Happening @ Michigan https://events.umich.edu/list/rss RSS Feed for Happening @ Michigan Events at the University of Michigan. CSEAS Lecture Series. The Past, Present, and Future of LGBT Activism in Singapore: A Roundtable on Pink Dot (October 25, 2021 9:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/87823 87823-21647043@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, October 25, 2021 9:30am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Center for Southeast Asian Studies

Free and open to the public. Register at: http://myumi.ch/0W3r9

This roundtable panel discusses the success and limits of an annual LGBT event called Pink Dot that began in Singapore, a city-state that imposes significant barriers to political organizing. The first decade of Pink Dot has now come to an end, but it is clear that the annual event has had a significant impact in terms of increased visibility for a marginalized community. Yet, despite the successes of Pink Dot, very little has concretely changed in Singapore for LGBT individuals.

In July 2021, the Journal of Language and Sexuality (J. Lang. Sex.) published the first special issue dedicated to Pink Dot. In exploring the use of language in the Pink Dot movement, the articles in this special issue simultaneously grapple with the past decade of Pink Dot and explore whether LGBT activism in Singapore might be evolving beyond the relatively ‘acceptable’ approach of Pink Dot’s strategic assimilationism.

The panel will be joined by the acclaimed Singaporean poet Alfian Sa’at, Professor Michelle Lazar of the National University of Singapore, and the three editors of the J. Lang. Sex. Professor Adi Saleem Bharat of the University of Michigan, Professor Robert Phillips of Ball State University, and Ph.D. student candidate Pavan Mano of King’s College London.

PANELISTS:

Alfian Sa’at is the resident playwright of Wild Rice. Some of his queer-themed plays include *Dreamplay: Asian Boys Vol. 1*, *Landmarks: Asian Boys Vol. 2*, *Happy Endings: Asian Boys Vol. 3*, and *The Insiders*. In 2012, he published a collection of queer poetry called *The Invisible Manuscript*. He was also part of the original committee that organized the first *Pink Dot* in 2009.

Michelle Lazar is associate professor and head of the Department of English Language & Literature at the National University of Singapore. With research interests in critical discourse studies and multimodality, Lazar has published widely in the areas of gender, sexuality, media, and politics. She was the recipient of the 2018 IGALA Best Article Award for her research on the discourse of homonationalism in a global southern context.

Robert Phillips is an associate professor of anthropology at Ball State University. He lectures on ethnographic methods and the anthropology of religion. Much of his empirical research was conducted in India and Singapore, focusing on the intersection of religion, technology, and cultural change. Most recently, Phillips has been conducting research with Jewish, queer, and BIPOC communities to understand how and why they employ alternative healthcare models in the healing of individual and communal trauma.

Pavan Mano is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at King’s College London. He works primarily in the cultural studies tradition at the intersections of language and literature. His current research deals with the heteronormativity and the politics of kinship, race, nationalism, and the operation of xenology produced as a function of these logics.

Adi Saleem Bharat is an LSA Collegiate Fellow and, from Fall 2022, an assistant professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. His research examines the intersection of race, religion, gender, and sexuality in contemporary France, with a focus on Jews and Muslims. As a Singaporean, he also maintains an active interest in contemporary Southeast Asia.

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Lecture / Discussion Fri, 15 Oct 2021 12:50:47 -0400 2021-10-25T09:30:00-04:00 2021-10-25T11:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Center for Southeast Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion
CSEAS Lecture Series. Is the Philippines Asia's Banana Republic? Vertical Disintegration After Empire (November 5, 2021 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/87095 87095-21638696@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, November 5, 2021 12:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Center for Southeast Asian Studies

Free and open to the public. Please register at https://myumi.ch/PlgjR

The term “banana republic,” a racializing pejorative used to describe Central American economies, does not usually conjure images of Asia. Yet it has become a common moniker for the state of the Philippines’ political and economic systems. Both journalistic and academic writing have used the label to characterize every administration from Ferdinand Marcos (1965 - 1986) to Rodrigo Duterte (2016 - current), citing U.S. intervention in politics, a state of bloodshed and rebellion, the persistence of kleptocracy in high office, the lack of government accountability, and the rampancy of inequality. These popular references suggest that notions of a “Philippine banana republic” have little to do with the tropical commodity on which the metaphor is based. This paper, in response, turns to the export banana zones of southeastern Mindanao as both the metaphoric root and a material source of the power asymmetries that envelop the agrarian landscape of the Philippine south. It offers historical comparisons between the Southeast Asian nation and Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Honduras to demonstrate how scholarly understandings of the “banana republics” shift in the Asian context. Focusing on (1) new land control schemes devised by the same American fruit conglomerates; (2) foundational ties to import markets in Japan, rather than to the U.S. and Europe; and (3) a history of peri-colonialism in Mindanao, this paper shows the role that the industry has played both in shaping local political and economic conditions, and in differentiating Philippine banana trade from networks in the same commodity elsewhere in the world.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact cseas@umich.edu.

Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Lecture / Discussion Thu, 16 Sep 2021 14:08:04 -0400 2021-11-05T12:00:00-04:00 2021-11-05T22:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Center for Southeast Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion Is the Philippines Asia's Banana Republic? Vertical Disintegration After Empire
CSEAS Friday Lecture Series. Nhu Quynh’s Stardom: The (Re)making of Womanhood on Screen, Creative Labor, and the Contemporary Vietnamese Film Industry (November 19, 2021 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/88658 88658-21656501@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, November 19, 2021 12:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Center for Southeast Asian Studies

Free and open to the public; register at https://myumi.ch/dOm0B

This talk discusses cinema in post-reform Vietnam through a combined analysis of gender, creative labor, and transnational filmmaking by looking at the five-decade career of a prolific and well-known socialist film star Nhu Quynh. As an experienced actress who has been awarded by the Vietnamese government with one of the highest artistic titles—the People’s Artist—Nhu Quynh has made an important contribution to the success of many high-profile, international film projects shot in Vietnam after the country began opening its economy in the late 1980s such as *Indochine* (1992), *Cyclo* (1995), and *The Vertical Ray of Summer *(2000), as well as that of highly acclaimed films of the Vietnamese New Wave like *Wharf of Widows *(*Bến không chồng*, 2001) and *Pao's Story* (*Chuyện của Pao*, 2006). By exploring the complexities of cinematic female images embodied through her characters, Nhu Quynh challenges the current reading of Vietnamese cinema that fixates on the representations of suffering, submissive, repressive women as the singular response to the heroic, triumphalist portrayals of wartime heroines. Defying the prevailing hypothesis that women would be a victim of the market economy, Nhu Quynh’s stardom illustrates the actress’s capability to take the opportunities of the open-economy policies to cultivate an impressive career amidst the crisis of the Vietnamese film industry in the post-socialist era.

Qui-Ha Hoang Nguyen is a postdoctoral associate at Yale University MacMillan Center for Southeast Asian Studies. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California in 2020. Her research interests include film postcolonial historiography, gender, and feminist studies, transnational film/media industry, environmental humanities, and global Asian cinema. Nguyen’s current book project, *Figuring Women in Vietnamese Revolutionary Cinema (1945 – 1975): Representation, Affect, and Agency*, is a study of women’s lived experiences, emotions, and agency on and off-screen in wartime Vietnam.

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Lecture / Discussion Thu, 04 Nov 2021 10:32:31 -0400 2021-11-19T12:00:00-05:00 2021-11-19T13:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Center for Southeast Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion Qui-Ha Hoang Nguyen, Yale University MacMillan Center for Southeast Asian Studies
CSEAS Lecture Series. The Role of Strategic Ignorance in Indonesian Agrarian Development (December 3, 2021 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/88960 88960-21659310@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, December 3, 2021 12:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Center for Southeast Asian Studies

Free and open to the public. Register at https://myumi.ch/dOmrB

The relationship between knowledge and power in agrarian development projects has been widely acknowledged, but what about the relationship between ignorance and power? Through analysis of Indonesia’s peatland development over the past three decades, this talk considers how state officials, scientists, and corporations have deployed ignorance strategically as a means to land access and control. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, Professor Goldstein look specifically at an area called the Mega Rice Project, a peat swamp forest that was drained for rice production in the mid-1990s and has since undergone dramatic biophysical transformation as the peat burns and releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Since 2000, this area has been the site of various state and NGO interventions to repair the landscape, most of which have been deemed failures. She argues that through these peatland development projects, elite actors have generated passive and active ignorance in ways that serve to protect the developmental status quo.

