Friday, May 1, 2026<\/strong> 9:00\u20139:15am \u2013 Welcome<\/p>\n 9:15\u201310:45am \u2013 Panel 1 10:45\u201311am \u2013 Break<\/p>\n 11:00am\u201312:30pm \u2013 Panel 2 12:30\u20131:30pm \u2013 Lunch<\/p>\n 1:30\u20133:15pm \u2013 Panel 3 3:15\u20133:30pm \u2013 Break<\/p>\n 3:30\u20135:00pm \u2013 Keynote from Kathleen Gutierrez Producing the Green Lung: Devastation, Restoration, and Governance in the C\u1ea7n Gi\u1edd mangrove forest Mangroves, several families of salt-tolerant trees and shrubs which are adapted to live in tropical intertidal zones, have long occupied a marginal position vis-\u00e0-vis the agrarian state. Not quite land and not quite sea, mangrove forests in Southeast Asia have played many roles on the margins, including as a “watery Zomia” giving refuge to pirates, nomads and rival armies, as well as a type of commons, providing access to firewood, fish, and medicinal plant products. This research adopts a political ecology approach to study the social history of mangroves in Vietnam, focusing specifically on the R\u1eebng S\u00e1c outside of Ho Chi Minh City. In tracking the R\u1eebng S\u00e1c’s evolving socio-mangrove system\u2014from destruction by American herbicidal warfare, to patriotic mass restoration, and ultimately to\u00a0 environmental protection\u2014I draw inspiration from Pamela McElwee’s concept of “environmental rule” to describe how the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has used environmental policy less to manage forests than to manage people. Far from submitting neatly to state discipline, mangroves and mangroves users alike have rejected and resisted interventions, forcing evolving technologies of governance. These changing entanglements of nature, culture and power have had transformative impacts on the R\u1eebng S\u00e1c landscape and still reverberate to the present. By foregrounding these histories, this research hopes to bring forward stories can be obscured as “the mangrove” becomes increasingly abstracted and commodified within the global conservation discourse. This research relies on secondary-source analysis.<\/p>\n Repositioning Folktale as Vernacular Knowledge: Decolonizing Cerite Maq Celinggis through Indigenization This research positions Cerite Maq Celinggis beyond mere entertainment in Bangka Belitung\u2019s oral tradition by treating it as a legitimate epistemological source of vernacular ecological knowledge, as one of the folktales that has existed within the oral tradition practices of the Belitung people. Drawing on Virgilio Enriquez\u2019s concept of Indigenization along with a qualitative decolonial textual analysis method, this research not only tries to challenge the colonial and academic frameworks that have historically marginalized oral narratives as intellectually inferior, but also demonstrates how Cerite Maq Celinggis functions not merely as a cultural expression but as a narrative of ecological knowledge that articulates complex relationships among human, animals, plants, and forest. The findings reveal that Cerite Maq Celinggis contains several strands of ecological knowledge, specifically the essential and intimate relationship between humans and nature as fundamental to human life. First, it raises the awareness of land exploitation, as nature requires a pause to restore itself after being used for farming. Furthermore, it implicitly provides knowledge regarding the classification of animals based on their suitability for hunting. Lastly, the folklore simultaneously portrays the complexity of relations among nature, humans, plants, and animals through conflict, negotiation, and decision-making.<\/p>\n Pearls Oysters In Merauke? Reimagining Maritime World of Early Twentieth Century Eastern Indonesia The history of pearls as state-making sites has been discussed thoroughly in the Aru Islands, especially within the context of Australian pearling expansion during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. But historical sources both from the Netherland Indies and Australia reveals a more complex picture, revealing another layer of inter-colonial debate between the Netherlands Indies and the Australian federal government. Merauke, the quiet town on the edge of the colony located in the southern part of the island of Papua, became a flash point between these competing colonial state briefly in the early years of the twentieth century. This research will highlight how Merauke can be an example to explain larger discussion around Dutch colonial expansion in Papua. In turn, this could contribute as a novel way to understand the larger historical relationship of Eastern Indonesian-Australian experience with European colonialism.