Asian Ethnology Podcast

Interviewer: Ben Dorman, co-editor Asian Ethnology

Recorded 8 June 2017, Nagoya, Japan

Peter Knecht was the editor of Asian Folklore Studies from 1980 until 2007. The journal changed its name to Asian Ethnology in 2008.

In this extended interview, Peter discusses his experiences working as the editor of Asian Folklore Studies. He talks about when he first encountered the journal working under founding editor, Matthias Eder...

Interviewer: Ben Dorman, co-editor Asian Ethnology

Recorded 11 March 2011

In this episode, anthropologist Susanne Klien discusses her recent book Urban Migrants in Rural Japan: Between Agency and Anomie in a Post-growth Society (SUNY Press, 2020). She touches on her motivations for doing the research, the reasons for migrants relocating to rural areas, and some of the challenges they face after relocation, amongst other is...

Interviewer: Mark Bookman

Recorded: Wednesday Feb 17th 2021

This episode features a discussion with Steven Fedorowicz, cultural anthropologist, visual anthropologist, and associate professor at Kansai Gaidai University. Steven will be giving a talk on "Representations of Deaf People in Japan: Inspiration, Outrage and Real Life," as part of the "Disability and Japan in the Digital Age Series" via Zoom on May 14, 2021 (Details to fol...

Interviewer: Mark Bookman

Date recorded: 26 October 2020

This episode of Asian Ethnology Podcast features Frank Mondelli, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University. Frank recently returned from research in Japan and is currently working on his doctoral dissertation on the social, technical, and political history of assistive technologies for deafness and hearing impairment in 20th century Japan. Frank discusses his recent work on...

In this episode Yoshiko Okuyama talks about her most recent monograph, Reframing Disability in Manga (University of Hawai'i Press, 2020). Okuyama explains that her work examines representations of disabled people in manga serialized throughout the 1990s and 2000s, focusing on portrayals of deaf, blind, paraplegic, and autistic individuals, as well as those with gender dysphoria. Bookman asks Okuyama about the history behind her pro...

Interviewer: Thomas David DuBois

In this episode, we speak with China historians David Faure and He Xi of the Chinese University of Hong Kong about historical anthropology. Faure discusses the university's Historical Anthropology of Chinese Society AOE, and assesses what it accomplished in its eight-year run. He Xi explains how fieldwork shaped her perspective on China's boat communities and her recent book on lineages in Jiangxi.

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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 ...

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 relat...

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 curren...

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...

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 o...

Originally recorded as a video interview (Dec 5, 2019). In this conversation, Robert Campbell discusses the National Institute of Japanese Literature (NIJL), its vision for archiving and preserving Japan's literary heritage, and the institute's involvement in media and public outreach.