Professor Michael Hawkins, Ph.D
21 episodes listed below
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Embark on a captivating journey with Professor Michael Hawkins, Ph.D., through the rich, intricate tapestry of Asian history &culture. Join us as we unravel the region's dynamic past, exploring the interplay of the empires, kingdoms, & diverse cultures that have shaped the region's unique identity. Examine the impact of imperialism, while simultaneously discovering & celebrating the agency & unique resiliency of Asian peoples, cultures, & societies. This podcast contains lectures, discussions, research, and audible versions of Dr. Hawkins's selected works. Support: https://gofund.me/04e5824c
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Michael Hawkins makes the ideas behind colonial rule as visible as its institutions, especially in Southeast Asia and the Philippines.
Dr. Michael Hawkins keeps returning to a consequential question: how empires use ideas about historical progress to classify the people they govern.
The American frontier follows its admirers to the Philippines, and your neat empire story starts coming apart.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A clear survey of how modern China was framed, challenged, and reframed in Western historiography.
The episode treats modern China less as a fixed place than as a question of categories, moving from globalization and identity into the habits historians use to sort race, class, gender, religion, East, and West.
British India becomes the starting point for a larger argument about how empire turns categories into tools of rule.
Asian World Podcast's Orientalism, Pt. 1 opens in British India, where the late 18th century nationalization of the British East India Company brings Parliament and the Crown into a tighter regime of surveillance and regulation. Dr.
A clear study of how Philippine integration meets Moro distinctness.
The piece frames Muslim integration in the Philippines as a test of how a post-colonial state defines itself while confronting Moro distinctness in southern Mindanao.
Footbinding is tied to Song-era wealth, marriageability, and the pressure women used to enforce body standards.
The piece frames footbinding against the Song Dynasty's economic revolution, using southward migration, double and triple cropping, and market specialization to give the subject wider historical reach before the body practice itself comes into focus.
Colonial rule is recast as a fight over time, consciousness, and power.
Asian World Podcast treats Michael C. Hawkins' reading of David Barrows as more than a lesson in colonial administration. It frames empire as a contest over time as much as control, opening on the United States nation-building project in the Colonial Philippines and returning to…
Empire is explained through the categories it invents, then caught inside them.
This reading treats the American conquest of the Philippines' Muslim south as a study in imperial self-knowledge: a power that claimed to stand outside history, then used history to sort the people it ruled.
A clear argument about British admiration hardening into civilizing certainty.
This account follows a shift from early British fascination with India to a harder language of improvement, reason, and control. Dr. Hawkins notes that merchants once borrowed dress, language, housing, food, and local customs, and even formed marriages with Indian women, raising…
A measured account of how resistance to empire can begin with accommodation rather than revolt.
Dr. Hawkins presents colonial resistance as a process shaped by choices, not a brief pause before revolt. He starts from the student question about why indigenous peoples did not resist empire sooner, then challenges the idea that numbers alone should have produced immediate…
Dramatized deep dives into American history, from the Galveston hurricane to Harper Lee's Mockingbird.
Curious facts, kid-sized and quiz-ready.
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The show opens on empire.
This episode features a reading of an academic article exploring American colonialism in the Philippines as a philosophical project to instill modernity through temporal consciousness.
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Asian World Podcast with Dr.
Asian World Podcast with Dr.
Asian World Podcast with Dr.
Asian World Podcast with Dr.
This episode explores the British civilizing mission in India, tracing the shift from early cultural assimilation to 19th-century imperialism driven by industrialization, racism, and fears of contamination.
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Asian World Podcast with Dr.
Asian World Podcast with Dr.
Asian World Podcast returns to Orientalism Part 2 after the earlier discussion of British attempts to discover, define, categorize, and exhibit India for governing purposes.
The episode follows a shift in British thinking about India, from fascination to dismissal.