Jenny Goldstein is an assistant professor in the Department of Global Development at Cornell University. She has a Ph.D. in geography from UCLA and works across political ecology, critical development studies, and science and technology studies. She has been conducting qualitative fieldwork in Indonesia since 2010 on the political economy of socio-ecological land use change and the politics of climate change knowledge. Other research interests include the human health impacts of ecological change and the role of digital infrastructures in environmental governance. Her recent articles have been published in *Antipode*, *Environment and Planning E*, *Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography*, and *Geoforum*. She is also the co-editor of the forthcoming book *The Nature of Data: Infrastructures, Environments, Politics* (University of Nebraska Press, 2022) and is currently working on a book project about the role of ignorance and uncertainty in Indonesia’s peatland development and restoration.

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If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact cseas@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Lecture / Discussion Thu, 04 Nov 2021 10:27:41 -0400 2021-12-03T12:00:00-05:00 2021-12-03T13:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Center for Southeast Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion Jenny Goldstein, Assistant Professor, Cornell University
Asian Language Fair (March 18, 2022 11:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/91745 91745-21682699@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, March 18, 2022 11:00am
Location: Michigan Union
Organized By: Asian Languages and Cultures

Are you interested in learning more about the Asian languages taught at the University of Michigan? The Department of Asian Languages and Cultures invites you to the Asian Languages Fair, featuring representatives from the Chinese Language Program, Japanese Language Program, Korean Language Program, South Asian Language Program, and Southeast Asian Language Program.

You are invited to come learn about opportunities at UM to study the following languages: Bengali, Chinese, Filipino, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Javanese, Korean, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Thai, Tibetan, Urdu, and Vietnamese. There will also be opportunities to win raffle prizes.

All attendees will be required to check-in with staff and present their ResponsiBlue Screening Check results for the day.

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Fair / Festival Tue, 15 Mar 2022 13:54:25 -0400 2022-03-18T11:00:00-04:00 2022-03-18T14:00:00-04:00 Michigan Union Asian Languages and Cultures Fair / Festival Language Fair Poster
CSEAS Lecture Series. Pedagogies of Transfemininity in the Spanish Colonial Philippines 1589-1864 (March 18, 2022 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/91621 91621-21681040@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, March 18, 2022 12:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Center for Southeast Asian Studies

In this talk, Jaya Jacobo narrates and describes the simultaneous disavowal and affirmation of transfemininity in the Spanish colonial Philippines within the apparatus of colonial cisheteropatriarchy by looking at narratives which mark out the emergence of the transfeminine in Catholic religious discourse and its catechetical project of conversion.

In particular, Jacobo reads the instrumentalization of transfeminine divinity against the establishment of imperial priesthood in chronicles written by Spanish friars as they document the evangelization of the islands. What emerges in these chronicles is the pedagogical value of the transfeminine priest/trans priestess as a recalcitrant body gaining the ideal subjectivity of a “rectified heathen.” To triangulate the discursive formation of the transfeminine as an aberrant body rectifying its own inclinations as well as resisting the force of interdictions, Jacobo turns to lexicons and grammars through the colonial centuries, ending with an analysis of the figuration of cisgenderhood and the concomitant recession of trans possibility in the didactics of a significant Tagalog novel of manners in the late nineteenth century.

Jaya Jacobo is Assistant Professor of Gender, Equality and Diversity at the Institute of Education of Coventry University, United Kingdom. She was previously Postdoctoral Fellow of the Philippine Work Package of the GlobaLGRACE Genders and Cultures of Equality Programme at the University of the Philippines, which enabled her to work alongside travesti and transsexual women artists, academics and activists in Brazil. She is a founding co-editor of *Queer Southeast Asia: A Transgressive Journal of Literary Art* and a member of the board of trustees of the Society of Trans Women of the Philippines.

Free and open to the public; register at http://myumi.ch/9P63y

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Lecture / Discussion Tue, 22 Feb 2022 12:25:39 -0500 2022-03-18T12:00:00-04:00 2022-03-18T13:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Center for Southeast Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion
CSEAS Film Screening. *The Donut King* (March 20, 2022 2:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/92873 92873-21697626@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Sunday, March 20, 2022 2:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Center for Southeast Asian Studies

Film Screening
Sunday, March 20, 2:00 p.m., The State Theater, Ann Arbor

*The Donut King*
2020. 90 mins. Documentary. NR
Cambodian refugee Ted Ngoy builds a multi-million dollar empire by baking America’s favorite pastry — the donut.

Post-film discussion and Q&A with Melissa Borja, assistant professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan, where she is a core faculty member in Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies. Professor Borja researches migration, religion, race, and politics.

