“Archaeological Explorations of ‘Viet’ Origins: A Personal Journey”
The discipline of archaeology in present-day Vietnam has an interesting and deep history, one marked by alternating backdrops of political stability, social upheaval, and nationalistic agendas. Past and present Vietnamese researchers have been interested in a material record (dating back millennia) to consider the underpinnings of an ancient “Viet” civilization, and how landscapes, relics, and sites fit into a larger tapestry of history – both ancient and recent. Not surprisingly, these material remains have also been incorporated into modern notions of identity and projects aimed at cultural preservation. This lecture considers these themes while also highlighting my own personal engagement with archaeological research as an individual of Vietnamese ancestry.
Pre-modern port-cities of the Melaka Straits region were one of the most diverse places in Southeast Asia. The range of networks, the openness of the economy, the free movement of people, as well as the small population base in the region, has meant that from the inception of a port-city, the nature of the settlement and its population would reflect the multi-cultural influences that flow through the port…
How can we imagine the spaces and peoples at the fringes of empire without centering empire? In this talk, I speculate on the challenges and possibilities of historicizing the “fringe” spaces of Southeast Asia, expanding on the concept of pericoloniality that I introduced tentatively in my earlier work on the ethnohistory of the various Lumad peoples of Mindanao…
The 1965-66 Massacres in Indonesia within the Frame of Genocide Studies: What is Gained, What is Lost Genocide Studies, since its beginnings as an academic field in the early 1980s, has worked with a more …
The Department of History at the University of Yangon has announced that the 9th South and Southeast Asian Association for the Study of Culture and Religion (SSEASR) Conference on Indigenous Civilizations and Peoples in South and Southeast Asia Connecting Past with Present and Beyond will take place in Yangon, Myanmar from July 13 to 19, 2021.