Recent Publications by HYI-Affiliated Scholars
February 2009
Professor PHAM Q. Phuong, HYI Doctoral Scholar 2001-2005, has recently published a new book, Hero and Deity: Tran Hung Dao and the Resurgence of Popular Religion in Vietnam (Mekong Press, 2009). ISBN 978-974-303-157-1
Hero and Deity is an eloquent and fascinating journey into the world of the worshippers and the cult of Tran Hung Dao. The legendary fourteenth-century hero and savior of Vietnam has evolved as a key symbol of the nation as well as an efficacious deity in its spiritual pantheon. He is today a ubiquitous, multivalent symbol of the contradictions of contemporary Vietnamese society. Mapping the cult of Saint Tran "bottom up" and "top down" through the rituals, pilgrimages, and lives of his devotees, Pham Quynh Phuong traces and uncovers the sources of the contestations over the meanings of Tran Hung Dao/Saint Tran.
Intertwined with this rich ethnography is a work of self-interrogation and engagement with the author's complex and changing "home," and with the diverse women and men-intellectuals, Communist Party cadres, and market sellers alike-whose lives are centered to a significant degree around the cult of Saint Tran and other deities.
For specialists, this book is a tremendous contribution to the ethnography of Vietnam, cultural studies, and Asian studies. For the general reader, it is an original and stimulating introduction to contemporary Vietnamese society.
Pham Quynh Phuong is a researcher at the Institute of Cultural Studies, Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences. Her academic interests range over the areas of popular religion, gender, cultural transformation, identity, youth, and social change.
For further details on Pham Quynh Phuong's book, and orders, see: http://www.mekongpress.com/catalog/detail.php?isbn=9789743031571
January 2009 - We are pleased to announce that several current and former HYI scholars have recently published books. Please follow the links below for additional information.
Shanghai Contemporary: The Politics of Built Form (How Divergent Planning Methods Transformed Shanghai’s Urban Identity), by Non Arkaraprasertkul (Current Doctoral Scholar at Oxford University). Click here for more information.
Local People’s Congresses in China: Development and Transition, by
Young Nam Cho (Visiting Scholar 2006-2007). Published by Cambridge
University Press.
Islam and Healing: Loss and Recovery of an Indo-Muslim Medical Tradition,
1600-1900, by Seema Alavi (Visiting Scholar 2004-2005). Published by
Palgrave
MacMillan.
October 2008
Makabe Jin (Visiting Scholar, ’07-’08) has published his award-winning first book,
Politics and Academia in Late Tokugawa Japan: Shôheizaka Confucians and Diplomatic Transformation
眞壁仁『徳川後期の学問と政治──昌平坂学問所儒者と幕末外交変容』（名古屋：名古屋大学出版会、2007年）
Makabe Jin, Tokugawa-kôki no gakumon to seiji: Shôheizaka-gakumonjo-jushya to Bakumatsu gaikô hen’yô [Politics and Academia in Late Tokugawa Japan: Shôheizaka Confucians and Diplomatic Transformation] (Nagoya: Nagoya University Press, 2007) 649, 11 pp.
The Shôheizaka Academy, the Tokugawa shogunal college founded in 1797 in Edo, was the center of the Neo-Confucian network in late Tokugawa Japan. In Japanese historical research, Shôheizaka Neo-Confucianism has been depicted as intellectual stagnation and a desperate reaction against the political mainstream. However, this view was influenced by a post-Meiji Restoration perspective. In reality, how did Shôheizaka Confucian scholars participate in governmental foreign policy making and how did their political thoughts change in this process? In his book, Makabe focuses on the Koga family, three generations of government-sanctioned Shôheizaka Confucianism, and examines these questions by rediscovering their ideas of reformation in Japanese foreign policy, based on a thorough investigation of hand manuscripts and books in the Academy library, private collections belonging to Shôheizaka Confucians, and domain-school libraries. Makabe’s book won the 2008 Tokugawa Prize, awarded by the Tokugawa Memorial Foundation for the best academic book on early-modern Japanese history, and is the winner of the Kadokawa Genyoshi Award for the best work on Japanese history in 2007.
