EALC 2018

[Kaiwei]

Welcome, @Riby! I will probably end up studying Japanese as a Chinese MA student (due to the abundance of scholarship on Chinese done in Japanese), but I secretly want to study Korean... 

[bakedmanapua]

@Riby great to have you on board! I'm a student of Japanese at the moment, but Korean is on my (admittedly long) list. As a film/media scholar I hope to eventually learn "for research"  

 

[Naito]

@spicyramen What kind of film/media study are you researching on? Recently I finished watching Sanada Maru, a Taiga dorama...I love historical drama! And also anime! (Naito Baron is actually a fictional character from a famous manga/anime).

[ystlum_chwilfrydig]

Hello, dear fellow aspirants of East Asian studies!

I focus on Japanese pre-modern literature, have applied for PhD (a number of them, naturally) and am already freaking out (perhaps too early). So I kind of hope that it's easier to survive it among people rather than suffer alone. :-)

Congratulations to the happy people who already got some good news!

[kotatsumuri]

Sounds great @Riby We wish you luck with your apps As others have said, it's great to have a future Korean scholar join us! I too hope I can find a good excuse to start studying Korean once I'm back in school too.

Welcome to @ystlum_chwilfrydig as well! Nice to meet you. I'm excited to see someone else interested in premodern Japanese studies! I'm planning on studying premodern history/religion myself.

I hope more EALC-enthusiasts will come out of the woodwork in the next few weeks and months. If anyone is out there lurking, don't be shy!!

[bakedmanapua]

@NaitoBaron my current project is on repetitive tropes in Japanese horror cinema. I’m more broadly interested in how political/cultural ideas are expressed in cinema and pop media. Somewhere down the road I want to do anime and the transnational nature of pop media coming out of Asia...there’s a lot there! 

Hello @ystlum_chwilfrydig! Welcome to the party. I, too, have applied for several EALC PhDs. Good to see you here! 

[Naito]

@spicyramen That is very interesting! I kind of also want to incorporate some aspects of contemporary film and drama's depiction of ancient literature. But I have too many interests and really need to narrow down to one!

By the way, there is a great new book just published this month for those who are students of Sinology:

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674979406

It is a collection of many essays written by the top in the field. So that's a great introduction to the potential advisors; if you are interested in learning more about them, reading their essays which condense their life of scholarships may be helpful!

"Table of Contents:

• Introduction [Michael Szonyi]
• I. Politics
  • 1. Is the Chinese Communist Regime Legitimate? [Elizabeth J. Perry]
  • 2. Can Fighting Corruption Save the Party? [Joseph Fewsmith]
  • 3. Does Mao Still Matter? [Roderick MacFarquhar]
  • 4. What Is the Source of Ethnic Tension in China? [Mark Elliott]
  • 5. What Should We Know about Public Opinion in China? [Ya-Wen Lei]
  • 6. What Does Longevity Mean for Leadership in China? [Arunabh Ghosh]
  • 7. Can the Chinese Communist Party Learn from Chinese Emperors? [Yuhua Wang]
• II. International Relations
  • 8. Will China Lead Asia? [Odd Arne Westad]
  • 9. How Strong Are China’s Armed Forces? [Andrew S. Erickson]
  • 10. What Does the Rise of China Mean for the United States? [Robert S. Ross]
  • 11. Is Chinese Exceptionalism Undermining China’s Foreign Policy Interests? [Alastair Iain Johnston]
  • 12. (When) Will Taiwan Reunify with the Mainland? [Steven M. Goldstein]
  • 13. Can China and Japan Ever Get Along? [Ezra F. Vogel]
• III. Economy
  • 14. Can China’s High Growth Continue? [Richard N. Cooper]
  • 15. Is the Chinese Economy Headed toward a Hard Landing? [Dwight H. Perkins]
  • 16. Will Urbanization Save the Chinese Economy or Destroy It? [Meg Rithmire]
  • 17. Is China Keeping Its Promises on Trade? [Mark Wu]
  • 18. How Do China’s New Rich Give Back? [Tony Saich]
  • 19. What Can China Teach Us about Fighting Poverty? [Nara Dillon]
• IV. Environment
  • 20. Can China Address Air Pollution and Climate Change? [Michael B. McElroy]
  • 21. Is There Environmental Awareness in China? [Karen Thornber]
• V. Society
  • 22. Why Does the End of the One-Child Policy Matter? [Susan Greenhalgh]
  • 23. How Are China and Its Middle Class Handling Aging and Mental Health? [Arthur Kleinman]
  • 24. How Important Is Religion in China? [James Robson]
  • 25. Will There Be Another Dalai Lama? [Leonard W. J. van der Kuijp]
  • 26. Does Law Matter in China? [William P. Alford]
  • 27. Why Do So Many Chinese Students Come to the United States? [William C. Kirby]
• VI. History and Culture
  • 28. Who Is Confucius in Today’s China? [Michael Puett]
  • 29. Where Did the Silk Road Come From? [Rowan Flad]
  • 30. Why Do Intellectuals Matter to Chinese Politics? [Peter K. Bol]
  • 31. Why Do Classic Chinese Novels Matter? [Wai-yee Li]
  • 32. How Have Chinese Writers Imagined China’s Future? [David Der-wei Wang]
  • 33. Has Chinese Propaganda Won Hearts and Minds? [Jie Li]
  • 34. Why Is It Still So Hard to Talk about the Cultural Revolution? [Xiaofei Tian]
  • 35. What Is the Future of China’s Past? [Stephen Owen]
  • 36. How Has the Study of China Changed in the Last Sixty Years? [Paul A. Cohen]"

