ANNUAL REPORT 2019-2020 www.cseashawaii.org CSEAS 2019 - 2020 Annual Report 2 3 CSEAS 2019 - 2020 Annual Report ABOUT UHCSEAS CONTENTS Our mission is to encourage transdisciplinary study of the eleven countries forming Southeast Asia: its peoples, religions, history, View from a cave along the Mekong River in Laos economics, geography, art, cultures, science, About UH CSEAS 03 and politics. Director’s Note 04 Faculty 06 Students loha! Welcome to the Center for Southeast non-profit organizations to develop curriculum ma- Spotlights 10 Asian Studies (CSEAS), College of Arts, Lan- terials and host outreach projects focused on South- FLAS Awardees 11 Aguages & Letters (CALL), at the University of east Asia. Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM). • Facilitate efforts by UHM to establish educational Exploration 12 With the objective of promoting educational and partnerships with colleges and universities in SEA. cultural awareness of Southeast Asia (SEA), CSEAS Programs • Organize and sponsor lecture series, colloquia, film worked over the past year to: series, seminars, museum exhibits, and major re- Talks 14 • Provide student funding for the study of Southeast search forums and conferences through our vibrant Asian languages and cultures. social media platforms. Events 16 • Support the teaching of Southeast Asian languages • Continue to build UHM’s SEA library collection, in- including Ilocano, Indonesian, Khmer, Tagalog, Thai, cluding digital and moving image resources. Web & Social Media 20 and Vietnamese. • Maintain and enhance our university’s national and • Build partnerships with local K-12 schools, com- international reputation as an outstanding resource Staff 22 munity colleges, military education centers, and in Southeast Asian studies. CSEAS 2019 - 2020 Annual Report 4 5 CSEAS 2019 - 2020 Annual Report modules continued through the 2019 - 2020 tive work by early career scholars across the year, and the project will be hosted again on- region by working directly with more than line in summer 2021. You can check out the a dozen Southeast Asian institutions. Our project here. EWC/UHM LuceSEA Transitions grant will DIRECTOR’S NOTE also enhance scholarly infrastructure and Southeast Asian studies are a dynamic part build synergies between the social sciences As our Center for Southeast Asian Studies of our UHM community, where we teach, and humanities in Southeast Asian Studies. research, and perform Southeast Asia in Supporting innovative and interdisciplinary careened into its 41st year in Fall 2019, we had classrooms, in performance spaces and, work in Southeast Asian studies has become much to celebrate: faculty, students, staff, and increasingly, online. We view these online a hallmark of the Luce Foundation, and our connections. opportunities as portals to Southeast Asia ambitious five-year program in this area will partners, and use them increasingly to build officially begin in January 2021. linkages that we hope to strengthen through We co-hosted events, supported students, and explored face-to-face interactions in the near future. Reflecting back on my second year as Center outreach initiatives to bring Southeast Asia to our local We are also in our second year of ‘going dig- director, I see that some foundational work in and broader communities. ital’ and creating globally accessible resourc- 2019-2020 has begun to yield results already. es on current issues in politics, social and We hired two new graduate assistants, Sara environmental movements, and the arts of Loh (Public Relations) and Hoan Nguyen These activities, which we pursued with Southeast Asia’s centrality in global Southeast Asia. Our social media outreach (Webmaster), whose considerable skills and vigor into the Spring 2020 semester, came to affairs. Offering student funding for continues to be one our strengths as our bi- talents enhance what we do and extend a screeching halt in March 2020. What did not Southeast Asian language study through monthly newsletter, Twitter, and Facebook our digital reach. Connections established stop was our funding for students through the Foreign Language Area Fellowships presence regularly interact with hundreds of during the Luce proposal development phase FLAS and other awards and our commitment (FLAS) program remains a core priority. readers a month who access our up-to-date opened new directions for Southeast Asian to the region. Still, COVID-19 forced us to re- information on research, scholarships, confer- collaborations both on campus and with key think and re-tool how we do our work, and to One of our most successful ongoing ences, publications, public events, and more. Southeast Asian institutions. It has been a envision new future worlds in which the UHM projects was in play this year. Dr. Kirstin productive and important time for our Center. Center for Southeast Asian Studies can best Pauka’s spectacular The Last King of Bali Directing our Center for Southeast Asian meet our mission: to encourage trans-disci- entertained thousands of Balinese the- Studies is a constant source of challenges, This