This week, our MA student Adrian Alarilla writes about the film festival he’s organizing with the Center, The SEAxSEA Film Festival, that explores Southeast Asia in its diversity, emphasizing underrepresented communities and youth-produced visions of the past, present, and future.   “It’s not given to people to judge what’s right or wrong. People have eternally

Rithy Panh was born in the capital city of Phnom Penh in 1964. His father was a civil servant who worked for the Ministry of Education. Perhaps it was due to their affiliation with the government that his family was among those targeted for “re-education” when the Khmer Rouge came into Phnom Penh in 1975.

by Shannon Bush   “To explain the reasons, the dynamics, the causes, the forces at work in pushing history forward without dehumanizing or depersonalizing it is Pramoedya’s great achievement.  … History is not the background to these stories, it is the protagonist.”  -from Max Lane’s Introduction to his English-language translation of Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s House

Last Saturday evening a group of around 75 people braved Husky football traffic to attend a panel discussion about Ken Burns’ and Lynn Novick’s new documentary series, “The Vietnam War.”  The event was organized by the Seattle chapter of Veterans for Peace and many in the audience were Vietnam vets.  Others had been conscientious objectors

This week we say farewell to our Thai language instructor, Dr. Wiworn Kesavatana-Dohrs, who is retiring. We also celebrate our MA students who graduated this week and the recipients of our endowed fellowships. With mixed emotions, the Southeast Asia Center would like to announce the retirement of Dr. Wiworn Kesavatana-Dohrs. We are saddened by her