 

[Kaiwei]

@NaitoBaron Looks like a good compilation—especially for those interested in contemporary affairs. I'll definitely have to check out the essays by Dr. Xiaofei Tian and Dr. Stephen Owen, as I'm quite interested in their work. 

Dr. Tian is actually releasing her book, The Halberd at Red Cliff Jian'an and the Three Kingdoms on April 02 ( http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674977037). I'm quite excited to learn more about the Three Kingdoms. She claims of the Jian'an and the Three Kingdoms, "Its writings laid the foundation of classical poetry and literary criticism." It's a must read for those interested in Classical Chinese lit. 

Right now I'm reading a compilation of essays by Paul K. Kroll entitled Reading Medieval Chinese Poetry http://www.brill.com/products/book/reading-medieval-chinese-poetry. I'm just finishing up his essay on a lesser known compilation of Tang Dynasty poets written by 殷璠 titled 河嶽英靈集. The essay is a nice acknowledgement of many poets that were not included in the 唐詩三百首. The compilation has articles written by some eminent scholars of pre-modern lit. (Ding Xiang Werner, Stephen Owen, Paul Kroll, and Ronald Egan). 

Survey: what's everyone reading? 

Also, whom do you folks deem as the top publishers of EALC scholarship? I'm presuming Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, etc... Any others? How is Brill?

 

[anon1234567]

On ‎2018‎-‎01‎-‎14 at 9:34 PM, lordtiandao said:

Yeah, when I was interviewing for UCLA the professor talked a little about why he thought the UCLA program was better than Princeton's. I didn't think this was a coincidence since I listed Princeton as one of the schools I applied to on the application.

No it was not a coincidence. Good luck! 

[anon1234567]

On ‎2018‎-‎01‎-‎15 at 1:48 PM, NaitoBaron said:

getting your stuff published by Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard is always a good thing, and Brill is like a second option, IMHO, but maybe

Yes, Absolutely! In which press you publish matters, especially when you apply for TT. 

[Kaiwei]

@anon1234567 I'm curious about publishing--do masters or PhD students ever get the opportunity to publish papers?  Thus far I haven't heard of this happening but wondering if it does from time to time.  

[anon1234567]

I am talking about publishing in reputable peer-reviewed academic journals. Phd students do publish, but not as a matter of rule, and if they do, it is usually after comps. Most publish after their final defense. 

MA students, highly highly unlikely, and they are not expected to. 

