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Southeast Asia Program FALL BuLLetin 2019 Southeast Asia FALL BULLETIN Program 2019 SEAP DIRECTORY seap.einaudi.cornell.edu INSIDE SEAP ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE FEATURES 4 180 Uris Hall, Cornell University 4 From Dissertation to Book: Ithaca, New York 14853 Islamist Mobilization in Indonesia, 607.255.2378 | fax 607.254.5000 by Alexandre Pelletier [email protected] listserv: [email protected] 9 18 Days in Myanmar, by Nisa Burns 14 Performing Angkor: Dance, Silk, and Stone, Abby Cohn, Director Cornell in Cambodia, by Kaja McGowan [email protected] and Hannah Phan Thamora Fishel, Associate Director 14 [email protected] 18 Unraveling the “Field” in Fieldwork, by Alexandra Dalferro James Nagy, Administrative Assistant [email protected] 22 Pluralism On Trial? Conference Focuses on Religion in Contemporary Indonesia, by Connor Rechtzigel KAHIN CENTER FOR ADVANCED 24 Language Exchange and Community 18 RESEARCH ON SOUTHEAST ASIA Engaged Research at the Border of 640 Stewart Avenue Thailand and Myanmar, by Mary Moroney Ithaca, New York 14850 26 Toward Southeast Asian Study, Anissa Rahadiningtyas by Christine Bacaereza Kahin Center Building Coordinator 26 [email protected] Kahin Center, Room 104 607.255.3619 COLUMNS 29 SEAP Publications SEAP OUTREACH AND 30 The Echols Collection—How Does the COMMUNICATIONS Echols Collection Acquire Material?, Brenna Fitzgerald, Editor, SEAP Bulletin, by Jeffrey Petersen and Gregory Green Communications and Outreach Coordinator 32 Cloud Watchers: Cornell Linguists Collecting [email protected] 34 Kahin Center, Room 117 Data on Lao, by Nielson Hul 607.255.6688 34 Sharing Southeast Asian Language and Kathi Colen Peck, Postsecondary Outreach Culture with Children in Local Schools, Coordinator by Brenna Fitzgerald 190E Uris Hall 36 New Developments in SEAP’s Post- [email protected] Secondary Outreach, by Kathi Colen Peck seap.einaudi.cornell.edu/outreach [email protected] 37 NEWS 37 Upcoming Events 38 SEAP PUBLICATIONS 38 Announcements: Editorial Office On Campus and Beyond Kahin Center, Room 215 41 Visiting Fellows 607.255.4359 42 Degrees Conferred seap.einaudi.cornell.edu/publications 43 SEAP Faculty 2019-2020 Sarah E. M. Grossman, Managing Editor [email protected] Fred Conner, Assistant Editor [email protected] COVER CAPTION Two fishermen performing for tourists on Inle Lake in Myanmar. Photo by Nisa Burns. LETTER from the Director I am gratified to see how many things have fallen in place Reflecting over the past year, and to note areas of genuine progress and stabilization. This is in part the result of the successful renewal of our Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center (NRC) and Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship grants for 2018–22. (SEAP has successfully competed for NRC/Title VI fund- ing since the inception of the grants program in 1958.) This year’s progress also stems from the dynamic conversation about the importance of international studies at Cornell, led by Vice Provost for International Affairs Wendy Wolford, and reflects a renewed appreciation of international studies, from Cornell’s President Martha Pollack down through the colleges. Those of us in Arts and Sciences were pleased to welcome our new Dean Ray Jayawardhana, a Sri Lankan who, among other things, fully appreciates the importance of our continued engagement in teaching Less Commonly Taught Languages of Southeast Asia and South Asia. (Cornell is the only institution outside of Sri Lanka to offer regular multilevel instruction in Sinhala.) Recognition as a National Resource Center enables us to support a number of programmatic and curricular activities, and we are particularly pleased to have moved ahead collaboratively in hiring a postsecondary outreach coordinator, Kathi Colen Peck, who has hit the ground running, reaching out to our community college and school of education partners, launching our Community College Internationalization Fellowship Program, and taking the Global Education Faculty Fellowship Program to a new level. Kathi is a great addition to our strong administrative/outreach team. On the faculty side, we were also pleased to welcome Christine Bacareza Balance, performing and media arts/Asian American studies focusing on the Philippines and Philippines diaspora. In addition to Christine earning tenure at the end of her first year here, SEAP’s two junior faculty in Asian studies, Chiara Formichi and Arnika Fuhrmann, have both been awarded tenure as well. This spring again saw a series of conferences and special events hosted or cohosted by SEAP. In March, SEAP held its 21st Annual Graduate Student Conference on the theme of “Conformities and Interruptions in Southeast Asia,” with Christine giving the keynote lecture, “Making Sense and Methods of Surprise: Notes Towards Southeast Asian Study.” The fifth in the series of Cornell Modern Indonesia Project conferences, organized by Chiara Formichi, took place in April, exploring “The State of Reli- gious Pluralism in Indonesia.” SEAP wrapped up the year in June as host to the Sixth International Conference on Lao Studies, organized by Greg