October 2, 2018

New Book Tuesday! Electrified Voices, The Life of Imagination, The Incorporeal, and More!

Our weekly list of new releases is now available! Electrified Voices How the Telephone, Phonograph, and Radio Shaped Modern Japan, 1868–1945 Kerim Yasar The Life of Imagination Revealing and Making the World Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei Pantheologies Gods, Worlds, Monsters Mary-Jane...

October 1, 2018

Celebrating Decades of Publishing in Film

For decades, Columbia University Press has been at the forefront of film studies, and we were one of the first university presses to have a list in the field. Anchored by the Film and Culture Series, edited by John Belton,...

September 30, 2018

International Translation Day

Today, September 30th, isn’t just the last day of National Translation Month it is also International Translation Day. International Translation Day is a day to celebrate language professionals and the work that they do. Here on the Columbia University Press...

September 29, 2018

Book Excerpt! How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context

On Saturdays throughout National Translation Month we have been featuring poetry titles. Continuing this week’s theme of Chinese literature we have an excerpt from How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context edited by Zong-qi Cai. The book is latest addition...

September 28, 2018

Zhang Yingyu’s The Book of Swindles

All this week we have been sharing Sinophone literature in English translation as part of our National Translation Month feature. Below is a roundup from The Book of Swindles—a seventeenth-century story collection, offers a panoramic guide to the art of deception....

September 28, 2018

Emotion Takes Place

“Ling Hon Lam’s book is a major breakthrough in early modern Chinese literary and theater studies. Lam challenges conventional wisdom that sees emotion as an expression of inner faculties, and seeks to reframe emotion as affective performativity, theatrical manifestation, and...

September 28, 2018

Zhenjun Zhang on Liu Yiqing’s Hidden and Visible Realms

This week for National Translation Month we have been featuring Sinophone literature in English translation. As part of that feature, we have a guest post today written by Zhenjun Zhang, an associate professor of Asian studies at St. Lawrence University...

September 27, 2018

Q&A with Max Oidtmann on Forging the Golden Urn

A Qing law mandated that the reincarnations of prominent Tibetan Buddhist monks be identified by drawing lots from a golden urn. In Forging the Golden Urn, Max Oidtmann traces how a Chinese bureaucratic technology was exported to the Tibetan and Mongolian regions...

September 27, 2018

Book Excerpt! The Reincarnated Giant: An Anthology of Twenty-First-Century Chinese Science Fiction

It is the final week of National Translation Month. All month long we have been featuring excerpts from recent titles and guest posts from translators and scholars. This week we have been focusing on Sinophone literature in English translation. Today...

September 27, 2018

Clare O’Farrell on Translating Foucault at the Movies

“Like all of his great interviews, Foucault at the Movies presents Foucault speaking in his own voice. We find Foucault saying that “the art of living” means that psychology must be killed; that the body must be dismantled; that memory must function...

September 26, 2018

China Trans Formed

“After Eunuchs deftly explores how the introduction of Western biomedicine transformed understandings of gender, sexuality, and the body in Chinese contexts from the twentieth century onward.” ~Ari Heinrich, University of California, San Diego Today we are happy to bring you...

September 26, 2018

Michael Berry On the Art of Translation and Wu He’s Experimental Novel Remains of Life

Yesterday on the blog we shared an excerpt from Chi Pang-yuan’s memoir The Great Flowing River that recounted the beginning of our “Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan” series, as part of our ongoing feature for National Translation Month. The experimental...