Edited January 19, 2018 by anon1234567

[Naito]

@costevens Fascinating! There are many excellent poets and writers during the Jian An (建安)  era. It is ironic that the era name literally means "constructing peace", yet the majority of the literature of the period was about wars, how short life is, etc. The most famous literati of that period were the Three "Cao" -- Cao Cao（曹操）, Cao Pi （曹丕）, and Cao Zhi (曹植）-- as well as Chen Lin (陳琳), Zhuge Liang (諸葛亮）, and Kong Rong (孔融). Cao Cao is one of my favorite poets, and I believe he inspired Li Bai's famous verse of wanting to drink to one heart's content facing the moon so as to not waste one's happy life (人生得意須盡歡，莫使金樽空對月), with his own verse: "對酒當歌，人生幾何？譬如朝露，去日苦多。" 《短歌行》( My rough translation: Drinking wine and singing songs / How many more times in a man's life can one continue to do so? / Short like a morning dew / With past days bygone one is to sufferings prone!) It is interesting to note that the 4-word meter of Cao Cao inspired the 7-word meter of Li Bai！The contents of these few verses are very similar, just expressed in different poetic forms. Whereas Cao Cao was in the 2nd to 3rd century, Li Bai was in the 8th century, yet the style of the Jian An era was still brilliantly timeless. And four centuries later, 平敦盛 (Taira no Atsumori) repeated the same theme: 人間五十年、化天のうちを比ぶれば、夢幻の如くなり。 (The life of a man is 50 years / compared to the length of Heaven and Earth / is like a dream). Just some observations.

As for publishing, my professors told me that one should treat book publications with "University" in it e.g. "Harvard University Press" as prestigious, and anything else (e.g. Brill, Routledge, etc.) less so. R1 (first-tier) research, doctoral-granting institutions generally prefer publications in good journals/presses for tenure tracks (TT). Not-too-good publications will come back to haunt you.

On the issue of getting published as a student, there are probably three unconventional approaches (although yes, it is extremely unlikely to get published without advanced degrees, that is very true). Although the likelihood of success is very low in any of the three methods below.

1. Co-authoring: The unconventional approach that I heard is you can get a full, named professor to co-author with you; however, of course first authoring is always better than co-authoring. This Master's student was able to get an article published with a full professor as co-author in Routledge's book Transforming Corporate Governance in East Asia: https://books.google.com/books?id=VVMsNpih5C8C&pg=PA278&lpg=PA278&dq=Controlling+Minority+Structures+and+its+Application+to+Taiwan&source=bl&ots=NxcfZWxz-P&sig=XELtcc69AvytTrnE5f2-alqf00Y&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiHyrnm0-TYAhXCRt8KHT1MBLkQ6AEIPDAD#v=onepage&q=Controlling Minority Structures and its Application to Taiwan&f=false

2. Translation: You can translate a significant text, novel, etc. but this requires extraordinary skills and maybe the translations you submit when you are a student may be rejected in favor of someone else who is a more established scholar.

3. Book Review: Again, unsolicited book reviews are routinely rejected. Furthermore, book reviews without advanced degree are also routinely rejected. Also, editors tend to prefer more established scholars.

[pudewen]

4 hours ago, anon1234567 said:

Yes, Absolutely! In which press you publish matters, especially when you apply for TT. 

The general rule is that major American university presses (Harvard, Princeton, UC, Stanford, Yale, etc) are better than smaller university presses with a reputation in a particular field (University of Hawaii would be the obvious one for us), which are similar to the major UK university presses (Oxford, Cambridge - note, these are definitely a step below the major US ones, they publish a lot more stuff with less editing/support and lower quality control) which are better than commercial academic presses (Brill, Routledge, and cronies). This isn't to say that there aren't good books put out by Brill, because there certainly are. But they provide hardly any support to authors in terms of editing and such, their peer review is much more cursory, and their books are extremely expensive despite low production values. Basically, anything from HUP is going to be a reasonably important book, pretty readable, and largely error-free (and moderately affordable, like $40-$75 new). Also, from an author's perspective, being put out by a press like that pretty much guarantees that research university libraries will buy it and that it will get reviewed in the field's major journal (JAS, for instance). None of that is guaranteed with Brill, and the book will cost $300 (which is bad for both readers and authors, the former for obvious reasons, the latter because it substantially reduces how many people are likely to read their book).

