive array of primary and secondary sources in Japanese and English to create the most comprehensive picture we have to date of a remarkable woman who has been written out of the standard narratives of Japanese social, political, and literary history. This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of the role of women in the complex interplay of power, poetry, and politics in medieval Japan.” —Rajyashree Pandey, Goldsmiths, University of London

January 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3565-1 / $49.00 (CLOTH)

Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India

The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India, by Kavita Datla, pursues an alternative account of the political disagreements between Hindus and Muslims in South Asia, conflicts too often described as the product of primordial and unchanging attachments to religion. The author suggests that the political struggles of India in the 1930s, the very decade in which the demand for Pakistan began to be articulated, should not be understood as the product of an inadequate or incomplete secularism, but as the clashing of competing secular agendas. Her work explores negotiations over language, education, and religion at Osmania University, the first university in India to use a modern Indian language (Urdu) as its medium of instruction, and sheds light on questions of colonial displacement and national belonging.

“This is a brilliantly innovative book that offers provocative insights into South Asian history, the workings of colonialism, and the interface of linguistic and religious identities in India’s premier princely state of Hyderabad. The author marshals an impressive range of sources to make a significant intervention in the field of Islamicate learning, moving beyond the much-discussed madrasa mode of education to document the birth and growth of India’s first vernacular public university.” —Syed Akbar Hyder, University of Texas at Austin

January 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3609-2 / $49.00 (CLOTH)

First Volume in a New Series: Korean Classics Library

A popular teaching that combined elements of Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, folk beliefs, and Catholicism, Tonghak (Eastern Learning) is best known for its involvement in a rebellion that touched off the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and accelerated Japanese involvement in Korea. Through a careful reading of sources—including religious works and biographies many of which are translated and annotated here into English for the first time—Salvation through Dissent: Tonghak Heterodoxy and Early Modern Korea, by George L. Kallander, traces Tonghak’s rise amidst the debates over orthodoxy and heterodoxy in Choson Korea (1392–1910) and its impact on religious and political identity from 1860 to 1906. It argues that the teachings of founder Ch’oe Cheu (1824–1864) attracted a large following among rural Koreans by offering them spiritual and material promises to relieve conditions such as poverty and disease and provided consolation in a tense geo-political climate.

“In this refreshingly original study of Tonghak, Kallander dismantles some of the myths that have sprung up about Korea’s first indigenous organized religion. He situates Tonghak in its historical context, reading the earliest Tonghak texts the way they were meant to be read when they were first composed, rather than the way they have been interpreted by latter generations. Moreover, in a departure from much previous scholarship on Tonghak, he accurately analyzes Tonghak as more religious than political in origin. This work is a significant contribution to our understanding of both Korean religion and Korean history in the nineteenth century.” —Don Baker, University of British Columbia

Korean Classics Library: Philosophy and Religion
January 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3716-7 / $45.00 (CLOTH)

Disease and Displacement in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii

Mai Lepera: Disease and Displacement in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii, by Kerri A. Inglis, attempts to recover Hawaiian voices at a significant moment in Hawai‘i’s history. It takes an unprecedented look at the Hansen’s disease outbreak (1865–1900) almost exclusively from the perspective of “patients,” ninety percent of whom were Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian). Using traditional and nontraditional sources, published and unpublished, it tells the story of a disease, a society’s reaction to it, and the consequences of the experience for Hawai‘i and its people.

February 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3635-1 / $24.00 (PAPER)