Young Suh (Maria Manetti Shrem Art Studio Program) 

In Dear Mother, Young Suh, professor of art, shares images and thoughts about his young daughter and being a first-time father, drawing on conversations he had with his mother during quarantine while his father was dying. Written in Korean and English, the two languages convey individual yet cohesive stories.

Susette Min (Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures)

In Unnamable: The Ends of Asian American Art, Susette Min critically examines the politics of visibility and the ways in which the definition of what is Asian American art confines artists. Min, an associate professor of Asian American Studies, reimagines Asian American art as a medium that subverts embedded knowledge and representations rather than a subset of objects.

Michiko Suzuki (Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures)

Often considered an exotic garment of “traditional Japan,” the kimono is, in fact, a vibrant part of Japanese modernity, playing an integral role in literature and film throughout the 20th century. In Reading the Kimono, Michiko Suzuki, professor of Japanese and comparative literature, offers new ways of interpreting textual and visual narratives through “kimono language” — what these garments communicate within their literary, historical and cultural contexts.

Michael Dylan Foster (Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures) and Shinome Kijin 

Monsters, spirits, fantastic beings and supernatural creatures haunt the folklore and popular culture of Japan. Broadly labeled yōkai, they appear in many forms, from tengu mountain goblins and kappa water sprites, to shape-shifting kitsune foxes and long-tongued ceiling-lickers. Popular today in anime, manga, film, and video games, many yōkai originated in local legends, folktales, and regional ghost stories. In The Book of Yōkai, Professor of Japanese Michael Dylan Foster invites readers to examine how people create, transmit, and collect folklore, and how they make sense of the mysteries in the world around them.

Xiaoling Shu (Department of Sociology) and Jingjing Chen

Chinese Marriages in Transition documents the complex, nuanced, and multidirectional nature of these cultural transformations. Using extensive data, Professor Xiaoling Shu and Jingjing Chen demonstrate that, while the second demographic transition is unfolding in many advanced Western societies, it is not necessarily a normative form of societal transition. Working instead from a framework of "new familism," they show that Chinese new familism consists of both old and new values, including the persistence of some traditional beliefs and practices accompanied by a transition to modern perceptions of gender and  family formation.

Sudipta Sen (Department of History)

In Ganges: The Many Pasts of an Indian River, Professor Sudipta Sen tells the sweeping history of the world’s third-largest river, a potent symbol across South Asia and the Hindu diaspora. Sen traces the river back to its first settlers, its myths of origin in the Hindu tradition, and its significance during the ascendancy of popular Buddhism. In the following centuries, Indian empires, Central Asian regimes, European merchants, the British Empire, and the Indian nation-state all shaped the identity and ecology of the river. Weaving together geography, environmental politics and religious history, Sen offers in this lavishly illustrated volume a remarkable portrait of one of the world’s largest and most densely populated river basins.

Henry Spiller (Department of Music)

In Archaic Instruments in Modern West Java: Bamboo, Henry Spiller, professor emeritus of music, explores how residents of Bandung, Indonesia, have re-adopted bamboo musical instruments to forge bridges between traditional and modern values, including musical environmentalism, heavy metal music and cultural authenticity.

Mark Jerng (Department of English)

In Claiming Others, Professor of English Mark C. Jerng traces the practice of adoption to the early 19th century, revealing its surprising centrality to American literature, law and social thought. Jerng considers how adoption makes us rethink the parent-child bond as central to issues of race and nationality, showing the ways adoption also speaks to broader questions about our history and identity.

Edited by Richard S. Kim (Department of Asian American Studies) 

Freedom Without Justice is the compelling story of Chol Soo Lee’s wrongful imprisonment and his years of survival in prison while political activists fought to win his freedom. His case became a nationwide rallying point for an extraordinary pan–Asian American movement during the late 1970s and early 1980s, bringing together people from a broad spectrum of social backgrounds for a common political cause. This diverse grassroots activism organized a six-year “Free Chol Soo Lee!” campaign that led to his release from San Quentin’s Death Row in 1983. 

As a chronicle of the life of a youth at risk, Lee's memoir draws readers into a variety of worlds — war-torn Korea, the streets of San Francisco, the criminal justice system, prison gang politics, and death row.

Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde (Department of Asian American Studies) 

Vietnamese diasporic relations affect — and are directly affected by — events in Viet Nam.. In Transnationalizing Viet Nam, Associate Professor Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde explores these connections, providing a nuanced understanding of this globalized community. Valverde draws on 250 interviews and almost two decades of research to show the complex relationship between Vietnamese in the diaspora and those back at the homeland.

The Kumbh Mela pulls together multiple strands of India’s deep cultural past with its status today as the second-most populous nation in the world with international influence and ambition to reach for the stars. Over 400 million were expected across the duration of this year’s festival, which ran from January 13 through February 26, 2025.

The University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) has recently funded two projects led by faculty in the UC Davis College of Letters and Science that document the lives of marginalized people, both in the past and present.