Christopher Hanscom, professor of Korean literature in the department of Asian languages and cultures, has published a new book, “The Affect of Difference: Representations of Race in East Asian Empire” (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2016; co-edited with Dennis Washburn).
“The Affect of Difference” is a collection of essays offering a new perspective on the history of race and racial ideologies in modern East Asia. Contributors approach this subject through the exploration of everyday culture from a range of academic disciplines, each working to show how race was made visible and present as a potential means of identification. By analyzing artifacts from diverse media including travelogues, records of speech, photographs, radio broadcasts, surgical techniques, tattoos, anthropometric postcards, fiction, the popular press, film and soundtracks — an archive that chronicles the quotidian experiences of the colonized — their essays shed light on the politics of inclusion and exclusion that underpinned Japanese empire.