Green, with attendees from Asia, Europe, and the across the United States—including many members of the New York State Lao community. SEAP was well represented at the 2019 AAS-in-Asia meeting in Bankok in July with three SEAP faculty in attendance as well as many current and former SEAP students. We were pleased to be able to serve as co-sponsors. Thanks are due to this past year’s SEAP graduate committee cochairs Astara Light and Michael Miller, not only for organizing a terrific conference, but also for putting together an intellectually engaging lineup for the Gatty Lecture series. Complementing our weekly Gatty talks, Michael also launched a podcast with National Resource Center funding. The Gatty Lecture Rewind pod- cast features conversations among graduate students and our visiting speakers and is developing a national and international following.1 Our incoming student committee cochairs Emily Donald and Sarah Meiners are putting together an exciting schedule of Gatty talks for the fall, and graduate student Bruno Shirley will chair our 22nd Annual Graduate Student Conference. We are honored that Caroline Hau will be returning to Cornell to give the eleventh Frank H. Golay Memorial Lecture. SEAP continues to actively engage Cornell undergraduates through Southeast Asia Language Week and numerous events geared at planting seeds of interest in Southeast Asia. Cornell in Cambodia will be cotaught during Winter session in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh by Sarosh Kuruvilla and Vida Vanchan (from Buffalo State University), with a focus on labor, economics, and society. On the horizon in 2020 is the seventieth anniversary celebration of the founding of the SEAP program! The SEAP History Project has begun, and video interviews with founding faculty are now available online, with an online portal and photo archive in the works.2 We are anticipating holding a celebration and symposium in September 2020. As soon as the date is set, expect a save-the-date notice, and we hope to see you back in Ithaca to join us in the celebration. —Abby Cohn, professor, linguistics, director, Southeast Asia Program 1 http://seap.einaudi.cornell.edu/story/podcast-seap-gatty-lecture-rewind 2 https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/59825 • 3 • From Dissertation to Book: Islamist Mobilization by Alexandre Pelletier, SEAP visiting fellow in Indonesia Seated on the porch of a small bamboo Islamic boarding school, or pesantren, in Garut, West Java, sipping perhaps what was the strongest coffee I had ever had, I began to understand the focus of my dissertation. I was well into my fifth month of fieldwork as a PhD candidate in political science at University of Toronto, investigating how main- stream Muslim leaders had responded to new Islamist groups since Indonesia’s transi- tion to democracy more than a decade earlier. I had just returned from Jombang, East (Front Pembela Islam), were mostly Java, where I met various Muslim lead- focusing on “cleaning up” the streets ers and was amazed at how large and of Jakarta from “sinful” activities such wealthy their Islamic boarding schools as gambling, prostitution, and alco- were. While pondering my observa- hol consumption. Since the mid-2000s, tions of East Javanese pesantren in this however, they have expanded their small and modest pesantren, similar to agenda and started targeting “mis- all the others I had visited in West Java, guided” religious minorities, as well as I realized how different Islamic author- people considered guilty of blasphemy ity looked in these two regions of Indo- against Islam. Bolstered by this new nesia. That day, I understood that my agenda, they have spread to smaller dissertation would focus on the links cities and rural towns throughout Java, between the status of Muslim leaders, attacking, closing down, or destroying economic resources, and Islamist mobi- mosques of Muslim sects deemed devi- lization. ant and Christian churches considered I graduated from the University illegal. of Toronto in 2019 and am current- My research aims to understand why ly a Social Sciences and Humanities Islamist groups have clustered in some Research Council of Canada post- regions of Java and not others. In more doctoral fellow hosted by the Cornell general terms, the question driving my Southeast Asia Program. While at Cor- work is why do Islamist groups suc- nell, I am working on a book manu- ceed in some regions and not others. script entitled Competition for Religious The province of West Java, for example, Authority and Islamist Success in Indone- accounts for nearly 60 percent of all sia. Based on my dissertation, the book Islamist protests and contains 50 per- seeks to understand radical Islamic cent of all Islamist groups in Java. The mobilization in Java, Indonesia. The contrast with East Java, for example, is primary task I am pursuing while here striking, given that this province has will include some additional research, witnessed only 10 percent of the pro- mostly in colonial and postcolonial tests and contains only 20 percent of all archives, and the streamlining of the the Islamist groups.

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