Alfred W. McCoy

Alfred W. McCoy is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has spent the past thirty years writing about Southeast Asian history and politics. His publications about this dynamic region have focused on two topics--the political history of the modern Philippines and the politics of opium in the Golden Triangle. The first edition of his book, published in 1972 as The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, sparked controversy, but is now regarded as the “classic work” about Asian drug trafficking. Now in its third revised edition, this book has been translated into nine languages, including, most recently, Thai and German. Three of his books on Philippine history have won the Philippine National Book Award--Philippine Cartoons (1985), Anarchy of Families (1994), and Lives at the Margin (2001). In 2001, the Association for Asian Studies awarded him the Grant Goodman Prize for his career contributions to the historical study of the Philippines. His forthcoming book on Philippine police draws together these two strands in his research, organized crime and modern Philippine history, to explore the role of police, information, and scandal in the shaping the modern Philippine state.

Courses:
History 319: The Vietnam Wars
History 458: Southeast Asia--800 to the Present
History 755 (Seminar): Tropical Dictators--Authoritarianism in Indonesia & the Philippines
History 755 (Seminar): Empire and Revolution in Southeast Asia
History 755 (Seminar): Photography and Philippine Environmental History
History 755 (Seminar): Islands of Southeast Asia: Comparative History of Indonesia & the Philippines

Papers/Publications:

Books:
-- Lives at the Margin: Biographies of Filipinos Ordinary, Heroic, Obscure (Quezon City, 2001).
-- Closer Than Brothers: Manhood at the Philippine Military Academy (New Haven, 1999).
-- Anarchy of Families: Filipino Elites and the Philippine State (Quezon City,1994).
-- War on Drugs: Studies in the Failure of U.S. Narcotics Policy (Boulder,1992).
-- The Politics of Heroin (New York, 1972, 1991, 2003).
-- Philippine Cartoons: Political Caricature of the American Era, 1900-1941 (Quezon City, 1985).
-- Priests on Trial (Melbourne,1984).
-- Philippine Social History: Global Trade and Local Transformations (Quezon City, 1982).
-- Southeast Asia Under Japanese Occupation (New Haven, 1980).
-- Drug Traffic: Narcotics and Organized Crime in Australia (Sydney, 1980).
-- Laos: War and Revolution (New York, 1970).

Articles:

“Closer Than Brothers: Two Classes at the Philippine Military Academy,” in, Elliott V. Converse, III, ed., Forging the Sword: Educating and Training Cadets and Junior Officers in the Modern World (Chicago: US Air Force Academy Military History Symposium Series, 1998).

“Requiem for a Drug Lord: State and Commodity in the Career of Khun Sa,” in, Josiah McC. Heyman, States and Illegal Practices (Oxford: Berg, 1999), pp. 129-67.

“Mission Myopia: Narcotics as ‘Fall Out’ from the CIA’s Covert Wars,” in, Craig R. Eisendrath, ed., National Insecurity: U.S. Intelligence After the Cold War (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000), pp. 118-48.

“The Stimulus of Prohibition: A Critical History of the Asian Opium Trade,” Fordham Urban Law Journal, 28, no. 1 (2000), pp. 201-43.

“Philippine Commonwealth and Cult of Masculinity,” Philippine Studies 48, no. 3 (2000), pp. 315-46.

“RAM and the Filipino Action Film,” in Rolando B. Tolentino, ed., Geopolitics of the Visible: Essays on Philippine Film Cultures (Quezon City: Ateneo University Press 2000), pp. 194-216.

“America’s Secret War in Laos, 1955-1975,” in, Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buzzanco, eds., A Companion to the Vietnam War (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 283-313.


How to contact Professor McCoy:
Email: awmccoy@ wisc.edu Phone: (608) 263-1855 Address:
5131 Humanities
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Madison, WI 53706

 

  

 

 

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Center for Southeast Asian Studies
University of Wisconsin-Madison
207 Ingraham Hall
1155 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706-1397
phone: 608.263.1755
fax: 608.263.3735
e-mail: seasia@intl-institute.wisc.edu