Free donuts provided by DJ’d Bakery—owners the Yams are proteges of The Donut King!

https://bit.ly/thedonutking

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Film Screening Tue, 01 Mar 2022 12:34:59 -0500 2022-03-20T14:00:00-04:00 2022-03-20T16:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Center for Southeast Asian Studies Film Screening The Donut King
CSEAS Lecture Series. Racial Capitalism and Interspecies Empire in Colonial Myanmar (April 1, 2022 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/91620 91620-21681039@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 1, 2022 12:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Center for Southeast Asian Studies

Under British rule in Myanmar, colonized people’s relationships with animals changed. Increasingly, animals were commoditized. Some creatures, such as elephants and oxen, became vital resources for the colony’s globally-important rice and teak industries. At the same time as these shifts were occurring, Burmese conceptions of human difference were undergoing significant changes themselves. Notions of race became more prominent in politics and culture, especially during the interwar years. These processes—the commoditization of animals and the racialization of human difference—were not only coincident with one another, they were connected. In this talk I will uncover some of these connections and their wider import for the history of modern imperialism in Southeast Asia.

Jonathan Saha is an Associate Professor of South Asian History. He serves as faculty with the Department of History at the University of Durham.

Free and open to the public; register at http://myumi.ch/7e3n6

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Lecture / Discussion Fri, 25 Feb 2022 15:43:59 -0500 2022-04-01T12:00:00-04:00 2022-04-01T13:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Center for Southeast Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion
CSEAS Lecture Series. Magnetic Female Power in East Javanese Cross-Gender Dance Performance (April 8, 2022 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/91623 91623-21681042@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 8, 2022 12:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for Southeast Asian Studies

Christina Sunardi is an associate professor in the Ethnomusicology program in the School of Music at the University of Washington, where she has been teaching since 2008. Her interests include performance, identity, spirituality and ethnography in Indonesia. Her work focuses in particular on the articulation of gender through music, dance, and theater in the cultural region of east Java.

Her publications include articles in Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land en Volkenkunde, Asian Music, and Ethnomusicology, as well as reviews in the *Journal of Folklore Research Reviews*, *American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences*, and Indonesia. Professor Sunardi has been studying and performing Javanese arts since 1997 in Indonesia and the United States, earning her Ph.D. in music from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007. Her book about the negotiation of gender and tradition through dance and music in east Java was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2015. In addition to her academic work, she enjoys playing gamelan music with the Seattle-based ensemble Gamelan Pacifica and performing as an independent dancer.

Free and open to the public; register at http://myumi.ch/z1w3G

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Lecture / Discussion Thu, 07 Apr 2022 11:25:51 -0400 2022-04-08T12:00:00-04:00 2022-04-08T13:00:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for Southeast Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion Weiser Hall
CSEAS Lecture Series. From Informal to Digital Spaces: How to Shape the Lived Experience of Networked Transformations in Southeast Asia? (April 15, 2022 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/91624 91624-21681043@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 15, 2022 12:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Center for Southeast Asian Studies

Urban planners have had a contested yet tangible impact on the public realm through the design and regulation of public spaces. What role can planners play now that issues of inclusivity, sociability, and access to opportunities are increasingly mediated by online platforms? How to plan for just outcomes in intangible digital spaces as well as physical public spaces? In this talk, Huê-Tâm Jamme connects the dots between planning, informality, and the digital realm. Within a theoretical framework inspired by Lefebvre’s production of space, Sen and Nussbaum’s capabilities approach, and Castells’ spaces of flows and spaces of places, she elaborates on two empirical studies that look at i) productive frictions between transportation networks and informal street vendors in Vietnam; and ii) gender equity in the gig economy in Thailand and Cambodia. Common to these projects is a mixed-method approach that reveals the lived experience of socio-spatial and technological transformations.

Huê-Tâm Jamme is an assistant professor at the Arizona State University’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning. Through her research and teaching, she promotes a de-centered perspective on planning. She focuses in particular on new mobilities, the platform economy, and their impacts on existing urbanisms. She graduated from SciencesPo Rennes in 2010; worked as a consultant in urban development in Asia for six years; and received a PhD in urban planning from the University of Southern California in 2020.

