In this episode, we are joined by Prof. Leo Ching, Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. Professor Ching's work explores colonial discourse studies, postcolonial theory, Japanese mass culture, and theories of globalization and regionalism. He is the author of Becoming “Japanese”: Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation and Anti-Japan: The Politics of Sentiment in Postcolonial East Asia, which is also available as a digital open access version. Prof. Ching is joined in conversation with JSAP contributors Sophie Hasuo, Rachel Willis, and Prof. Reginald Jackson. Topics of discussion include: identifications; defining home; Prof. Ching's family history; baseball in Taiwan and Japan; the Redress / Reparation movement in the US; geology; graduate school; Masao Miyoshi; California; being stopped by police in Japan; race in the US South; the category of "Asian American"; so-called "standard" Japanese vs. Kansai-ben; antiblackness and antiracism; anti-Asian violence; settler colonialism; Ainu people; "coloniality as the underside of modernity"; Palestine; and Archipelago East Asia.

To learn more about Professor Ching's research, please watch his JSAP webinar, "Contrapuntal Imaginations: Reading Empires in an Undergraduate Japanese Studies Class."

This podcast is created with generous support from the University of Michigan’s Center for Japanese Studies.  Recording, editing, and transcription support came from Reginald Jackson, Justin Schell, Sophie Hasuo, Rachel Willis, Harrison Watson, Robin Griffin, and Allison Alexy. Please see the Japanese Studies and Antiracist Pedagogy homepage for more information.