<\/p>\n Examining the Word “Sakai” in Malayan History Malaysia is imagined as primarily a tri-racial country, with the Malays, Chinese, and Indians making up its population.\u00a0 The Malay category is perhaps the sometimes conflated with the term \u201cBumiputra\u201d or \u201cindigenous.\u201d This is a legal category in Malaysia that applies to the legally Muslim Malays from the Malay peninsula, the Dayak peoples from Sabah and Sarawak states on Borneo, and the largely non-Muslim interior tribes referred to today as Orang Asli. The Malays from the\u00a0 Malay peninsula are complex as they are of mixed descent from Indonesian peoples like the Minangkabau, Arab traders, and Orang Asli. Orang Asli refers to the 18 tribes of people who were on the Malay peninsula before the arrival of the Malacca sultanate ~1400 CE.<\/p>\n The Malay peninsula has a long history of slavery, including the kerajaan, where people were \u201cslaves\u201d of the sultanate,\u00a0 but also other types of slavery like that experienced by Orang Asli. Malays commonly used the term \u201cSakai\u201d to refer to Orang Asli before independence, and it translates as follower, subject, or slave. Today Malaysians treat the word \u201cSakai\u201d as a slur, like when a netizen called the only Orang Asli MP a \u201cSakai\u201d to imply he was unintelligent or savage in 2025. From this information, it would be reasonable to assume that the non-Muslim tribes of the Malay peninsula experienced a long and awful history of slavery where they were incredibly degraded. While there is some truth to this, looking at the entire history of the word Sakai in context reveals a much more complex reality. The term \u201cslave\u201d is a catch-all term applied to many different and disparate forms of bondage and labor, to the point where translating Sakai as \u201cslave\u201d demands unpacking. This paper will deal with the implications of the word \u201cSakai\u201d on understanding Orang Asli history.<\/p>\n Techno-Nationalism and the Indonesian Scientific Diaspora in the United States This study rethinks techno-nationalism by decentring its dominant state-centred formulation and foregrounding the cultural practices through which individuals, particularly members of the scientific diaspora, actively produce and sustain national identity through science and technology. Existing scholarship largely conceptualizes techno-nationalism as a state-driven project aimed at securing national competitiveness, technological sovereignty, and geopolitical advantage. While this perspective highlights the role of state power, it overlooks both the transnational nature of technology and the agency of individuals whose technological practices transcend national borders. Drawing on ethnographic research among the Indonesian scientific diaspora in the United States, this study advances the concept of techno-nationalism, showing how technology functions as a cultural practice through which national belonging is imagined, enacted, and maintained beyond the territorial limits of the nation-state. Focusing on Indonesian scientists and engineers working primarily in the US technology sector, the article demonstrates how diasporic actors mobilize their expertise, networks, and professional trajectories as expressions of continued attachment to Indonesia. These practices challenge both state-centric techno-nationalism and techno-globalist narratives that downplay the persistence of national identity in global technological fields. Theoretically, the research distinguishes political nationalism from national identity and draws on Anderson\u2019s notion of imagined communities and Heidegger\u2019s conception of technology as a mode of revealing. From this perspective, technology is not merely an instrumental tool but a constitutive practice that discloses the nation as a meaningful and inhabitable social world. Methodologically, the study combines literature review, participant observation, and in-depth interviews conducted within Indonesian diaspora communities across the United States. The findings suggest that techno-nationalism does not disappear under conditions of globalization and migration; rather, it is reconfigured. Through what this study terms diaspora techno-nationalism, global scientific practice becomes a medium for sustaining national identity, revealing nationalism as a dynamic, culturally embedded process rather than a bounded state ideology.