Free and open to the public; register at http://myumi.ch/WJ2AA

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Lecture / Discussion Tue, 12 Apr 2022 09:37:56 -0400 2022-04-15T12:00:00-04:00 2022-04-15T13:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Center for Southeast Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion
River Life and the Ticker of Time (April 18, 2022 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/89843 89843-21665971@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, April 18, 2022 12:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Institute for Social Research

River Life and the Ticker of Time
Naveeda Khan, Johns Hopkins University

Monday, Apr. 18, Open Talks will be held noon to 1pm, and the Grad Workshops will be held 1 to 3pm.
Join us via Zoom.


Abstract:
My talk starts with an examination of Padma Nodir Majhi (The Boatman of the Padma), the 1936 novella by Manik Bandopadhaya, to draw out the attention it lavishes on the Padma River. There are the usual anthropomorphic depictions of the river as a capricious woman, bountiful and destructive in turn, but also much in the way of descriptions of the waxing and waning depth of the river, the flow patterns, the color of the water, the dissolved matter in it, the taste of it, and the fishes and other marine life. Each is a chronotope in the literary sense of configuring time, space, and subjectivity in particular ways, but also a ticker of time in the sense of marking the objective state of the river at a particular moment. But again, the anthropomorphic inflections of our language break through with the ticker indicating the beating heart of the river, the river oft described has having a wavering and flickering heart. I examine these tensions between poetic figurations and objective descriptions of the river in the novel, following them across the filmic register to two art films based on the novel, Jago Hua Severa (The Dawn will Break, 1959) and Padma Nodir Majhi (1993) and finally across the scientific register to current studies of the river, with its focus on fluvial channel dynamics, metal content in the river and declining state of fish species. I explore how anthropology inherits this tension with its encounters not just with people but with texts and media by and about them and what anthropology does or can do with this tension to realize what Katherine McKittrick calls living outside of prevailing knowledge systems by reciting and recasting human-environment interactions.

This is a part of the Research Center for Group Dynamics (RCGD) Winter 2022 Series - "Water Ways: New Social Science, Science Studies, and Environmental Approaches to Water"

This is also a part of the class Anthrcul 558 section 002

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Presentation Wed, 13 Apr 2022 11:50:57 -0400 2022-04-18T12:00:00-04:00 2022-04-18T15:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Institute for Social Research Presentation event flyer
CSEAS Film Screening & Post-film Discussion. *Bitter Honey* (April 24, 2022 2:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/94238 94238-21726186@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Sunday, April 24, 2022 2:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Center for Southeast Asian Studies

Bali is world-famous as a tourist paradise, but for some Balinese women the reality is more troubling. Approximately 10% of Balinese families are polygamous, and men in these unions often take multiple brides without their spouses' consent. Filmed over the course of seven years, "Bitter Honey" offers the first in-depth exploration of these family's lives. Women from three polygamous families tell their stories of coercion, betrayal, and domestic violence and share their courageous struggle for empowerment and equal rights.

Directed by Robert Lemelson, 2015. 81 minutes. In Indonesian and Balinese with English subtitles.

Post-film discussion and Q&A with Moniek van Rheenen, sixth-year PhD candidate in linguistic anthropology and Southeast Asian studies at the University of Michigan, specializing in Indonesian Islam.

CSEAS is sponsoring a limited number of FREE tickets to this one-day screening!

To redeem, visit https://michtheater.org/bitter-honey; click Buy Tickets button; then click Know A Promotion Code? located at the top of the pop-up window. Enter the code CSEASHONEY, a $0 purchase option will appear. Add your ticket and proceed through the purchase.

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Film Screening Thu, 31 Mar 2022 14:17:50 -0400 2022-04-24T14:00:00-04:00 2022-04-24T16:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Center for Southeast Asian Studies Film Screening CSEAS Film Screening & Post-film Discussion. *Bitter Honey*
Virtual Southeast Asian Languages & Scholarships Information Session (July 19, 2022 2:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/95922 95922-21791438@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, July 19, 2022 2:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Asian Languages and Cultures

Want to learn about all the Southeast Asian languages we offer? Want to learn about opportunities to work in Southeast Asia and scholarships for these languages? Attend this information session!

-Graduate students and undergraduate students of all levels and backgrounds welcome.
-Talk directly to our Filipino, Indonesian, Thai, and Vietnamese instructors & students
-Get answers about applying for a First-Year Language Scholarship and FLAS Fellowship
-Enjoy a virtual showcase of Southeast Asian unique cultures
-Play games and win prizes! (T-shirts, tote bags, notebooks, and Amazon gift cards!)

