Imperial heights : book review

Eric Jenning's Imperial heights: Dalat and the making and undoing of French Indochina looks at the development of Dalat, some 100 miles northeast of the modern Ho-Chi Minh City on the Lang Bian Plateau, as a hill-station and spa for European colonialists in the early 20th century. By the 1920s, it was a "decidedly French social space".

Read the review by Michael Vann in the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and see the author's response to the review as well.

Find the book in SOAS Library at GG959.703 / 742279.
Link to the Library Catalogue from  here

Professor Eric Jennings  is based at the Department of History, University of Toronto
Associate Professor Michael Vann is based at the Department of History, California State University, Sacremento.

Women and trade-unionism in post-war Japan: book review

Dr. Christopher Gerteis' book Gender struggles: wage-earning women and male-dominated unions in post-war Japan was published by Harvard University Asia Center in 2009 as one of their East Asian Monographs series

Read the latest review (in Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol.37(2) 2011)

Dr Gerteis lectures on the history of contemporary Japan here at SOAS
The reviewer, Professor Robin LeBlanc, lectures on politics and law at the Washington and Lee University School of Law, Lexington (Virginia)

There are two copies available in SOAS Library at D331.478 / 987419.
 Link to the catalogue entry from HERE

Storytelling and oral history

A report from the BBC's Middle East website looks at the tradition of storytelling and the role of the professional storyteller  in the Middle East, and how history (ancient and modern) as well as contemporary events such as the Arab Spring are being adapted by the storytellers.

Click HERE to read the report

The report also includes videos of modern professional storytellers performing
But will the traditional art survive in competition with modern technology?