[kotatsumuri]

Very interesting discussion on publishing, not something I've really thought about yet. Definitely important to keep in the backs of our minds for the future!

I had an email today from USC EAAS MA and I nearly had a heart attack--at work no less--but it ended up being a "we received all of your applications materials" kind of email (the deadline was 1/5). Ugh! They really had me there for a few seconds!

 

[lordtiandao]

Brill has been going downhill for a while now. The consensus among people I know (at least in the field of Chinese history), is that they'll publish almost anything these days. Stanford in recent years has been moving towards contemporary China. They don't seem to publish anything on premodern Chinese history at all. 

Now a question, some books are published by Harvard University Press while others are published by Harvard University Asia Center. Is the former more prestigious than the latter or are they about the same?

[lordtiandao]

6 hours ago, NaitoBaron said:

There are probably three unconventional approaches (although yes, it is extremely unlikely to get published without advanced degrees, that is very true). Although the likelihood of success is very low in any of the three methods below.

1. Co-authoring: The unconventional approach that I heard is you can get a full, named professor to co-author with you; however, of course first authoring is always better than co-authoring. This Master's student was able to get an article published with a full professor as co-author in Routledge's book Transforming Corporate Governance in East Asia: https://books.google.com/books?id=VVMsNpih5C8C&pg=PA278&lpg=PA278&dq=Controlling+Minority+Structures+and+its+Application+to+Taiwan&source=bl&ots=NxcfZWxz-P&sig=XELtcc69AvytTrnE5f2-alqf00Y&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiHyrnm0-TYAhXCRt8KHT1MBLkQ6AEIPDAD#v=onepage&q=Controlling Minority Structures and its Application to Taiwan&f=false

2. Translation: You can translate a significant text, novel, etc. but this requires extraordinary skills and maybe the translations you submit when you are a student may be rejected in favor of someone else who is a more established scholar.

3. Book Review: Again, unsolicited book reviews are routinely rejected. Furthermore, book reviews without advanced degree are also routinely rejected. Also, editors tend to prefer more established scholars.

3

I don't think this is exactly true. MA/MPhil students are not expected to publish, but I know a lot of people who do so. Both my friend (in modern Chinese history) and myself (in premodern Chinese history) have submitted a single author paper to academic journals. It all comes down to whether or not you have a good topic and a good paper. Reviews are normally double-blind, so aside from the editor, the reviewer won't know you're still an MA student.

Edited January 20, 2018 by lordtiandao

[Naito]

42 minutes ago, lordtiandao said:

I don't think this is exactly true. MA/MPhil students are not expected to publish, but I know a lot of people who do so. Both my friend (in modern Chinese history) and myself (in premodern Chinese history) have submitted a single author paper to academic journals. It all comes down to whether or not you have a good topic and a good paper. Reviews are normally double-blind, so aside from the editor, the reviewer won't know you're still an MA student.

I mean the chance of getting an article published is still there, but it is like anon said "highly unlikely", and the chance is very, very low. Of course there are always exceptions where an extraordinary student can publish his or her work in the MA stage but that's not a matter of rule. I said the "likelihood of success is very low" for the majority of people and the submissions are "routinely" rejected but not always rejected.

Also you want to publish very high-quality article in extremely reputable peer-reviewed journal (unless you can publish in student-run law review, law journal which is relatively easier as it is student-reviewed, not peer-reviewed). So usually, from my professors, one could get the dissertation revised and published as a monograph as the first publication, preferably in a University Press. This is probably what anon has in mind when he stated that most PhDs publish after the defense.

Alternatively as an MA or PhD student you can present your papers at conferences. Also a fourth unconventional approach is to write encyclopedia articles but again, not sure how good of a chance it is to get published as they probably want experts to write encyclopedia articles.

