News

CSEAS: Updates

NEW CHAIR

Prof. Penny Edwards has become the new Chair of the Center for Southeast Asia Studies at UC Berkeley, effective July 1, 2008.  She succeeded Prof. Peter Zinoman who served in the position for five years.  

Prof. Edwards received her Ph.D. in History from Monash University. Her research centers on cultural history, nationalism, ethnicity, gender identity and the Chinese diaspora in colonized and postcolonial Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on Cambodia and colonial Burma. Her book, Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation, 1860-1945, was published by the University of Hawaii Press in 2007.

Other recent publications include:

•  “The tyranny of proximity: Power and mobility in colonial Cambodia, 1863-1954”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 37:3 (October 2006);
•  “Grounds for protest: Placing Shwedagon pagoda in colonial and postcolonial history”, Postcolonial Studies 9:2 (2006);
• “Taj Angkor: Enshrining L’inde in le Cambodge” in Kathryn Robson and Jennifer Yee, eds., France and “Indochina”: Cultural Representations (Lexington, 2005);
• “Making a Religion of the Nation and its Language: The French Protectorate (1863-1954) and the Dhammakay”, in John Marston and Elizabeth Guthrie, eds.,  History, Buddhism and New Religious Movements in Cambodia (Hawaii, 2004);
• “Relocating the interlocutor: Taw Sein Ko (1864-1930) and the itinerancy of knowledge in British Burma”, South East Asia Research 12:3 (2004); and,
• “On home ground: Settling land and domesticating difference in the ‘non-settler’ colonies of Burma and Cambodia”, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 4:3 (2003);

She is also a co-editor, with Debjani Ganguly and Jacqueline Lo, of the February 2007 Journal of Intercultural Studies’ special issue, “Pigments of the Imagination”. Prof. Edwards is an Associate Professor in the Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies, which she joined in 2007.

TEACHING

Irma Pena, who taught Tagalog in the Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies for many years, resigned from UC Berkeley at the end of the spring semester 2008 to take up a new teaching position at the University of Hawaii-Manoa as of 2008-09.

Frank Smith has joined the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies as UC Berkeley’s new full-time instructor of Khmer. He has taught Khmer at the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute (SEASSI) for more than ten years and will be offering new syllabi in Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced Khmer here at Berkeley.

Frank has been speaking, reading and writing Khmer for 21 years, and also speaks Lao, Thai and Northern (Surin) Khmer. He has developed teaching texts for Beginning and Intermediate/Advanced Lao, as well as numerous materials for teaching Khmer.  Frank’s knowledge of Khmer culture is reflected through his work in diverse digital and print media, including an ethnographic study of Khmer peasant interpretations of the Khmer Rouge -  http://www.studykhmer.com/videos/interpretive.pdf - and his more recent monthly video podcasts in Khmer: http://www.studykhmer.com/podcast/index.html.

Frank received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Masters in Library Science from Simmons College.

Dr. Joi Barrios has joined DSSEAS to teach Beginning and Intermediate Tagalog at UC Berkeley in 2008-09. She is also teaching a new course, cross-listed in South & Southeast Asian Studies and Ethnic Studies, on “Philippine Diaspora Literature” in Fall 2008. Dr. Barrios is a well-known poet and playwright as well as a translator and scholar of Philippine literature. She is currently on leave from her position as Associate Professor in the Department of Filipino and Philippine Literature at the University of the Philippines.

Joi is the author of five books, including the poetry collection To Be a Woman is to Live at a Time of War, and From the Theater Wings: Grounding and Flight of Filipino Women Playwrights. She has won fourteen national literary awards in the Philippines for her contributions to literature, and was among the 100 women chosen as Weavers of History for the Philippine Centennial Celebration. In 2004, she also received the TOWNS (Ten Outstanding Women in the Nation's Service) award from the President of the Philippines.

She has taught at the Osaka University of Foreign Studies, UCLA, UCI, and the University of Michigan, and served as Associate Dean of College of Arts and Letters and Coordinator of the Graduate Program at the University of the Philippines. She has a Ph.D. in Filipino and Philippine Literature from the University of the Philippines.

