Asian Studies (19)

• Anthropology
• Asian Studies
• Folklore and Ethnology
• Literature
• Other languages

Careful Village and Other 'Khashag' from Tibet: The Amdo Comedies of Menla Jyab

• Menla Jyab
• Timothy Thurston
• Tsering Samdrup
• Timothy Thurston
• Tsering Samdrup

This volume offers a unique glimpse into the world of khashag, a vibrant genre of Tibetan spoken comic dialogues from the area Tibetans call Amdo, with the first ever publication of 11 annotated translations of scripts by its leading performer, Menla Jyab. Emerging in the 1980s during a period of cultural revival in Tibetan communities, khashag fused traditional Tibetan expression with influences from Han Chinese xiangsheng (crosstalk), evolving into a medium of sharp societal critique and joyous entertainment. Menla Jyab, a pioneering performer, used his platform in radio, television, to craft comedies described as ‘having meaning in every line’.

• Anthropology
• Asian Studies

Humans, Dogs and Other Beings: Myths, Stories, and History in the Land of Genghis Khan

• Baasanjav Terbish

Step into the windswept steppes of Mongolia and explore a world where humans and animals have coexisted for centuries in a delicate, profound dance. This groundbreaking book examines the complex relationships between the Mongols and four animals—dogs, marmots, cats, and camels—shedding light on a nomadic culture that is deeply intertwined with its natural environment. Drawing from rich ethnographic accounts, historical records, and personal memoir, the author, of Mongol origin, offers a vivid narrative that intertwines cultural insights with intimate reflections.

• Asian Studies
• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
• Linguistics
• Literature

Interconnected Traditions: Semitic Languages, Literatures, Cultures—A Festschrift for Geoffrey Khan: Volume 1: Hebrew and the Wider Semitic World

• Aaron D. Hornkohl
• Nadia Vidro
• Janet C.E. Watson
• Eleanor Coghill
• Magdalen M. Connolly
• Benjamin M. Outhwaite

Geoffrey Khan’s pioneering scholarship has transformed the study of Semitic languages, literatures, and cultures, leaving an indelible mark on fields ranging from Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic dialectology to medieval manuscript traditions and linguistic typology. This Festschrift, celebrating a distinguished career that culminated in his tenure (2012–2025) as Regius Professor of Hebrew in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge, brings together contributions from a vast and representative array of scholars—retired, established, and up and coming—whose work has been influenced by his vast intellectual legacy.

• Asian Studies
• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
• Linguistics
• Literature

Interconnected Traditions: Semitic Languages, Literatures, Cultures—A Festschrift for Geoffrey Khan: Volume 2: The Medieval World, Judaeo-Arabic, and Neo-Aramaic

• Aaron D. Hornkohl
• Nadia Vidro
• Janet C.E. Watson
• Eleanor Coghill
• Magdalen M. Connolly
• Benjamin M. Outhwaite

Geoffrey Khan’s pioneering scholarship has transformed the study of Semitic languages, literatures, and cultures, leaving an indelible mark on fields ranging from Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic dialectology to medieval manuscript traditions and linguistic typology. This Festschrift, celebrating a distinguished career that culminated in his tenure (2012–2025) as Regius Professor of Hebrew in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge, brings together contributions from a vast and representative array of scholars—retired, established, and up and coming—whose work has been influenced by his vast intellectual legacy.

• Asian Studies
• Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
• History
• Literature

Harvesting the Sea in Southeastern Arabia: Volume 1: Regional Studies

• Janet C.E. Watson
• Miranda J. Morris
• Erik Anonby

Traditional livelihoods and the ecosystems that sustain them are dying out around the world. This book is a collection of research on the relationships between people, their environment, their expertise and their languages along the ecologically fragile coasts of the Arabian Peninsula. These studies are the outcome of many years of collaborative fieldwork with local communities in three main regions of southern and eastern Arabia: the Musandam Peninsula, Dhofar and al-Mahrah, and the island of Soqotra. Bringing together oral literature, traditional scientific knowledge, and marine subsistence at the peripheries of the Arabian seaboard, the volume makes a major contribution to the documentation of the indigenous Modern South Arabian languages (MSAL), regional Arabic, and the Kumzari language, as well as to a greater understanding of their speakers’ mastery in harvesting the seas.

