I acquire in the fields of Asian humanities, film, and food history. In addition I publish several longstanding series: European Perspectives, Gender and Culture, Film and Culture, and the Wellek Library Lectures.
Our Asian humanities list, developed over the past 50 years in close association with the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University, is comprised mainly of translations of classic works in philosophy, history and literature from China, Japan, Korea, and South Asia, as well as anthologies of translations of core texts in those traditions. Recent publications include Mencius, translated by Irene Bloom, How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology, edited by Zong-qi Cai, Tamil Love Poetry: The Five Hundred Short Poems of the Ainkurunuru, translated and edited by Martha Ann Selby, Haiku Before Haiku: From the Renga Masters to Basho, translated by Steven D. Carter, and The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular Literature, edited by Victor H. Mair and Mark Bender.
The Press publishes a first book series, supported by the Mellon Foundation, called South Asia Across the Disciplines jointly with the University of California Press and the University of Chicago Press. Submissions to that series should be sent directly to Alison Alexanian
I also publish translations of modern and contemporary Asian literary works in two series. Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan includes works such as Zero and Other Fictions by Huang Fan, and Orphan of Asia by Zhouliu Wu. Our Weatherhead Books on Asia series has recently published Humans, Beasts, and Ghosts: Stories and Essays by Qian Zhongshu, and The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama edited by Xiaomei Chen. The Weatherhead series includes a nonfiction component in which we publish translations of important historical works, such as Theory of Literature and Other Writings by Natsume Soseki, and Kojin Karatani's History and Repetition. In addition, our Asia Perspectives series includes works of history and cultural criticism of interest to general readers as well as to Asia scholars, such as So Lovely a Country Will Never Perish: Wartime Diaries of Japanese Writers, by Donald Keene.
Most film books published at Columbia are in our Film and Culture Series. This well-established series has published many of the most highly respected works of film history and culture of the past twenty years. Recent books in the series are Pretty: Film and the Decorative Image, by Rosalind Galt, Film Studies: An Introduction, by Ed Sikov, and Indie: An American Film Culture, by Michael Z. Newman.
Gender and Culture is also a longstanding series at the Press, and includes many seminal feminist works, including Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Between Men and Joan Wallach Scott’s Gender and the Politics of History. Recent works include Carolyn Williams's Gilbert and Sullivan: Gender, Genre, Parody, Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics, by Hillary L. Chute, and Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ, and the Vichy Dilemma, by Barbara Will.
Our food list includes the highly acclaimed Molecular Gastronomy and three other books by Hervé This: Kitchen Mysteries, Building a Meal, and The Science of the Oven. The books in this list are published in our series Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History. Recent titles include Massimo Montanari's Cheese, Pears, and History in a Proverb, Pomodoro!: A History of the Tomato in Italy, by David Gentilcore, and Food and Faith in Christian Culture, edited by Ken Albala and Trudy Eden.
European Perspectives, another well established series at the Press, includes translations of works by leading European philosophers, historians, and cultural critics, including Julia Kristeva, Gilles Deleuze, Emmanuel Levinas, Theodor Adorno, Carlo Ginzburg, Gianni Vattimo, Hélène Cixous, and many others. Julia Kristeva's The Severed Head: Capital Visions and François Noudelmann's The Philosopher’s Touch: Sartre, Nietzsche, and Barthes at the Piano are the most recent publications in this series.
The Wellek Library Lectures books originate from lectures sponsored by the Critical Theory Institute at the University of California, Irvine, and includes works by Judith Butler, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Paul Gilroy, and many others. The most recent books in this series is Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing, by Ngugi wa Thiong'o.
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