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May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, which is a celebration and acknowledgement of the cultural and historical impacts of these important groups and their members. AAPI month was first recognized in the US in 1978, and since then has become a time to honor Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. You can learn more about it here, and for those lucky enough to be in Ann Arbor, you can attend some AAPI month events hosted by the Ann Arbor District Library. From Asian-Americans in theater to the ecology of the Pacific, the University of Michigan Press is highlighting some of our most relevant titles. 

During the month of May, you can save 50% on any book (even forthcoming titles) when you shop our website and use promo code SPRING25!

Fantasies of Ito Michio by Tara Rodman

Born in Japan and trained in Germany, dancer and choreographer Ito Michio (1893–1961) achieved prominence in London before moving to the U.S. in 1916 and building a career as an internationally acclaimed artist. Tara Rodman reveals a narrative of Ito’s life that foregrounds the fabricated and overlooked to highlight his involvement with Japanese artists, such as Yamada Kosaku and Ishii Baku, and global modernist movements. Fantasies of Ito Michio offers “fantasy” as a rubric for understanding how individuals such as Ito sustain themselves in periods of violent disruption and as a scholarly methodology for engaging the past.

Cultural Production of Hallyu in the Digital Platform Era: Industry Perspectives by Dal Yong Jin (forthcoming August 2025) 

This book explores how histories, industry structures, and politics interact in the platformization of the Korean Wave. Dal Yong Jin argues that while much research centers on the Korean culture takeover and the dominance of Korean products on premier global media platforms, Korean cultural industries also experience reshaping and changing depending on the platforms, often on the global stage. By developing critical cultural industries studies as a new theoretical framework, Cultural Production of Hallyu in the Digital Platform Era explores the ever-growing Korean Wave phenomenon with the advent of global digital platforms.

Queer Throughlines: Spaces of Queer Activism in South Korea and the Korean Diaspora by Ju Hui Judy Han (Forthcoming October 2025)

Queer Throughlines draws on years of direct participation, interviews, and ethnography to examine transnational Korean LGBTQ+ activism since the 1990s. Ju Hui Judy Han maps the sites and routes of leftist and queer political movements, highlighting challenges posed by Christian conservatives in both South Korea and the United States. The book uses the concept of “throughlines” to weave together a web of movement stories across time and space. These moments do not always line up in a straightforward narrative of victory or progress, yet they create powerful lines of solidarity, community, and kinship.

In Search of Admiration and Respect: Chinese Cultural Diplomacy in the United States, 1875-1974 by Yanqiu Zheng

In Search of Admiration and Respect examines the institutionalization of Chinese cultural diplomacy in the period between high imperialism and the international ascendance of the People’s Republic of China. Yanqiu Zheng argues that, unlike similar projects by more established powers, Chinese cultural diplomacy in this era was not carried out solely by a functional government agency; rather, limited resources forced an uneasy collaboration between the New York-based China Institute and the Chinese Nationalist government. Drawing upon diverse archival sources, Zheng expands the contours of cultural diplomacy beyond established powers and sheds light on the limited agency of peripheral nations in their self-representation.