Southeast Asia and the World – 1st Southeast Asian Studies Graduate Conference, Harvard University

Inaugural Southeast Asian Studies Graduate Conference, Harvard University

In person, registration appreciated at https://bit.ly/HVDSEACONFRSVP

Via Zoom, registration required at https://bit.ly/HVDSEAGRADCONF

This hybrid conference gathers participants from across the globe, both in-person and virtually, to delve into the intricate tapestry of Southeast Asia, a region whose identity and place in the world have long been debated. In examining Southeast Asia, we aim to address questions such as what constitutes a region, what connects one place to another, and what it means to be part of “the world.” Our conference transcends traditional geospatial or geopolitical boundaries, focusing on diverse dimensions including geography, politics, culture, society, literature, economy, and ecology. The thought-provoking panels prepared for this event explore a wide range of topics, encompassing the challenges of law, economics, sovereignty, ecology, literature, art, political power, labor, migration, and the influence of other countries on the region. Through these discussions, we seek to further our understanding of the unique characteristics and commonalities that shape Southeast Asia as a whole.
As a pre-read conference, we encourage attendees to engage with the material beforehand, enabling more in-depth discussions and insightful exchanges during the event. We extend a warm welcome to all participants and look forward to a stimulating dialogue and fruitful collaborations. Together, we will broaden our perspectives and deepen our understanding of this fascinating and diverse region.

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Yang Qu (Chair), Jannis Jizhou Chen, Courtney T. Wittekind, Daniel Lowery

Sponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center

SCHEDULE

Thursday, April 6

19:00-21:15 Film Screening: To Singapore With Love (2013) by Tan Pin Pin
(Filmmaker in attendance)
Qui-Ha Nguyen (Yale University)
Teren Sevea (Harvard Divinity School)
Location: Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts

Friday, April 7

09:10-09:20 Opening remarks
James Robson (Victor and William Fung Director, Harvard Asia Center; Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University)
Annette Damayanti Lienau (Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard University)
Location: CGIS South S050, 1730 Cambridge Street

09:20-10:30 Keynote lecture: Sunk Costs: Postcolonial Connections in Southeast Asia
Nurfadzilah Yahaya (Department of History, Yale University)

Location: CGIS South S050, 1730 Cambridge Street

10:50-12:15 Panel 1: Law and Economics in Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia’s economy has come a long way over the last decade. The continued development of economic, financial, and legal institutions have been key drivers of emerging markets and have propelled the region’s increasing importance to the global economy. This panel will discuss how economic, financial, and legal frameworks are being revisited and strengthened throughout Southeast Asia, using both ASEAN and country-specific examples as case studies and touching upon how history has impacted these processes.

ASEAN Competition Policy and Law (CPL) and Economic Performance, Lestary Jakara Barany (Columbia University)
How should ASEAN Financial Cooperation Move Forward, Alwin Adityo (Harvard Kennedy School)
Timor-Leste Membership and ASEAN Centrality, Joao M. Saldanha (Joao Saldanha University)
Cronyism in Crisis Reform: Evidence from Malaysia and Indonesia’s Early Recovery Policies to Asian Financial Crisis, Yunqi Wang (London School of Economics and Political Science)
Discussant: David Dapice (Harvard Kennedy School)

12:45-1:45 Lunch

1.55-3.40 Panel 2: Negotiating Fragmented Sovereignties in Southeast Asia
Sovereignty in Southeast Asia is seldom absolute, uncontested, or cleanly defined within boundaries of the modern nation state. This panel will explore the complex tensions of how sovereignty and identity are conceptualized, mobilized, and negotiated internationally and internationally during competition over resource extraction, geopolitics, expanding transnational religious communities, and autonomous governance arrangements for ethnic minorities.