<\/p>\n Learning to Become a Psychologist in Indonesia: An Analysis from Sociocultural and Critical Perspectives. An Insider Narrative. Psychology education in Indonesia is often framed as a neutral space for producing competent professionals. This paper offers a poststructuralist perspective of psychology education as a learning site for psychologists. Using the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Muhammadiyah Malang\u2014an Islamic university within the Muhammadiyah higher education ecosystem\u2014as a Southeast Asian case, I aim to explore how psychology students learn to be legitimate psychologists within an Islamic university in Indonesia\u2019s neoliberal higher education system. The study combines discourse analysis of program texts (syllabi, practicum rubrics, and ethics guidelines) with semi-structured interviews with students and lecturers across undergraduate and professional tracks. Initial assessment reveals competing discourses that circulate through the learning process \u2014 positivistic, professional, neoliberal. I argue that psychology education operates through a disciplined participation as a mode of learning that enables a certain way of knowing and expertise while also reducing structural problems into individual issues and narrowing students\u2019 civic imagination. By bringing Foucault\u2019s governmentality, this paper advances a critical study of learning sciences in Southeast Asia and suggests pathways for a more democratic, justice-oriented psychology curriculum, specifically within Islamic higher education.<\/p>\n Situated Queerness in Vietnam: Capturing L\u00f4 T\u00f4<\/em> on Film For this presentation, I selected two queer Vietnamese films which I will analyze and ask the following questions:<\/p>\n – What do these films reveal about queer subjectivity and the perception of queer people in Vietnamese society? What dimensions of these communities are made visible? What dimensions are rendered invisible?<\/p>\n – How are these depictions of queer life on film in conversation with Vietnam\u2019s historical and current reality when it comes to societal attitudes, politics, and queer movements?<\/p>\n The first film is a documentary called Chuy\u1ebfn \u0110i Cu\u1ed1i C\u00f9ng C\u1ee7a Ch\u1ecb Ph\u1ee5ng (lit. Madam Ph\u1ee5ng\u2019s Last Journey) and the second is a dramedy called L\u00f4 T\u00f4. In Chuy\u1ebfn \u0110i Cu\u1ed1i C\u00f9ng C\u1ee7a Ch\u1ecb Ph\u1ee5ng, director Nguy\u1ec5n Th\u1ecb Th\u1ea5m takes the audience on a year-long journey with a troupe of queer crossdressing performers led by Madam Ph\u1ee5ng. The second film, L\u00f4 T\u00f4, is directly inspired by Chuy\u1ebfn \u0110i Cu\u1ed1i C\u00f9ng C\u1ee7a Ch\u1ecb Ph\u1ee5ng, tracing the path of a young gay man who runs away from home to join a traveling l\u00f4 t\u00f4 troupe. I specifically chose these films because they represent a rare instance in which one film is directly inspired by another and released within a short timeframe. In transforming a non-fiction documentary intended for film festival circuits into a movie suitable for theater release and a broader audience, certain changes and negotiations must be made. This will become a method of analysis in which I specifically examine the similarities and differences between these two works. This presentation will analyze the films narratively and formally and look to emphasize the mutable and multifaceted nature of queer subjectivities, which remains fluid, even as state and global discourses\u2014through neoliberal hegemonic notions of heteropatriarchy\u2014attempt to affix specific meanings to particular bodies.<\/p>\n The Establishment of Filipino American Identity in Pilipino Cultural Night Performances For this conference, my research proposal will reflect the preliminary research work that I\u2019ve done in regards to Filipino-American performances of traditional Filipino music in the United States. My goal is to demonstrate how and why the “”fossilization”” phenomenon (usually discussed through the perspective of linguists) occurs in regards to traditional styles of musical performance and dance. In no way am I attempting to prove that a particular type of performance is “”more authentic”” than another; the goal is a demonstration of how the process of “”fossilization”” occurs in traditional diasporic performances, and what the resulting effects are on the community and practice.