Edited January 20, 2018 by NaitoBaron

[Naito]

@kotatsumuri Sorry to hear that! Hopefully the next time you open an email it will be an acceptance. Fingers crossed!

[Naito]

Also, one of my professors said that the reason as to why it is so unlikely to get published as an MA student is the competition for very limited spots in an issue of a journal is fierce, to say the least. Also plenty of postdocs, plus young professors and old professors alike, compete to publish in very reputable journals too.

You want to publish in something like this (Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies) http://hjas.org/

Chances are better if you are a PhD candidate than prior to that, but the thing is, "better" as in like 0.5% more likely (say your chance of publication as an MA student is 0.2% and as a PhD candidate that will be 0.7%)

Again, each and every professor I have ever talked to emphasized this and repeated ad nauseum many, many times: less-than-high-quality publications will come back to haunt you. The proverbial 天時地利人和 (The right Time, Geography, and People) applies here too. And, Sun Tzu said in the 謀攻 (plan of strategy) chapter: "故知勝者有五：知可以戰與不可以戰者勝" (Lionel Giles' translation: "He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.") 

And, back to what I commented regarding the PhD in previous posts, the PHD is not about reading & liking what you read. It is a very brutal process where you really are at the scary edge of human knowledge, have read everything on the subject including primary and secondary, and then come up with a "Eureka!" moment when you come up with something so original and so new to say. And that is what reputable peer-reviewed journals look for. To use a more modern analogy, the PhD is like an entrepreneurship. You're working on this "billion" dollar business idea, and you start it from scratch and nobody has done it before (Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. are examples). So the journals really look for the same, and the peers, who do the peer-review thing, look for that, too; and these professors already know so, so much about the field they will know what is original and creative. It is brutal, but it is what it is. 

Edited January 20, 2018 by NaitoBaron

[lordtiandao]

24 minutes ago, NaitoBaron said:

You want to publish in something like this (Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies) http://hjas.org/

For a first journal article, honestly, no, you don't, especially at the MA or early PhD stage. You just need a reputable journal that is peer reviewed. That's the most important part. Preferably that journal has published something related to what you want to publish in the past, as it means they would be interested in the work you have done.

24 minutes ago, NaitoBaron said:

Again, each and every professor I have ever talked to emphasized this and repeated ad nauseum many, many times: less-than-high-quality publications will come back to haunt you.

They usually just mean you shouldn't publish in unrefereed journals until you have tenure. After you have tenure, nobody cares where you publish.

Edited January 20, 2018 by lordtiandao

[Naito]

 

1 hour ago, lordtiandao said:

For a first journal article, honestly, no, you don't, especially at the MA or early PhD stage. You just need a reputable journal that is peer reviewed. That's the most important part. Preferably that journal has published something related to what you want to publish in the past, as it means they would be interested in the work you have done.

They usually just mean you shouldn't publish in unrefereed journals until you have tenure. After you have tenure, nobody cares where you publish.

@lordtiandao, you should try to submit to 1st tier journals first, then cascade from there, IMHO. Or maybe try working paper series or conferences or invited talks. But publication is too important and usually new and innovative research happens at the dissertation stage, and you can take a little out of your dissertation and revise into a publishable high quality journal article, or maybe expand at the same time condense the dissertation into a journal article but always get it published in a top journal even if it's your first piece. A professor I know only got 1 paper published in top tier journal and he got TT...

And sure, you can have more freedom after you have tenure (albeit some universities have started to discuss de-tenuring for unproductive faculty), but people in the field know what is a good journal and what is a great journal. Anna Shields of Princeton for example continuously published in Harvard University Press. She was made full professor at Princeton and before that, she was at somewhere else that is lower-ranked. Also, getting tenure just means you become an associate professor and really, if you want to move up in the ranks to full professor, another promotion application is necessitated and when that happens, post-tenure publications are scrutinized. 

