The Southeast Asia Center promotes and sustains the study of Southeast Asia and encourages understanding of Southeast Asia in the Pacific Northwest and the nation. We pursue this mission by offering language study and courses in various disciplines that focus on Southeast Asia. Southeast Asian languages offered on a regular basis by the University of Washington include Indonesian, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese as well as the self-study of Burmese. The Southeast Asia Center actively organizes Southeast Asia-related programs such as teacher training, outreach activities and an accessible resource library that includes: print materials, microfilm, maps, and instructional media materials. These activities of the Center are assisted by funding from the University of Washington and the U.S. Department of Education.
A US Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center for Southeast Asian Studies in the Pacific Northwest, the Southeast Asia Center is housed in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies where along with seven other area study centers, it fosters cooperative efforts in teacher training and outreach. The Southeast Asia Center's interdisciplinary academic programs include a BA and MA in International Studies with a Southeast Asian Concentration as well as PhD and professional degrees involving area concentrations and research in Southeast Asia.
The Center's forty core and affiliate faculty come from the College of Arts and Sciences as well as various UW professional colleges. The Center's directorship rotates among core UW faculty. The Associate Director is a professional UW staff member who manages the daily operations of the Center along with oversight from the Director and faculty. The Center depends greatly on the contributions of student assistants, part-time staff, and university and community volunteers.
International
Call for Papers
"BEYOND DICHOTOMIES: ALTERNATIVE VOICES AND HISTORIES IN POST-COLONIAL VIET
NAM"
The Center for Southeast Asian Studies, in conjunction with the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington, Seattle (USA), invites academics, advanced graduate students, and independent scholars to submit paper proposals for the conference-workshop
"BEYOND DICHOTOMIES: ALTERNATIVE VOICES AND HISTORIES IN POST-COLONIAL VIET NAM,"
to be held on the Seattle campus of the University of Washington from Thursday, May 15th, to Sunday, May 18th, 2008. Prof. Ngo Vinh Long (University of Maine), eminent historian of Viet Nam, will give the keynote address.
This May 2008 conference-workshop on post-colonial Viet Nam is the second in a three-part series, constituting a multi-year research initiative in Viet Nam Studies, "Alternative Voices and Histories in Viet Nam: Colonial Modernities and Post-colonial Narratives." The initiative's aims are: to bring together scholars from around the world who focus on new interpretations of Vietnamese history and historiography; to provide a forum for recent, disparate work on new sources and under-researched topics to critically engage with one another; and to publish the results for the wider academic community. Our first conference-workshop, "Beyond Teleologies: alternative voices and histories in colonial Viet Nam" was held in Seattle in 2007. A third conference-workshop, "Beyond Borders: alternative voices and histories of the 20th century Vietnamese diaspora" will be held in 2009.
The three-part series is based on the understanding that modern Vietnamese historiography has been unduly dominated by several particular and at times overlapping discourses reflective of the prevalent ideological presumptions of the 20th century, such as those that:
-privilege the perspectives, interests, and actions of a central state or states;
-impose nationalist and traditionalist notions on Vietnamese history and culture;
-subsume Vietnamese revolutionary visions and movements solely under communist teleologies;
-and enforce Cold War rhetorical postures by excluding, externalizing and
de-legitimizing those that do not fit simplistic binaries
By contrast, the workshops will highlight academic work that complicates, challenges and counters these paradigms, thereby enriching and expanding our understanding of the variety of modern Vietnamese historical actors, factors, and epistemologies, and suggesting the contours of alternative models.
For this workshop on post-colonial Viet Nam, "Beyond Dichotomies," we are seeking papers that engage the broad themes of alternative voices and counter-histories, from the Franco-Viet Minh war up to the early Doi Moi period, in all areas of Viet Nam. Moving beyond the ideological demands of competing nationalisms and Cold War reductionism, with their stark dichotomies and enduring, but flawed tropes of "South Viet Nam" and "North Viet Nam," papers will focus on various political, social and cultural movements and phenomena in their particular contexts and meanings. Eschewing conventional arguments that seek to reconfirm or rehabilitate the overarching, even hegemonic narrative claims of the Sai Gon- or Ha Noi-centered states, papers will, for example, illuminate:
-expressions of regional, local and/or ethnic identities (e.g., Hue, Mekong Delta, Highlands, etc.) beyond the North/South binary;
-regional, class- and community-based, as well as gendered responses to modernity, post-coloniality, (counter-) revolutionary violence, and wars and their legacies;
-sways of thinking and being in the modernizing post-colonial world (beyond the politics of war and revolution), as expressed in literature, fashions, advertising, performing arts, religion and other cultural modes and habits;
-varieties of dissidence under authoritarian, violent regimes, from organized protests, intellectual, literary and artistic expressions, to "every-day resistance";
-the range of revolutionary-nationalist visions, particularly in the southern part of Viet Nam, pre- and post-1975:
-so-called "Third Force," neutralist or peace forces on the margins of the Republic of Viet Nam; and · connections between colonial and post-colonial, as well as between wartime and post-war societies and politics.
In general, the organizers welcome papers that engage a broad range of sources and literatures, in particular new and under-researched ones.
Please submit, preferably electronically,
(1) a paper abstract,
(2) a brief statement how the paper will engage the larger themes and concerns
of the workshop, and
(3) a short C.V.
BY TUESDAY, JANUARY 8, 2008
to the organizers of the conference series:
Christoph Giebel, Assoc. Prof. of History and International Studies, giebel@u.washington.edu
and
Judith Henchy, Head, Southeast Asia Section, University of Washington Libraries,
and Lecturer in International Studies, judithh@u.washington.edu
c/o Center for Southeast Asian Studies
University of Washington, box 353650
Seattle, WA 98195-3650, USA
Participants should agree to submit their draft papers no later than three weeks prior to the workshop, be willing to provide detailed comments on other select papers, engage in group deliberations during the entire workshop, and thereafter commit to actively participate in periodic follow-up discussions and commentary for the planned publications. Participants will receive a modest travel subvention from the organizers, but will be expected to cover most of their expenses through other institutional funds.