SEASSI Lecture Series

 

*************************

2011 Lecture Series

Monday, June 20, 2011
3:30pm - 5:00pm, 206 Ingrasham Hall
Rice Plus: Widows' Economic Practices in Rural Cambodia by Dr. Susan H. Lee (Senior Lecturer, Social Sciences, Boston University)
     
Lecture Series Image

 

Tuesday, July 12, 2011
3:30pm - 5:00pm, 206 Ingraham Hall
Interpreting an Event: The funeral of Gen. Vang Pao. by Prof. Kao-Ly Yang, Anthropology (Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, California State University-Fresno)
     The passing of General Vang Pao in January 2011 has been the major event for the Hmong Diaspora since 1975, date of their exile to the West. It marks the end of a socio-political time for the Hmong people, and for the Mainstream society, the closure of the Cold War in Laos. In this presentation, will be analyzed and discussed several aspects such as the unfolding of the funeral in Fresno, CA, the meanings given by attendees and news to his passing. Based on this exceptional event, the presenter will give an overview of the state of the Hmong culture, its changes due to contacts with Lao and Western cultures.
Seassi lecture series poster image

 

Saturday, July 16, 2011
12;00pm - 1;30pm, Rooms 325/326, Pyle Center, 702 Langdon Street
Besmirched with Blood: an Emotional History of Transnational Romance in Colonial Singapore.” by Prof. Tamara Loos, (Associate Professor, History and Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University)
     In 1900, in the British colony of Singapore a Siamese man, Manit, shot his beloved British wife, Maude, and allegedly attempted suicide. Several competing interpretations of the incident exist. In one, Manit is considered a deranged and treacherous fraud; in another, he is a pitiable cuckold; in the third, he is a respectable gentleman suffering from unrequited love. Surprisingly, given the racialized context of high imperialism in Southeast Asia, the British in Singapore came to empathize with the Asian Manit as a lovelorn gentleman and to disavow their own countrywoman. The court ultimately acquitted him of any wrongdoing. The case cuts across racial divisions and enables a focus, through emotional discourse, on a broader racial, sexual, and gendered organization of power in late colonial Southeast Asia.
SEASSI Lecture Series Image

 

Wednesday, July 20, 2011
3:30pm - 5:00pm, 1651 Humanities Building
Archaeological Investigations of Vietnam’s Ancient Capital by Prof. Nam Kim, (Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology University of Wisconsin-Madison)
     This paper presents results from recent field investigations at the Metal Age site of Co Loa, located in northern Vietnam and widely considered to be an ancient capital of Vietnamese civilization. Though the site’s monumental system of fortifications was purportedly constructed by an indigenously Vietnamese kingdom during the third century BC, this semi-historical claim is based on a mix of oral traditions, legend, and myth. Compounding the situation are extant Imperial Han textual records which suggest that uncivilized, local “barbarians” inhabited the area prior to Han colonization of Vietnam. Accordingly, material evidence and the chronological reconstruction of the site’s history are of vital significance. The findings are germane to both early Vietnamese history as well as ongoing theoretical discussions regarding the formation of ancient states.
SEASSI Lecture series image

*************************

Previous Lecture Series

2010 Lecture Series:

  • Sodomy II, or what do one Mongolian model (blowed up real good), three frogs, 12 hydroelectric power plants, and millions (allegedly) of freshly-documented Filipino immigrants have to do with the political situation in Malaysia today? by Clare Boulanger

  • Thailand's Crisis (not over yet) by Prof. Thongchai Winichakul (History, UW-Madison)

  • Philiphe Binh and the Problem of Vietnamese Historical Biography by Prof. George Dutton (Associate Professor, Dept. of Asian Languages & Cultures, UCLA)

  • The Social Life of Companionable Objects: Living with Indonesian Things by Prof. Kenneth George (Anthropology, UW-Madison)

 

2009 Lecture Series:

  • Opium, Power, People: Anthropological Understandings of a Drug Interdiction Project in Thailand. by Prof. Kathleen Gillogly (Department of Anthropology and Sociology, UW-Parkside)

  • Policing America's Empire: Philippine Pacification and the Rise of the Surveillance State. by Prof. Alfred W. McCoy (Department of History, UW-Madison)

  • Cannibalism and Race Transformation in a Mekong Delta at War, 1945-52 . by Shawn McHale (Director, Sigur Center for Asian Studies and Associate Professor of History and International Affairs, George Washington University)

  • Holy Matrimony? The Politics of Polygamy in Indonesia. by Prof. Suzanne A Brenner (Department of Anthropology, UC-San Diego)

  • Cambodian Buddhism and Cambodian Magic - Conceiving Religion. by Prof. Erik Davis (Department of Religious Studies, Macalester College)

 

2008 Lecture Series:

  • Moving Costs: Internal migration in Vietnam since Doi Moi by Ian Coxhead, Professor of Agricutural and Applied Economics, UW-Madison.

  • The Price of Rice: Has globalization hurt Southeast Asia's poor? Ian Coxhead, Professor of Agricutural and Applied Economics, UW-Madison.

 

2007 Lecture Series:

  • Gender and Vietnam by Giang Han Tran, Fulbright Scholar of Sociology at Temple University

  • The Study of Religion and the Understanding of Southeast Asia: Three Lectures on Three Challenges by Charles Hallisey, Professor, Languages and Cultures of Asia at UW-Madison

  • Three Lectures on Politics in the Philippines by Paul Hutchcroft, Professor of Politics at UW-Madison

  • Special Lecture: Like a Paid Prison Sentence with a Good Chance of Drowning by Steve McKay, Professor of Sociology

  • Two Lectures on Globalization and Development in Southeast Asia by Ian Coxhead, Professor of Applied and Agricultural Economics at UW-Madison

 

2006 -"Dictatorship and Democracy in Burma" by Ian Holliday, Humanities & Social Sciences, City University of Hong Kong; "Southeast Asian Theater in the 21st Century" by Evan Winnet, Theater and Dance, Macalester College

2005 - "The Ramayana" taught by Frank Smith (Khmer coordinator) and Amelia Liwe (Indonesian Coordinator)

2004 - "Islam in Southeast Asia" taught by Anna Gade (Religion, Oberlin College)

 

Click on image to enlarge
Other SEASSI Photos

Contact Us!
Please direct any questions to the SEASSI Program Coordinator:

Mary Jo Wilson
Center for Southeast Asian Studies
University of Wisconsin-Madison
207 Ingraham Hall
1155 Observatory Dr.
Madison, WI 53706
phone: (608) 263-1755
fax: (608) 263-3735
email: seassi@intl-institute.wisc.edu