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Category: Book Reviews
BOOK REVIEW: Ines Zupanov’s Missionary Tropics
Conversion as a Work of Classification and Translation
In Missionary Tropics, Ines Zupanov examines the Portuguese Jesuit missionary project in India from the beginning of the sixteenth up to the establishment of the East India Company and British imperialism in the seventeenth century. Zupanov closely analyzes the wealth of devotional literature and Jesuit letters such as those of Francis Xavier, Diogo Goncalves, Jacome Fenicio, and Jesuit martyrs. The author attempts to move beyond hagiography, nationalistic histories, and that of institutions to contribute a more critical understanding of Jesuit missions. Missionary Tropics is divided into three parts: the first examines St. Francis Xavier and Thomas the Apostle and the role of sacred relics in Asia; the second examines the experiences and representation of missionary work in India such as the romanticization of martyrdom; and the third part examines missionary reports and attempts to understand Indian culture and religion. Zupanov posits two themes throughout her book—tropics and translation.
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BOOK REVIEW: M.N. Srinivas’ Social Change in Modern India
BOOK REVIEW: Võ Phiến and the Sadness of Exile
Schafer, John C. Võ Phiến and the Sadness of Exile. Southeast Asia Publications, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University, 2006.
UPDATE 10/15/2016: This literary masterpiece is now re-released as an open edition by Digital Commons at Humboldt State University.
Open Access Online version: http://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/monographs/2/
Proceeds from the print version will support the Library Scholars internship program, which makes open access publishing at Humboldt State University Press possible.
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BOOK REVIEW: Gary Kulik’s “War Stories” & Nick Turse’s Kill Anything That Moves
Kulik, Gary. War Stories: False Atrocity Tales, Swift Boaters, and Winter Soldiers or What Really Happened in Vietnam. Potomac Books, Inc., 2009.
Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam by Nick Turse, 2013
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BOOK REVIEW: Christina Schwenkel’s The American War in Contemporary Vietnam
Schwenkel, Christina. The American War in Contemporary Vietnam: Transnational Remembrance and Representation. Tracking Globalization. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.
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BOOK REVIEW: Nha Ca’s Mourning Headband for Hue
Gareth Porter, “The 1968 ‘Hue Massacre,’” Indochina Chronicle, No. 33. June 24, 1974.
Lien-Hang Nguyen, “The War Politburo: North Vietnam’s Diplomatic and Political Road to the Tet Offensive,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies, vol.1, nos. 1-2, (Fall 2006).
Merle Pribenow, “General Vo Nguyen Giap and the Mysterious Evolution of the Plan for the 1968 Tet Offensive,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies, vol. 3, no.2 (Summer 2008).
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BOOK REVIEW: Rudolf Mrazek’s Engineers of Happy Land
ARTICLE REVIEWS: Van Leur (1934), Smail (1961), Benda (1964)
Van Leur, J.C., Excerpts from Indonesian Trade and Society: Essays in Asian Social and Economic History, (Holland/USA: Foris Publications, 1983) (originally written in 1934)
Smail, John R. W. “On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia.” Journal of Southeast Asian History 2, no. 2 (July 1, 1961): 72–102.
Benda, Harry J. “Democracy in Indonesia.” Journal of Asian Studies 23, no. 23 (May 1964): 449-456.
Euro-centric and Asia-Centric Historiographies as ‘False Antithesis”
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BOOK REVIEW: Heonik Kwon’s Ghosts of War in Vietnam
Kwon, Heonik. Ghosts of War in Vietnam. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2008.
Lincoln, Martha, and Bruce Lincoln. “Toward a Critical Hauntology: Bare Afterlife and the Ghosts of Ba Chúc.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 57, no. 1 (2015): 191–220.
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Cindy A. Nguyen 