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Livestream / Virtual Thu, 14 Jul 2022 12:09:59 -0400 2022-07-19T14:30:00-04:00 2022-07-19T15:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Asian Languages and Cultures Livestream / Virtual Click image to expand image and scan QR Code or Click RSVP Link to Register
CSEAS Lecture Series. Living with the Mekong: Archaeological Perspectives and Alternative Futures (September 2, 2022 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/97503 97503-21794655@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, September 2, 2022 12:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for Southeast Asian Studies

The Mekong River is Southeast Asia’s longest drainage system, and more than 60 million people today rely on the Mekong River to support farming, fishing, and other livelihoods. Watering the region’s rice bowl and serving as a biodiversity hotspot, the Mekong is also a contested space whose existence is now threatened by both human and natural forces. A complex web of international agreements and a fully-functioning multi-country Mekong River Commission have not prevented the construction of six hydroelectric dams in China, with more than ten major dams in the planning stage for Laos and Cambodia, and dozens more on its tributaries. These dams, and increasingly unpredictable rainfall, have already impacted Mekong River communities downstream, and the future promises to be even more bleak. What was life like before the dams? How did the Mekong River ecology shape the everyday life of its communities in the premodern world? What were some unexpected consequences of these practices, and how did communities and the state manage these problems? Archaeological research in Cambodia offers insights on major turning points in how Khmers managed the art of living with their Mekong River: the Pre-Angkorian and Angkorian worlds.

Dr. Miriam Stark (BA, U Michigan, MA & Ph.D., University of Arizona) is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and Director of the UHM Center for Southeast Asian Studies. She has worked in Cambodia since 1996 and her last decade of publications examine urbanization, ceramic production and distribution, and power relations in premodern Cambodia. Stark’s archaeological research program integrates research with capacity-building in collaboration with Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts and its various units, involving nearly 100 students, interns, and archaeological professionals since launching her first field-based project in the country. She is currently a Fulbright Senior Specialist, Honorary Research Associate with the University of Sydney, editorial board member for 13 journals, and a member of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (US Department of State).

Register at http://myumi.ch/48Pnn

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Lecture / Discussion Mon, 29 Aug 2022 10:43:53 -0400 2022-09-02T12:00:00-04:00 2022-09-02T13:00:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for Southeast Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion Miriam Stark (BA, U Michigan, MA & Ph.D., University of Arizona) is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and Director of the UHM Center for Southeast Asian Studies
CSEAS Lecture Series. Welfare Politics in Cambodia: An Examination of the National Ageing Policy 2017-2030 (September 9, 2022 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/97506 97506-21794659@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, September 9, 2022 12:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for Southeast Asian Studies

This talk explores the Cambodian government’s approach to maintain peace and stability in Cambodia through an examination of the Cambodian National Ageing Policy (NAP) 2017-2030. The NAP made an important case study as it is one of the forefront social welfare policies that the Cambodian government implemented along with the National Social Protection Policy Framework (NSPPF) 2016-2025 following a
contested election in 2013. The tracing of the country’s political development in the post-conflict period (1990-present) helps inform the analysis on the Cambodian government’s policy choice toward the vulnerable population such as the old age. The implementation of the NAP can be viewed as a positive step toward creating an inclusive society where no one is left behind. However, I argue that the NAP should be seen first as an apparatus development strategy to reaffirm the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) ruling legitimacy and popularity by proving the ability of an authoritarian ruler to care for the population. Using empirical data collected from my field research attest to my argument on how the Cambodian government incorporates ageing policy as an instrument to strengthen its ruling power, thus, the stability of the regime. By critically assessing the ageing policy’s implementing progress and impact outcomes, this study uncovers the differences between how this social welfare policy serves and benefits the Cambodian government and the ageing population.

Register at: http://myumi.ch/5W2NA

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Lecture / Discussion Mon, 29 Aug 2022 10:44:11 -0400 2022-09-09T12:00:00-04:00 2022-09-09T13:00:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for Southeast Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion Soksamphoas Im, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Center for Khmer Studies
Subtitling “Ram ke Nam” (October 20, 2022 11:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/100375 100375-21799680@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, October 20, 2022 11:00am
Location: North Quad
Organized By: Asian Languages and Cultures

Free and Open to the Public

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Lecture / Discussion Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:01:08 -0400 2022-10-20T11:00:00-04:00 2022-10-20T13:00:00-04:00 North Quad Asian Languages and Cultures Lecture / Discussion Subtitling “Ram ke Nam” Poster