Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

June! How nice to see you.

At the Association for Asian Studies #AsiaNow blog, I continue my series of interviews with new authors, speaking with ethnomusicologist Ying Diao about her book, Faith by Aurality in China’s Ethnic Borderland: Media, Mobility, and Christianity at the Margins.

Recommendations

China Stories

ChinaFile Conversation, “The Future According to Xi and Putin”
John Delury and Jeffrey Wasserstrom, “Thinking Globally About Student Protest: Precedents from East Asia”
Nectar Gan and Chris Lau, “Hong Kong arrests six in first use of new local national security law days ahead of Tiananmen anniversary”
Timothy Grose, “Beijing’s Culinary Crusade: Erasing Uyghur Identity through Food”
Kaiser Kuo, “The Struggle for Taiwan” — Sinica Podcast interview with Sulmaan Wasif Khan of Tufts University on his new book, The Struggle for Taiwan: A History of America, China, and the Island Caught Between
Michelle Kuo and Albert Wu, “Protest Scenes, Inauguration: An intense two weeks in Taiwan” — photos and stories from the front lines of happenings in Taiwan, with some helpful reading/listening recommendations at the end
Tiffany May, “Hong Kong Convicts Democracy Activists in Largest National Security Trial”
Evan Osnos, “The Shadow of Tiananmen Falls on Hong Kong”
Jessie Pang and James Pomfret, “‘Sitting in jail for everyone else’ – a Hong Kong democrat’s sacrifice”
Michael E. Ruane and Olivia Diaz, “Giant pandas are returning to D.C.’s National Zoo. Meet Bao Li and Qing Bao.”
April Xu, “He found the American Dream on China’s TikTok. The reality was more complicated”

Wanderings Around the World

Jessica Bennett, “The Last Remaining Courtroom Artists”
Karida L. Brown, “When desegregation came to Harlan County, Ky.: An oral history”
Scott Calvert, “America’s Tiniest National Park—With the Hugely Unpronounceable Name”
Anjali Chauhan, “‘I wanted to know if feminist politics was all but lost’: Academic Srila Roy on her new book” (The book: Changing the Subject: Feminist and Queer Politics in Neoliberal India)
Sarah Diamond, with photographs by Christopher Lee, “She Landed One of Music’s Great Gigs, but First Came Boot Camp”
Ryan M. Moser, “After Prison, I Went to Miami to Reacquaint Myself With Freedom”
Jessie Yeung, Priti Gupta, and Esha Mitra, with photographs by Noemi Cassanelli, “In an India divided by prosperity and poverty, whose dreams come true?”

Standout Story

This is where the cultish components of academia come to the fore. The institution thrives on our fear of failure, on the mortification of “sunk cost,” and by sucking up our available time and resources in ways that make it impossible to cultivate other skills or quadrants of life. We stay, despite so many signs we should leave, because we have allowed the work to paper over the doors. If others left, we shamed or pitied them; if others wanted in, we cheered them. That thinking has shifted significantly since then, but at the time, particularly for someone in the very thick of the job market, it felt like there were two options: sure, it was suffocating in the room, and everyone was starving and cranky. But if you left it, it really did feel like you would cease to exist.

Anne Helen Petersen, “Ten Years Out of Academia”

Featured photo: Interior of The Fillmore Detroit, May 31, 2024.