EVENTS

Indonesia conference, April 2008
CSEAS hosted the UC Berkeley and ULCA Joint Conference on Southeast Asian Studies, “Ten Years After: Reformasi & New Social Movements in Indonesia, 1998-2008” at Berkeley from April 25-26, 2008. Seven panels examined a range of issues concerning the past ten years of Indonesia’s experiences following the fall of the authoritarian New Order regime in May 1998. Presenters included both current graduate students and established scholars from universities around the U.S., and from Europe, Australia and Indonesia. The conference was well attended throughout and featured a special forum on post-1998 Indonesia with featured speaker Nursyahbani Katjasungkana and Hilmar Farid on the afternoon of April 25th. This forum is available as a podcast or download as an mp3 file: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=23068&p
=1&ipp=15&category =

UCB-UCLA Distinguished Visitor, October 2007
Zainah Anwar, the Executive Director of Sisters in Islam in Malaysia, was the UC Berkeley-UCLA Distinguished Visitor from Southeast Asia in October 2007. Ms. Anwar visited both campuses and met with students and faculty during her visit. She presented a public lecture on “What Islam, Whose Islam? The Struggle for Womens Rights within a Religious Framework & the Experience of Sisters in Islam” at each campus. This lecture is available for download as a podcast:

VISITORS

CSEAS Visiting Scholar Dr. Peter Bartu was appointed senior political adviser to the U.N. Assistance Mission to Iraq in spring 2008. He previously served on peacekeeping duties in Cambodia and East Timor. Dr. Bartu was affiliated with the Peace and Conflict Studies program in International and Area Studies in 2006-07.

GRADUATE STUDENTS

The following graduate students received Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship awards for 2008-09:

Indonesian: Isabel Esterman, David Hembry, David Kamholz
Khmer: Stephanie Farmer
Thai: Aaron Sorenson
Vietnamese: Matthew Berry, Trinh Luu

The following students received Fulbright awards for dissertation research in 2008-09: Cam Nguyet Nguyen (Asian Studies) and Arjun Subrahmanyan (History).

Recent Ph.D. Dissertations

Agricultural & Resource Economics
Jules Elkins, “Is industrialization bad for your health?  Industrial growth in Indonesia”, 2008

Anthropology
Daromir Rudnyckyj, "Islamic ethics and spiritual economy in contemporary Indonesia", 2006
Assistant Professor, Southeast Asian Studies, University of Victoria

Jerome Whitington, “The simulation of politics: Developmental natures in Lao hydropower”, 2008

City & Regional Planning
Pitch Pongsawat, “Border partial citizenship, border towns, and Thai-Myanmar cross-border development: Case studies of two Thai border towns”, 2007
Lecturer, Political Science, Chulalongkorn University

Economics
Sudarat Ananchotikul, “Essays on corporate governance in emerging markets”, 2007

English
Victor Mendoza, “The Erotics of "White Love"; or, Queering Philippine-U.S. Relations”, 2007

Marguerite Nguyen, “Vietnamese-American encounters: Race, power, and literary innovation”, 2008
Lecturer, English, UC Berkeley

History
Gerard Sasges, “Contraband, capital, and the colonial state: The alcohol monopoly in Northern Viet Nam, 1897-1933”, 2006
Country Director, UC Education Abroad Program - Vietnam

Tuyen Tran, “Behind the smoke and mirrors:  The Vietnamese in California, 1975-1994”, 2007

Medical Anthropology
Karen Greene, “A right life or the education of Soksabbay Sok: Child rights, abandonment, and governmentalized care in the Royal Kingdom of Kampuchea” 2007

Music
Christina Sunardi, “Gendered dance modes in Malang, East Java: Music, movement and the production of local senses of identity”, 2007
Assistant Professor, Ethnomusicology, University of Washington

Political Science
Naazneen Barma, “Crafting the state: Transitional governance and the international role in post-conflict peacebuilding”, 2007
East Asia and Pacific Division, World Bank

Sophal Ear, “The political economy of aid, governance and policy-making: Cambodia in global, national and sectoral perspectives”, 2006
Assistant Professor, National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School

Justin Hastings, “The political geography of clandestine transnational organizations in Southeast Asia”, 2008
Assistant Professor, Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Georgia Tech University

South & Southeast Asian Studies
Ellen Boccuzzi, “Becoming urban:  Thai literature about rural-urban migration and a society in transition”, 2007
Faculty, Pridi Banomyong International College, Thammasat University

Elizabeth Chandra, “National fictions: Chinese-Malay literature and the politics of forgetting”, 2006