• Asian Studies
• Philosophy

The Art of Becoming Infinite: Mou Zongsan’s Vertical Rethinking of Self and Subjectivity

• Gabriella Stanchina

In addressing fundamental questions of self-consciousness and self-identity, the book contextualizes Mou's philosophy within contemporary discussions in neuroscience and cognitive science. By placing Mou's ideas in dialogue with Western thought—examining thinkers like Husserl, Kant, Hegel, and Lévinas—as well as with Daoist and Confucian vision of mind, this work opens a pathway to understanding selfhood beyond purely epistemological boundaries.

• Asian Studies
• Digital Humanities
• Politics and Sociology

Digital Humanities in the India Rim: Contemporary Scholarship in Australia and India

• Hart Cohen
• Ujjwal Jana
• Myra Gurney

This varied collection delves into illuminating examples of Digital Humanities research and practice currently being undertaken by academics in India and Australia, and seeks to understand the shared challenges as well as the points of similarity and difference between them. From the influence of Netflix on International Relations to contemporary digital adaptations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, via detours into erobotics (empathic robots) and the cultural specificity of online dating, these essays convey the distinctive breadth and imagination of research in this field. Digital Humanities is a relatively new discipline in the India Rim, and this novelty has created space for innovative research ideas, as well as the use of traditional methodologies and software in different ways within these unique cultural spaces that could potentially influence how Digital Humanities is conceptualised internationally.

• Asian Studies
• Music

Rāgs Around the Clock: A Handbook for North Indian Classical Music, with Online Recordings in the Khayāl Style

• David Clarke
• Vijay Rajput

Rāgs Around the Clock is a rich and vibrant compendium for the discovery and study of North Indian classical music. The theory and practice of rāg are explored through two interlinked resources: a handbook of essays and analyses offering technical, historical, cultural and aesthetic perspectives; and two online albums – Rāg samay cakra and Twilight Rāgs from North India – featuring khayāl singer Vijay Rajput and accompanists.

• Asian Studies
• Classics
• Theatre

The Embassy, the Ambush, and the Ogre: Greco-Roman Influence in Sanskrit Theater

• Roberto Morales-Harley

This volume presents a sophisticated and intricate examination of the parallels between Sanskrit and Greco-Roman literature. By means of a philological and literary analysis, Morales-Harley hypothesizes that Greco-Roman literature was known, understood, and recreated in India. Moreover, it is argued that the techniques for adapting epic into theater could have been Greco-Roman influences in India, and that some of the elements adapted within the literary motifs (specifically the motifs of the embassy, the ambush, and the ogre) could have been Greco-Roman borrowings by Sanskrit authors.

• Asian Studies
• Folklore and Ethnology
• History
• Music

Music and the Making of Modern Japan: Joining the Global Concert

• Margaret Mehl

In only 50 years, from the 1870s to the early 1920s, Japanese people laid the foundations for the country’s post-war rise as a musical as well as an economic power. Meanwhile, new types of popular song, fuelled by the growing global record industry, successfully blended inspiration from the West with musical characteristics perceived as Japanese.

• Anthropology
• Asian Studies
• Folklore and Ethnology
• Linguistics
• Literature

Shépa: The Tibetan Oral Tradition in Choné

• Bendi Tso
• Marnyi Gyatso
• Naljor Tsering
• Mark Turin
• Members of the Choné Tibetan Community

This book contains a unique collection of Tibetan oral narrations and songs known as Shépa, as these have been performed, recorded and shared between generations of Choné Tibetans from Amdo living in the eastern Tibetan Plateau. Presented in trilingual format — in Tibetan, Chinese and English — the book reflects a sustained collaboration with and between members of the local community, including narrators, monks, and scholars, calling attention to the diversity inherent in all oral traditions, and the mutability of Shépa in particular.

• Asian Studies
• History

A Short History of Transport in Japan from Ancient Times to the Present

• John Andrew Black

A Short History of Transport in Japan from Ancient Times to the Present is a unique study: the first by a Western scholar to place the long-term development of Japanese infrastructure alongside an analysis of its evolving political economy.

