Blogging the AAS

The Association for Asian Studies annual meeting is taking place this weekend in Chicago. We’ll be posting occasional updates from China Beatniks who are attending the meeting and will be checking in about the sessions and meetings they’ve participated in. Below, our first two postings from the meeting. From Jeff Wasserstrom (3/26/09, 11:53 a.m.): As Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies, I needed to be on site a couple of days before the Association for Asian Studies panels and other main events begin, and I have been struck since arriving by how many things I’ve seen inside or near the Sheraton hotel (the conference base) that link up to Chinese events and locales, blogging, or things people whose China blogs I follow have addressed. I’ve rolled thoughts and images relating to these into a pre-conference post. Blog-Based Books Enter the Mainstream (of American publishing) On the blogging front, this morning’s edition of USA Today, provided free to all hotel guests, had a piece called “Books Editors Look to Bloggers for Possibilities,” which caught my attention in part because this conference is the first at whichChina in 2008: A Year of Great Significance will be on sale. Like most American reports on the topic of blog-based books, it didn’t mention the fact that such publications became more routine in China before doing so in the U.S. It also didn’t give any examples (are there any out there?) of books that, like ours, is based on a group blog with many contributors, as opposed to, for example, solo ones by Colby Buzzell. The piece ends by wondering: “Can the Twitter novel be far behind?