<\/p>\n My research will touch upon multiple aspects of Filipino-American musical identity, and I will draw heavily from sources such as Theodore Gonzales\u2019 book The Day the Dancers Stayed and Anthony O\u2019Campo\u2019s The Latinos of America. I will also be referencing current trends in the University of Washington\u2019s Filipino dance undergraduate group, “”Sayaw””. By combining these resources, I will show how fossilization can occur in musical practices, refer to Gonzales\u2019 analysis of “”Pilipino Cultural Nights””, or PCNs, on west coast college campuses, and discuss how identity within the diasporic Filipino community is shaped. Through this, I aim to: bring a better understanding of how to navigate the complexities of Filipino-American identity, demonstrate how powerful music is in retaining and passing down culture to subsequent generations, and how we can use this understanding moving forward as we continue to practice and innovate on tradition.<\/p>\n Decolonizing “Primitive” Collections: Representations and Perceptions of Asmat Art in Western Institutions Throughout the era of colonization in Oceania and Southeast Asia, collectors have often neglected to use ethical practices when acquiring artifacts or artwork, much of which was deeply important to spirituality or culture. Many of these artifacts have ended up in museums, which are also inherently colonial institutions. It has only been in recent years that institutions have actively been working to decolonize and ethically research their collections. Though much work has been done on collections from certain locations, this level of research has not been popularized for artifacts from Papua, specifically the Asmat region. This lack of research and information about collections affects the level of education museums are able to provide to the general public. I argue that the way museums present the data and information about Papuan art, specifically Asmat, and display its artifacts affects the way museum visitors perceive culture. To achieve my goals, I will draw on documents, journal entries, Papuan and Indigenous studies scholarship, and my personal experiences as a curator.<\/p>\n In my proposed presentation, I will discuss how the colonial history of Papua has affected Papuan art collections, and how museums are changing in their processes to actively decolonize these collections. I address how Dutch and Indonesian colonial presence has changed the Papuan landscape and collection practices done by early colonials who traveled to this region. I will also discuss projects I am doing in partnership with the Burke Museum in Seattle, Washington that I argue work to dismantle the colonial legacies of such collections, thus creating institutional change that can be applied to other global collections. Through my work, I aim to educate about the harm of colonial legacies left on Papuan people and artifacts and provide frameworks on how to dismantle such structures in the museum space.<\/p>\n Archival static: Writing early radio history in the Philippines, 1870s-1941 Despite its centrality to twentieth-century life, originating as a popular medium in the 1920s, radio remains one of the least studied forms of mass media, both globally and in the context of the Philippines, receiving less sustained attention than film, television, or print. Furthermore, the colonial history of science and technology in the Philippines has long privileged the visual as the basis of detached, objective, scientific knowledge. In this paper, I make the case for centering sound and listening in order to challenge these visual and textual biases. I situate radio as an emergent technology within a longer genealogy of sonic and communication technologies, such as the telephone, phonograph, and telegraph, and across the successive Spanish and US colonial regimes to disrupt the idea that it is a universal technology. Filipinos were not merely passive consumers of American(ized) broadcasting, but active listeners who used sonic media for self-making and political negotiation. Distinct listening practices in the Philippines shaped various forms of community, affect, and modern subjectivities under colonial rule.<\/p>\n Using newspapers, magazines, photographs, memoirs, and travel narratives in English, Spanish, and Tagalog, I outline a methodology for reconstructing soundscapes in the absence of recorded audio archives. Tuning into these faint, fragmented, and dispersed archives reveals how Filipinos engaged with radio alongside other print, sonic, and visual media in ways that served to both reinforce and subvert colonial authority. From amateur schoolboys who assembled homemade receivers to elite wedding radio broadcasts staged as public spectacle, listening practices produced uneven and contested publics that defied colonial designs and borders. By attending to alternative sensory, vernacular, and affective modes of knowledge production from a place that has often been relegated to the colonial margins, this paper cuts through the noise of imperial narratives of technology, progress, and modernity.