University of Chicago Press: New Titles in History: Asian History

'Avant-garde' Art Groups in China, 1979-1989

Paul Gladston — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

This book gives a critical account of four of the most significant avant-garde Chinese art groups and associations of the late 1970s and ’80s. It is made up largely of conversations conducted by the author with members of these organizations that provide insight into the circumstances of artistic production during the decade leading up to the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989. The conversations are supported by an extended introduction and other comprehensive notes that give a detailed overview of the historical circumstances under which the groups and associations developed.

Mao's Golden Mangoes and the Cultural Revolution

Alfreda Murck — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In August 1968, the Pakistani foreign minister visited Beijing and presented Chairman Mao Zedong with a crate of mangoes as a diplomatic gesture. The next day, Mao sent the mangoes to the “Worker-Peasant Mao Zedong though Propaganda Teams,” who had been stationed at Quinghua University to put down warring factions of Red Guards ten days previously. The message of this gift was to dismiss the Student Red Guards, who had been leaders of the proletarian movement in China, and in their stead to install workers as the permanent guardians of China’s education system. During the following weeks, the mangoes were distributed to several factories, where they were treated as though they were religious relics. The golden mango was thus a powerful emblem of the power and respect accorded to the proletariat under Mao’s rule.

Mao’s Gold Mangoes and the Cultural Revolution is the catalog for an exhibition of the same title at the Museum Rietberg in Zürich, which explores the golden mangoes’ reverberations throughout Chinese culture for years to come. Included texts focus on the historical narrative of the golden mangoes’ rise to fame; first-person accounts of both students and factory workers; an examination the National Day Parade in 1968, which used the symbol of the mangoes prominently; a critical essay on the 1976 film The Song of the Mango; and an in-depth comparative study of working conditions in China from the late 1960s and today.

Our Pictures, Our Words

Laxmi Murthy; Rajashri Dasgupta — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Vibrant, dynamic, spirited, and forceful. The contemporary women’s movement in India, which began in the late 1970s, fought valiantly against dark times marked by violence and misogyny. But it also celebrated—liberation, solidarity among women, and the joyous breaking away from patriarchy. Its members sang, performed, and painted, in order to draw attention to the vital issues of the time: dowry death, widow immolation, acid throwing, and rape.

Featuring over three hundred full color images, Our Pictures, Our Words delivers a lavish pictorial history of the multifaceted Indian women’s movement, conveyed through its most immediate visual representation: posters, drawings, pamphlets, reports, brochures, stickers, wall-writing, and photographs. The artwork reproduced here is part of Zubaan’s six-year Poster Women project, which has attempted to locate and archive as many posters as possible in order to visually map the diversity of women’s causes.

Over the past three decades, women’s concerns have matured and broadened to include a range of issues related to women’s health, sexuality, the environment, literacy, the impact of religion and communal violence on women’s lives, political participation, globalization, displacement, labor rights, disability rights, class and caste issues, and many more. To capture this many-faceted crusade, the posters in the book have been thematically organized and annotated in detail, with information about the date the artwork was created, the campaign it supported, the designer, the concept behind the poster, the reaction to it, and short essays to further document the richness of the movement.

From Stone to Flesh

Donald S. Lopez Jr. — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

We have come to admire Buddhism for being profound but accessible, as much a lifestyle as a religion. The credit for creating Buddhism goes to the Buddha, a figure widely respected across the Western world for his philosophical insight, his teachings of nonviolence, and his practice of meditation. But who was this Buddha, and how did he become the Buddha we know and love today?

Leading historian of Buddhism Donald S. Lopez Jr. tells the story of how various idols carved in stone—variously named Beddou, Codam, Xaca, and Fo—became the man of flesh and blood that we know simply as the Buddha. He reveals that the positive view of the Buddha in Europe and America is rather recent, originating a little more than a hundred and fifty years ago. For centuries, the Buddha was condemned by Western writers as the most dangerous idol of the Orient. He was a demon, the murderer of his mother, a purveyor of idolatry.

Lopez provides an engaging history of depictions of the Buddha from classical accounts and medieval stories to the testimonies of European travelers, diplomats, soldiers, and missionaries. He shows that centuries of hostility toward the Buddha changed dramatically in the nineteenth century, when the teachings of the Buddha, having disappeared from India by the fourteenth century, were read by European scholars newly proficient in Asian languages. At the same time, the traditional view of the Buddha persisted in Asia, where he was revered as much for his supernatural powers as for his philosophical insights. From Stone to Flesh follows the twists and turns of these Eastern and Western notions of the Buddha, leading finally to his triumph as the founder of a world religion.

Lives of the Mughal Emperors

John Reeve — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

One of the most powerful of all the world’s great dynasties, the Mughals ruled India for over three hundred years. Beginning in 1526, the first six emperors—Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb—invaded, lost, regained, and greatly expanded an empire that at its peak covered most of preindependent India. But the later rulers were seriously overstretched, increasingly lacking authority, resources, or ability, and by the time the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was deposed in 1857, the once-great dynasty held power over just the Red Fort in Delhi.

In The Lives of the Mughal Emperors, John Reeve tells the individual stories of the Mughal emperors and other key officials through the art that was produced at the time. The Mughals were great patrons of the arts, and Reeve reveals them to be not only an enormously powerful dynasty but also one beset by problems of opium and alcohol addiction, brutal familial infighting, and territorial pressures from other political powers. A beautifully illustrated introduction to the Mughal period, this volume will appeal to anyone interested in how the Mughals built and then lost a great empire.

Mughal India

J. P. Losty; Malini Roy — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Published to accompany a major British Library exhibition, Mughal India showcases the British Library’s extensive collection of illustrated manuscripts and paintings commissioned by Mughal emperors and other officials. Depicting the splendor and vibrant color of Mughal life, the exquisitely decorated works span four centuries, from the foundation of the Mughal dynasty by Babur in the sixteenth century, through the heights of the empire and the “Great” Mughal emperors of the seventeenth century, into the decline and eventual collapse in the nineteenth century.

The lavish artworks cover a variety of subject matter, from scenes of courtly life to illustrations of works of literature. The development of a Mughal style of art can be traced through the illustrations and paintings, as can the influence of European styles. Many of these works have never before been published, and combined here with the engaging narrative of two experts who place each image within its historical and art historical context, they serve to provide us with a beautiful and illuminating view of the art and culture of Mughal India.

Contagion and Enclaves

Nandini Bhattacharya — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT

Contagion and Enclaves examines the social history of medicine across two intersecting British enclaves in the major tea-producing region of colonial India: the hill station of Darjeeling and the adjacent tea plantations of North Bengal. Focusing on the establishment of hill sanatoria and other health care facilities and practices against the backdrop of the expansion of tea cultivation and labor migration, it tracks the demographic and environmental transformation of the region and the critical role race and medicine played in it, showing that the British enclaves were essential and distinctive sites of the articulation of colonial power and economy.