East Asia Now

Over a six-month period from October 2024 until March 2025, CEAS Associate Director David Fields had the incredible opportunity to record an extensive oral history with Hyuk YU, emeritus professor of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. While he is best known as a chemist, this oral history focused on Professor Yu’s early life in Korea. Born in 1933, Professor YU was an eye-witness to...

Over a six-month period from October 2024 until March 2025, CEAS Associate Director David Fields had the incredible opportunity to record an extensive oral history with Hyuk YU, emeritus professor of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. While he is best known as a chemist, this oral history focused on Professor Yu’s early life in Korea. Born in 1933, Professor YU was an eye-witness to...

Over a six-month period from October 2024 until March 2025, CEAS Associate Director David Fields had the incredible opportunity to record an extensive oral history with Hyuk YU, emeritus professor of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. While he is best known as a chemist, this oral history focused on Professor Yu’s early life in Korea. Born in 1933, Professor YU was an eye-witness to...

Over a six-month period from October 2024 until March 2025, CEAS Associate Director David Fields had the incredible opportunity to record an extensive oral history with Hyuk YU, emeritus professor of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. While he is best known as a chemist, this oral history focused on Professor Yu’s early life in Korea. Born in 1933, Professor YU was an eye-witness to...

David Rennie, current geopolitics editor at The Economist, shared how he stumbled into journalism as well as stories that have stayed with him over 20 years of reporting during his return to Wisconsin to deliver the CEAS Professional Lecture. He also delved into how both the US and China share some similarities despite their conflicting political ideologies, the intricacies of Chinese and American...

Nick Lardy, nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), offered a brief origin story of his entry into the field of Chinese Economics, which involved an interesting piece of local Madison political engagement. He discussed his illustrious career across academia and think thanks, and gave us a breakdown on the ebbs and flows of the role of the private sec...

John Fitzgerald, Senior Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra, discussed his professional journey and his work on the development of Chinese nationalism. His foray into this field of study was a result of “serendipity and opportunity” involving an interesting convergence with a piece of UW-Madison history. He argues for the necessity of looking at the development of Chine...

Sarah Mellors Rodriguez, then Associate Professor of History at Missouri State University, joined David Fields, CEAS Associate Director, for a discussion on reproductive policies in the PRC. She shared the genesis of her first book, Reproductive Realities in Modern China: Birth Control and Abortion, 1911-2021 (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and explored the uneven trajectory of abortion from a...

In this episode, Jean-François di Meglio, the President of Asia Centre, discussed EU-China relations and his professional experiences in international finance with David Fields, CEAS Associate Director. Asia Centre is a Paris-based independent research institute which focuses on international and economic relations with countries in the Asia Pacific region, as well as the area’s sociopolitical dev...

Kaiser Kuo, the host of the Sinica Podcast, sat down with CEAS's David Fields during his visit to the UW campus. He discussed how he became interested in the political climate surrounding US & China relations, what drew him away from graduate school, and how his personal history influenced his desire to shed a light on information coming out of China. He asks that the listeners be cautious of anyo...

Professor Aaron Skabelund of Brigham Young University discusses his path to Japanese history through his love for reading and opportunities to live in Japan. During his time at Columbia he found an interest in Japanese history, empire, and animals, which produced his first book, "Empire of Dogs." His new book, "Inglorious, Illegal Bastards," discusses the creation and acceptance of the Japanese Se...

On this episode of the East Asia Now podcast, Professor Brian Dott of Whitman College discusses how he got into studying Chinese history through his father’s colleagues and how he decided to study the history of chile pepper in China. He discusses his book, The Chile Pepper in China: A Cultural Biography, and how difficult it is to trace how an American-originating food became integral to Chinese...

On this episode of the East Asia Now podcast, Professor Melissa Macauley of Northwestern University discusses her interest in Chinese history and its connection to Southeast Asian history. In her book, Distant Shores: Colonial Encounters on China’s Maritime Frontier, she argues against the narrative that China lacked expansion and resources in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Following the...

Lawrence University’s Professor Brigid Vance discusses her background that led to her studying the intellectual and socio-cultural history of Ming Dynasty China. Her current research focuses on the legacy and cultural import of dreams and dream divination in late imperial China, including dream interpretation and how knowledge about dreams are disseminated. Along with the historical aspects, she t...

In this episode CEAS Associate Director David Fields and Tokyo-based author Matt Alt discuss "fantasy delivery devices," the first karaoke machine and Alt's new book Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World. For more on Matt Alt and to purchase a copy of the book visit https://www.mattalt.com/.

In this episode CEAS Associate Director David Fields speaks with Junko Habu, professor of Anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley. Habu discusses her interest in food security in Jomon Japan and what lessons prehistoric societies can teach us in our own quest for sustainability.

This episode features a talk given by Jean-Pierre Cabestan on his recent book China Tomorrow: Democracy or Dictatorship? Cabestan is a political scientist at Hong Kong Baptist University. This talk was given in Madison in fall 2019.

This episode features a talk given by Toshihiro Nakayama titled “"How Japan Handled the ‘Trump Shock’ and learned to Live with it: Understanding Japan-US Relations from a Japanese Perspective." Nakayama is a prominent Japanese public intellectual, a Professor of American Politics and Foreign Policy at Keio University in Tokyo, and a journalist.

We are excited to announce that TransAsia and the World is transitioning to East Asia Now an outreach initiative of the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. We look forward to continuing to bring you programming touching on a wide range of topics in East Asian Studies and on issues connecting East Asia and the United States, including lectures, interviews, and disc...

Episode 15 - Justin Tse discusses the trans-Pacific lives of Cantonese Protestants, his approach to the study of Asian American history and religion, and the 2014 Hong Kong Umbrella Movement.

Galen Poor and Joshua Tan interview Joseph Ho about his intersecting interests in the modern history of Christianity in China and the history of photography. Learn about cultural encounters between Americans and China in the early twentieth century, the unique position of American missionaries in early twentieth century China, the history of photography and film-making in China, and how photograph...

Episode 13 - Philip Cerepak and Galen Poor interview PhD candidate Kathleen Gutierrez of the University of California-Berkeley about the politics of nomenclature and binomial naming systems for plants in the Philippines during the early twentieth century. Learn about colonialism and science, the relationship between local and Western naming systems, and how Filipino scientists attuned themselves t...

Episode 12 - Galen Poor and Aijie Shi interview Tom Mullaney, Professor of Chinese History at Stanford University. He discusses how thinking about technology changes how we understand Asian and global history. Learn about grand narratives in the history of science, the importance of studying low-impact inventions, and how systems of knowledge, practice and politics are embodied in everyday technol...

Episode 11 - Galen Poor and Phillip Cerepak interview Lin Li, a PhD Candidate at UW-Madison. She discusses the politics of historical memory around Comfort Women in East Asia. Learn how the efforts of Comfort Women activists have always crossed national boundaries, flummoxing ideas like national tragedy and memory.

Episode 10 - Galen Poor and Joy Block interview Madihah Akhter, a Ph. D Candidate in History at Stanford University. Akhter shares a fascinating set of stories about the Begum of Bhopal, Shah Jahan - a powerful female sultan of one of India's princely states. As Indians across the British Empire conceptualized independence for India, the Begum offered a vision that prioritized Islamic femininity a...