In the winter term 2024/25, AREA Ruhr launched its novel AREA Ruhr Book Talk Series (online format). Experts from AREA Ruhr met up with authors of newly released academic books that deal with East Asia from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives. Following the exchange between the invited author and the AREA host, the audience was encouraged to join the discussion as well.
In the first AREA Book Talk in late October 2024 Dr. Anke Scherer of AREA Ruhr hosted Dr. Dorothea Mladenova (Leipzig University) to talk about her book Selbstoptimierung bis in den Tod. Aktive Lebensendplanung in Japan. The conversation gave insights into why and how Mladenova came up with the research idea for the book, how she organized and conducted her field research in Japan and into the key findings of her project.
In the second AREA Ruhr Book Talk in late November 2024 Prof. Hannes Mosler of AREA Ruhr hosted Prof. Jin-Wook Shin (Chung-Ang University, Seoul) to talk about his edited volume Democracy and Human Rights in the Kim Dae-jung Era in order to assess the state of democracy and human rights in South Korea. The talk was conducted only a few days before South Korea’s state crisis started in early December 2024.
In mid-January 2025 Prof. Christine Moll-Murata of AREA Ruhr hosted Dr. Yasmin Koppen (Leipzig University) to discuss her book about East Asian Landscapes and Legitimation: Localizing Authority through Sacred Sites in China and Vietnam (based on Yasmin’s doctoral dissertation at AREA Ruhr). Yasmin gave insights into the methodology called “Experiential Architecture Analysis” developed by herself to examine spatial-social interactions as evidenced at sacred sites in China and Vietnam as well as other aspects of her book.
As the AREA Book Talks were well received by the East Asian Studies community, we plan to continue the Series in the upcoming summer term. The new schedule will be published in due time.