• Asian Studies
• Economics
• Politics and Sociology

Infrastructure Investment in Indonesia: A Focus on Ports

• Colin Duffield
• Felix Kin Peng Hui
• Sally Wilson

Infrastructure Investment in Indonesia: A Focus on Ports presents an important and original collation of current material investigating the efficient facilitation of major infrastructure projects in Indonesia and Australia, with an emphasis on infrastructure investment and a focus on port planning and development

• Anthropology
• Asian Studies
• Literature
• Other languages

Tales of Darkness and Light: Soso Tham's The Old Days of the Khasis

• Soso Tham
• Janet Hujon

Poet of landscape, myth and memory, Soso Tham paid rich and poignant tribute to his tribe in his masterpiece The Old Days of the Khasis. Janet Hujon’s vibrant new translation presents the English reader with Tham’s long poem, which keeps a rich cultural tradition of the Khasi people alive through its retelling of old narratives and acts as a cultural signpost for their literary identity.

• Anthropology
• Asian Studies
• Folklore and Ethnology
• Literature
• Other languages

Long Narrative Songs from the Mongghul of Northeast Tibet: Texts in Mongghul, Chinese, and English

• Li Dechun
• Gerald Roche

Containing ballads of martial heroism, tales of tragic lovers and visions of the nature of the world, Long Narrative Songs from the Mongghul of Northeast Tibet: Texts in Mongghul, Chinese, and English is a rich repository of songs collected amongst the Mongghul of the Seven Valleys, on the northeast Tibetan Plateau in western China.

• Asian Studies
• Folklore and Ethnology
• Music
• Other languages
• Theatre

Tellings and Texts: Music, Literature and Performance in North India

• Francesca Orsini
• Katherine Butler Schofield

Examining materials from early modern and contemporary North India and Pakistan, Tellings and Texts brings together seventeen first-rate papers on the relations between written and oral texts, their performance, and the musical traditions these performances have entailed. The contributions from some of the best scholars in the field cover a wide range of literary genres and social and cultural contexts across the region.

• Anthropology
• Asian Studies

Feeding the City: Work and Food Culture of the Mumbai Dabbawalas

• Sara Roncaglia
• Angela Arnone

Every day in Mumbai 5,000 dabbawalas distribute 200,000 home-cooked lunchboxes across the city. Giving employment and status to thousands of largely illiterate villagers, this co-operative provides one of the most efficient delivery networks in the world. This book is an ethnographic study of the fascinating inner workings of Mumbai’s dabbawalas. Sara Roncaglia explains how they cater to the dietary requirements of a diverse and increasingly global city, where food preparation and consumption is pervaded with religious and cultural significance. Developing the idea of ‘gastrosemantics’, Roncaglia’s study helps us to rethink our relationship to food at a local and global level.

• Asian Studies
• History
• History: International Relations
• Politics and Sociology

The Passion of Max von Oppenheim: Archaeology and Intrigue in the Middle East from Wilhelm II to Hitler

• Lionel Gossman

Born into a prominent German Jewish banking family, Max von Oppenheim was a keen amateur archaeologist and ethnologist, whose excavation of Tel Halaf in Syria marked an important contribution to knowledge of the ancient Middle East. He was also an ardent German patriot, eager to support his country’s pursuit of its ‘place in the sun’. Ranging widely over many fields – from war studies to archaeology and banking history – this book tells the gripping and at times unsettling story of one part-Jewish man’s passion for his country in the face of persistent and, in his later years, genocidal anti-Semitism.

• Anthropology
• Asian Studies
• Folklore and Ethnology
• History
• History: International Relations
• Politics and Sociology

Frontier Encounters: Knowledge and Practice at the Russian, Chinese and Mongolian Border

• Franck Billé
• Grégory Delaplace
• Caroline Humphrey

China, Russia and Mongolia share thousands of miles of border, but their traditions, languages and worldviews are remarkably different. Presenting varied perspectives on how the borders between these unique countries are enacted, produced and crossed, this book illuminates global uncertainties: China’s search for energy resources and the employment of its huge population, Russia’s fear of Chinese migration, and the precarious economic independence of Mongolia as its neighbours negotiate to extract its plentiful resources. Bringing together anthropologists, sociologists and economists, this timely collection of essays offers new perspectives on an area that is currently of enormous economic, strategic and geo-political relevance.