Global Asias: Tactics and Theories – Book Launch and Workshop

Co-sponsored by the Harvard Yenching Institute and the Asia Center

An indispensable guide to the methods, frameworks, and critical concepts animating Global Asias scholarship, Global Asias: Tactics & Theories (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2025) is the inaugural volume of the Global Asias MAP book series sponsored by Penn State’s Global Asias Initiative. Praised as “visionary,” “innovative,” and “richly seductive,” the book exemplifies how the collaborative ethos of Global Asias praxis catalyzes new methods of scholarship and pedagogy—and creates inventive models of academic knowledge-production. Organized around five keywords—Transits, Indigeneity, Epistemology, Language, and A/Geography—and featuring innovative research and pedagogy forums, the book highlights potential overlaps and points of disagreement between area studies, ethnic studies, and diaspora studies.

One editor and three contributors will provide a brief overview of the book and a discussion of the collaborative process that produced its approach and structure. This will be followed by an interactive workshop with attendees about devising new methods of Global Asias scholarship and pedagogy in different institutional settings. 

Advanced registration is encouraged and participants are invited to suggest questions and topics to be discussed at the workshop. An excerpt from the book will be emailed in advance to registrants: https://forms.gle/Nzd7DhRJGC7DNdQPA

PRESENTERS:

Tina Chen
Associate Professor of English and Asian American Studies, Pennsylvania State University
Founding Editor, Verge: Studies in Global Asias
Founding Director, Global Asias Initiative

Fiona Lee
Senior Lecturer in English, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Universiti Malaya, Malaysia
Visiting Scholar, Harvard-Yenching Institute

Andrew Leong
Assistant Professor of English, University of California, Berkeley 

Alexander Murphy
Assistant Professor of Japanese, Clark University
Reischauer Institute Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University 

CHAIR:

James Robson
James C. Kralik and Yunli Lou Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations; Harvard College Professor; Director, Harvard-Yenching Institute