Pittsburgh, PA – The University of Pittsburgh Press is pleased to announce the launch of Power Currents: Asian Media in the World, a new scholarly book series that recenters media within Asian studies and Asia within media studies.

The transformations in Asia’s media landscapes are both shaping and being shaped by histories, traditions, demographics, industrial structures, and governance dynamics that demand analyses and approaches drawn from Asian points of reference. This series aims to showcase research on analog and digital media forms past and present as they course in, around, and through Asia, with an emphasis on projects that explore the converging currents of media and power—cultural, political, economic, technological—as they flux and flow across local, regional, and transnational contexts.

Attending to the complexity and centrality of Asian media products and practices amidst global reconfigurations of power, the series invites monographs and edited volumes from new and experienced scholars that investigate the ever-shifting political and ethical ramifications of media presence and change in Asia—broadly conceived to include West, Central, South, Southeast, and East Asia, as well as the Pacific Islands—and throughout Asian networks of influence worldwide.

Power Currents will be edited by Rahul Mukherjee, Dick Wolf Associate Professor of Television and New Media Studies and associate professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, Cheryll Ruth Soriano, professor of communications at De La Salle University, and Jonathan E. Abel, professor of Asian studies and comparative literature at Pennsylvania State University. An international editorial board of distinguished academics will advise the editors and the Press on series matters.

“The series will be an exciting venue for inter-Asian perspectives and comparative conceptual frameworks that address media platforms, industries, and infrastructures,” comments Mukherjee.

“This new series seeks to position Asia as a dynamic site of theoretical innovation amid its continued ascent on the global stage,” shares Soriano. “We very much look forward to supporting projects that foreground methodologically diverse approaches and from a wide range of disciplines.”

“Too often theories of media developed to elucidate transformations in Western societies have been simply applied to Asian materials,” offers Abel. “Power Currents offers a provocation, an opportunity, and a forum for the development of frameworks derived from Asian media.”

Inquiries should be directed to William Masami Hammell, Senior Acquisitions Editor: whammell@upress.pitt.edu. Submission information is available on the University of Pittsburgh Press website: https://upittpress.org/book-submission/. Once up and running, the series aims to publish 2-3 books each year.