<\/p>\n The B-Sides of Unmaking Botany: Labor and the Archive of the Bereaved in the Colonial Philippines Writing history entails good editing\u2014and accepting when material can\u2019t make the final cut. Lengthy research projects require a command of sources but also analytical flexibility. Such flexibility can ensure rigor sometimes at the expense of findings that, alas, must be shelved for some other future use.<\/p>\n \u201cThe B-Sides of Unmaking Botany<\/em>\u201d will examine a set of sources that did not make it into the recently published monograph Unmaking Botany: Science and Vernacular in the Colonial Philippines<\/em> (Duke University Press, 2025). The objectives of the talk are thus twofold: to provide a behind-the-scenes take on the production of a scholarly monograph and to offer a conceptual argument gleaned from the sources that nonetheless resonates with some of Unmaking Botany\u2019s principal interventions.<\/p>\n Up to today, little primary and synthetic information exists on Spanish-born, rank-and-file men recruited to join botany operations in the colonial Philippines in the late nineteenth century. That is, except for men whose widows compiled extensive documentation on their deceased spouses\u2019 lives with the intention of obtaining postmortem pensions. Paradoxically then, for many of the rank-and-file of Philippine colonial botany, corporeal death meant bureaucratic accretion; loss predicated a paper trail. Widows\u2019 work to put the bureaucratic pieces in place, so to speak, open a way to consider those whose labors contributed to colonial botany\u2019s execution. These women formed a class of administrators upon whose work an archive exists and who therefore enable us to contemplate accretion\u2014not just of plants or knowledge, but of archive\u2014occasioned by death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Center for Southeast Asia and its Diasporas Spring 2026 Student Conference and Keynote Presentation Friday, May 1, 2026 9am\u20135pm Thomson Hall Room 317 9:00\u20139:15am \u2013 Welcome 9:15\u201310:45am \u2013 Panel 1 Colonial legacies and contemporary discourses on Southeast Asian environments 10:45\u201311am \u2013 Break 11:00am\u201312:30pm \u2013 Panel 2 Past, present, future: Nationalisms and national identities in Southeast<\/p>\n
\n9am\u20135pm<\/strong>
\nThomson Hall Room 317<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nColonial legacies and contemporary discourses on Southeast Asian environments<\/p>\n
\nPast, present, future: Nationalisms and national identities in Southeast Asia<\/p>\n
\nThe sights and sounds of Southeast Asia<\/p>\n
\nThe B-Sides of Unmaking Botany<\/em>: Labor and the Archive of the Bereaved in the Colonial Philippines<\/p>\n
\nPanel 1: Colonial legacies and contemporary discourses on Southeast Asian environments<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n<\/strong>Will Burnham (he\/him) \u2013 Southeast Asian Studies, Marine and Environmental Affairs<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Andri Fernanda (he\/him) \u2013 Asian Languages and Literature<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Rangga Rasyid (he\/him) \u2013 Southeast Asian Studies<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nPanel 2: Past, present, future: Nationalisms and national identities in Southeast Asia<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\nEden Quah (she\/her) \u2013 Southeast Asian Studies<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Imam Subkhan \u2013 Anthropology<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Bintang Sasmita Wicaksana \u2013 Learning Sciences and Human Development<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nPanel 3: The sights and sounds of Southeast Asia<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n<\/strong>MinhYen Do (any pronouns) \u2013 Southeast Asian Studies<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Rayne Mescallado (they\/them) \u2013 Ethnomusicology<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Caitlin O\u2019Malley (she\/her) \u2013 Southeast Asian Studies<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Kelly Van Acker (she\/her) \u2013 History<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nKeynote Presentation<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\nKathleen Gutierrez \u2013 Assistant Professor of History, UC Santa Cruz<\/strong><\/p>\n