Edited January 20, 2018 by NaitoBaron

[lordtiandao]

Journal rankings isn't everything, particularly for a first publication at an early stage. It's good to shoot high but let's be realistic - it's better to submit to a reputable, peer-reviewed journal that has a higher chance of acceptance than to the top ranking journal that has a lesser chance of acceptance. At that early of a stage, you just want to demonstrate that you can publish (for MA/MPhil students, a publication at this stage is a huge boost to your application). Peer review takes a long time (mine took three months) and since each journal has different styling requirements, it's a huge pain to change all your footnotes to the style of another journal. I could have submitted my article to HJAS, but I chose not to because I found a slightly less prestigious journal than HJAS that has previously published two papers on the same period I work on. I also happen to know that the editor also works on that period, so I know there is a good chance they are going to be more interested in my paper than HJAS.

When choosing what journals to submit, you need to first look at who owns the journal (Harvard, Cambridge, Tyler & Francis, etc.), then look at what kind of papers they publish and who writes them, and finally look at who the editor is and who is on the editorial board. That should give you an idea of the relative prestige and reputation of the journal.

[pudewen]

9 hours ago, lordtiandao said:

Journal rankings isn't everything, particularly for a first publication at an early stage. It's good to shoot high but let's be realistic - it's better to submit to a reputable, peer-reviewed journal that has a higher chance of acceptance than to the top ranking journal that has a lesser chance of acceptance. At that early of a stage, you just want to demonstrate that you can publish (for MA/MPhil students, a publication at this stage is a huge boost to your application). Peer review takes a long time (mine took three months) and since each journal has different styling requirements, it's a huge pain to change all your footnotes to the style of another journal. I could have submitted my article to HJAS, but I chose not to because I found a slightly less prestigious journal than HJAS that has previously published two papers on the same period I work on. I also happen to know that the editor also works on that period, so I know there is a good chance they are going to be more interested in my paper than HJAS.

When choosing what journals to submit, you need to first look at who owns the journal (Harvard, Cambridge, Tyler & Francis, etc.), then look at what kind of papers they publish and who writes them, and finally look at who the editor is and who is on the editorial board. That should give you an idea of the relative prestige and reputation of the journal.

I'd like to point out that the difference between journals isn't all about prestige. One of my good friends works part-time for HJAS and one of my committee members is currently running the journal, and what I've heard consistently is that what leads a large number of HJAS submissions to be rejected is that they don't have a wide enough audience. The "rule" that I've heard for them is that to be published in HJAS your article needs to be of clear interest to someone who either works on a different East Asian country from you, on a different time period from you, or in a different field from you. So if your article deals with medieval Chinese lit, it needs to either be clearly important to a scholar of medieval Chinese history, or one of medieval Japanese lit, or one of late imperial Chinese lit. You can write an absolutely terrific article on Tang poetry, but if it doesn't appeal outside the field, it's not right for HJAS, and should go to a field specific journal. The same would be true for JAS, and similar things are true for top disciplinary journals (to be published in AHR, your article probably needs to interest a historian who works on a different place from you). So consider the aims of a journal when deciding where to (try to) publish. If your article doesn't have the right audience, it doesn't really matter how good it is.

[pudewen]

14 hours ago, lordtiandao said:

Brill has been going downhill for a while now. The consensus among people I know (at least in the field of Chinese history), is that they'll publish almost anything these days. Stanford in recent years has been moving towards contemporary China. They don't seem to publish anything on premodern Chinese history at all. 

Now a question, some books are published by Harvard University Press while others are published by Harvard University Asia Center. Is the former more prestigious than the latter or are they about the same?

The editor at HUAC told me the same thing about Stanford, which used to be a real center for Qing history in particular. That said, they have had some Qing history publications coming out recently, so I'm not sure exactly what to think. Shuang Chen's State Sponsored Inequality, for instance, came out of Stanford last year.

HUP is probably a bit more prestigious than HUAC, but the latter is definitely still a great place to publish, and one of the only top-level places that can be guaranteed to consider book manuscripts on pre-modern Asian humanities - at other presses, it really depends on the interests of the editors. They also make a point of trying to publish a lot of first books, which is great for early career authors.