year, like last, I must close my comments plinary understandings of Southeast Asia’s atre, music, and dance fans over a three- and the 2019-2020 academic year was no by expressing my profound appreciation people, heritage, ideologies, politics, and week run at UHM’s Kennedy Theatre just different. But with challenges also came re- to the people who make this Center work. ecologies. COVID-19 accelerated our move- before the COVID-19 pandemic hit our wards, the largest of which was the receipt First among them is Associate Director Paul ment in certain directions we’d begun to take, state. Outreach efforts included visits to of our five-year, $1 million UHM/East-West Rausch, whose deep experience, creativi- and offered glimpses of new collaborations numerous K-12 schools around Oʻahu and Center project entitled, “LuceSEA Transitions: ty and commitment are fundamental to the we could not have envisioned. It also exacted our neighbor islands through the Bali- Environment, Society and Change” from the Center’s success. Thanks also go to the CSEAS a terrible toll in Southeast Asia, where the re- nese Wayang Listrik in Hawaii’s Schools Luce Foundation Southeast Asia Initiative. Executive Board, whose varied experience silience of our colleagues and their communi- project in the lead up to the theatrical Our grant, which involves 13 key team leaders and constant collegiality make it a pleasure ties have continued to teach us how to move production. These activities are well-doc- based at UHM and at the East-West Center, to steer the ship. Finally, I thank the unsung through the world. umented on our website. will support our direct international research heroes who are our administrative staff, par- engagements on Southeast Asian rural to ticularly Myra Yamamoto (fiscal and person- Back here at the University of Hawai’i at Our Center also provided seed funding in urban transitions and their impacts: in popu- nel) and Dr. Chizuko Allen (fellowships coor- Mānoa, supporting students, faculty and staff 2019 for Dr. Pia Arboleda’s development lation mobility, in rural economic landscapes, dinator). Without their support we cannot in Southeast Asian studies remains our goal. of Tagalog language training materials in urban planning, and in local environmen- function, and we are grateful for their support. The United States Department of Defense’s through her Pamana ng lahi program, tal histories. It funds capacity-building, builds release of its Indo-Pacific Strategy Report in which she piloted at Honolulu’s St. Louis Dr. Miriam Stark new research networks, and seeds collabora- CSEAS Director June 2019 only served to further illustrate High School in June 2019. Work on CSEAS 2019 - 2020 Annual Report 6 7 CSEAS 2019 - 2020 Annual Report FACULTY This section provides a snapshot of Southeast DR. JONATHAN DR. BRADLEY PADWE MCDONNELL Asia faculty specialist activities during the An Associate Professor in the Anthropology An Assistant Professor in the Linguistics academic year 2019 - 2020. Department, his paper "Disturbed Forests, Deparment, he was awarded the 2020 Fragmented Memories: Jarai and Other College of Languages, Linguistics & Liter- ature Excellence in Teaching Award. Lives in the Cambodian Highlands" was You can also view the specialist database on our Dr. Bradley also received a 4-year National published by the University of Washington Science Foundation grant to investigate website. Press, 2020. language use in a multi-lingual commu- nity. This project aims to document the linguistic practices of the Nasal speech community in Bengkulu province, Indonesia. PROF. BARBARA BARNARD SMITH DR. LE NGOC THAO Professor Emerita of Music, Barbara Barnard Smith, is a pioneer From the Department of Family and of cultural diversity at UHM. This champion of the music and Consumer Sciences, College of Tropical dance of Hawaiʻi and the greater Pacific and Asia, celebrated her Agriculture and Human Resources, she 100th birthday on June 10. was promoted to full professor. In honor of her 100th birthday, The 2020 Barbara B. Smith Webi- nar Series: A Legacy for Ethnomusicology, offered free monthly DR. BEN FAIRFIELD webinars that focused on the impact Professor Smith had on generations of ethnomusicology students trained at UHM. Dr. Ben Fairfield, ethnomusicology, partnered with UH Choir director, Jace DR. MIRIAM STARK Saplan, and provided the percussion instruments for a choral arrangement of CSEAS Director & Professor, Anthropology/Archaeology, Dr. “Phu Yai Lee” (A classic Thai protest song Miriam Stark published “Collaboration, Engagement, and Cam- from the 1960s that is still played and bodia: Archaeological perspectives on cultural heritage” in the referenced in today’s Thai political dis- Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage. course). All the instruments played were Dr. Stark also appeared in Episode 3 of the Mark of Empire series made in class, with much of the material hosted by Singaporean scholar Peter Lee. The series explores the scavenged by Professor Fairfield and his history of four Southeast Asian empires that made their mark on students.