Interview with Peter Knecht, former editor of Asian Folklore Studies
Asian Ethnology Podcast
Interviewer: Ben Dorman, co-editor Asian Ethnology
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Interview with John Powers
Asian Ethnology Podcast
Interviewer: Ben Dorman In this episode, John Powers (Deakin University) discusses an interdisciplinary project involving historians, anthropologists, scientists, and folklorists concerning rivers that originate in Tibet, which play a key role in global hydrological cycles yet are in crises as a result of multiple threats.
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Interview with Susanne Klien
Asian Ethnology Podcast
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 issues. She also addresses some questions that were asked in a book talk given on 22 February 2021 that was part of the .
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Interview with Steven Fedorowicz
Asian Ethnology Podcast
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 follow). In discussing some of what he will be presenting, Steven talks about his ongoing project concerning media representations of deaf people and culture in...
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Interview with Frank Mondelli
Asian Ethnology Podcast
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 the history of hearing aids in 1950s Japan, how he became interested in assistive technology, and how thinking about assistive technology can help us think about...
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Interview with Mark Bookman
Asian Ethnology Podcast
Interviewer: Ben Dorman Date recorded: 3 November 2020 In this episode, Mark Bookman discusses a new series of lectures entitled "Disability and Japan in the Digital Age," which is run through the Anthropological Institute, Nanzan University. He talks about the significance of the series at this time. Mark will also be presenting interviews with the participants in Asian Ethnology Podcast episodes.
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Interview with Yoshiko Okuyama
Asian Ethnology Podcast
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 project and the logic that guided her decision-making regarding specific manga titles and disability identities. The two also unpack the contributions of Reframing...
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Interview with Andreas Riessland
Asian Ethnology Podcast
In this episode anthropologist Andreas Riessland discusses his research on Japanese biker gangs (bōsōzoku) and a project involving Shugendō Buddhist and Shinto groups that ended in failure due to various struggles between the groups. He also discusses how he came to terms with the failure, and offers advice to researchers who confront “failure” in fieldwork.
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Interview with David Faure and He Xi
Asian Ethnology Podcast
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. Publications discussed in this episode He Xi, Lineage and Community in China, 1100-1500: Genealogical Innovation in Jiangxi, London: Routledge, 2020. The Fisher Folk...
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Interview with Gopalan Ravindran
Asian Ethnology Podcast
In this episode, Gopalan Ravindran, Professor and Head of Department of Journalism and Communication at the University of Madras, talks about media literacy in India in general, his initial interest in journalism and communication, and then discusses two specific initiatives related to media literacy and journalism among marginalized communities in Southern India.
info_outlineInterviewer: Ben Dorman, co-editor Asian Ethnology
Recorded 29 June 2017, Nagoya, Japan
This episode's guest is Keller Kimbrough, professor of Japanese at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Keller Kimbrough’s research interests include the literature and art of late-Heian, medieval, and early Edo-period Japan. He discusses, amongst other publications, his work in Asian Folklore Studies and Asian Ethnology.
Episode Summary
- Intro 0:47
- Reasons for studying Japanese literature 2:55
- Discussion on “Preaching the Animal Realm in Medieval Japan” (see Publications listing below); how images of hells were used for financial gain 6:49
- Challenges in obtaining permissions to print images 9:11
- Discussion on “Bloody Hell! Reading Boys’ Books in Seventeenth-Century Japan” (see Publications listing below); “extravagant representational violence,” obsession with “media violence” going back centuries 14:46
- Personal interest in “graphic” tales with action; the pleasure of “finding stories”; interest in kabuki and setsuwa (“spoken story”: genre of folktales, myths, legends); the story of “Little Yoshitsune Slays a Thousand”; parallels in contemporary literature and media 18:38
- Discussion of Wondrous Brutal Fictions (see Publications listing below); late medieval oral tradition (sekkyō) adapted to puppet theatre (bunraku); “textual archeologist” 22:35
- Current project – “samurai fiction” (kōwakamai warrior fiction); “pulp fiction” and the heroics of sacrifice 27:18
- Future work – Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds (see Publications listing below) and other projects 29:20
- Interest in textual tradition and the culture of publishing 30:18
- Outro 30:45
Publications mentioned in this episode
Preaching the Animal Realm in Medieval Japan, Asian Folklore Studies 65-2.
Bloody Hell! Reading Boys’ Books in Seventeenth-Century Japan, Asian Ethnology 74-1.
Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds: A Collection of Short Medieval Japanese Tales, Edited by Keller Kimbrough and Haruo Shirane, Columbia University Press (February 2018)
Music used with kind permission of the performer, shamisen master Koji Yamaguchi.
Copyright 2017 by Asian Ethnology Podcast