The Prism of Sovereignty: Tungsten, Democracy, and the Chinese Nation-State, 1907-1948, Gaoziyan (Wendy) Cui (UC Santa Barbara)
Theorising Legal Transplant in Contemporary Vietnam: Colonisation, Globalisation, and Digitisation, Ha Ngoc Nguyen (Harvard University)
Autonomy for Whom? Empirical Evidence on the Equity Implications of Territorial Autonomy in Vietnam, Greg Amusu (Princeton University)
Discussant: Meg Rithmire (Harvard Business School)

16:00-17:45 Panel 3: Of Land, Air, Sea, and People: The Elements of Ecology in Southeast Asia
This panel features an interdisciplinary group of scholars from urban planning, cultural-social-environmental anthropology, government policy, and engineering, who all focus on the ecological transformations and challenges experienced by certain human communities in Southeast Asia. The topics of their scholarly investigation span from the (post)colonial planning of the Mekong Delta to the transboundary haze pollution across various countries, the environmental knowledge of the Dayak people in Borneo to the marine expertise of the sea-faring Bajo people of Indonesia. Through their critical analyses that ecologize the region, we find discussions on capitalism, climate change, indigeneity, environmental elements, material culture, government and legal frameworks, and (post)coloniality.

Representing Resilience: How to See a Delta?, Lizzie Yarina (MIT)
Indigenous Knowledge as A Missing Key Paradigm of Socio-Ecological Interaction: The Case of Dayak People, Maria Angelica Christy Aka (Wageningen University & Research) and Warih Aji Pamungkas (Delft University of Technology)
The Emergence and Digital Afterlife of Transboundary Haze in Southeast Asia, Jing Hao Liong (Duke University)
Global Seas: Bajo archipelagic connectedness in a marine protected area (Taka Bonerate National Park, South Sulawesi, Indonesia), Colin Vanlaer (National Museum of Natural History, Paris)
Discussant: Karen Thornber (Department of Comparative Literature & Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University)

Saturday, April 8

09:10-10:55 Panel 4: Literature, Nation, and the Sinophone-Anglophone South
This panel focuses on literary works produced in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Sinophone literature and Anglophone literature in Southeast Asia are two adjacent fields, whose mutual engagement can be further strengthened. This panel seeks to forge this connection by presenting four papers that examine the literary production of Li Zishu, Tan Twan Eng, Lee Jing Jing, Kristin Chen, Vyvanne Loh, Li Bihua, and Li Ang. Through their analyses, we also obtain insights into the issues of victimhood and selfhood, disability and diaspora, and food and hunger.

A powerful force of deconstruction that emerges from lower-class daily lives: Interpretations of Malaysian realistic novel Vulgar Land from the perspective of disability, Qibing Nie (Sun Yat-sen University)
From 华侨 (huaqiao) to 华人 (huaren): English-language historical fiction and the problematic category of the overseas Chinese, Paul Tan (Nanyang Technological University)
Food Politics: Three Hungry Women of the South, Xinran Wang (National University of Singapore)
Victimhood and the (In)secure Self: An Analysis of Tan Twan Eng’s The Gift of Rain, Ngoi Hui Chien (Universiti Malaya)
Discussant: Chan Cheow Thia (National University of Singapore)

11:15-12:30 Lunch + Professionalization Workshop: Turning Your Dissertation into a Book
Teren Sevea (Harvard Divinity School)
Mattias Fibiger (Harvard Business School)
Kristen Wanner (Harvard Asia Center Publications Program)
Qin Higley (Harvard Asia Center Publications Program)

12:40-2:15 Panel 5: Practices of Resistance: Art, Discourse, and the Contestation of Political Power
Description: This panel examines the creative strategies employed by activists and artists in Southeast Asia to challenge political power and promote democracy. The presentations explore diverse forms of resistance, including digital activism in Indonesia, musical expression during the Marcos Administration in the Philippines, chronicling the missing and silenced voices in post-coup Myanmar, and youth-led movements in Thailand and Myanmar between 2020 and 2021. Together, these case studies shed light on the innovative ways individuals and communities engage in resistance and strive for a more equitable future.

Digitally-mediated contention and conflicting collective frames within pro-democracy youth activism in Indonesia, Clarice Handoko (University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa)
Making Meaning out of Music: Understanding the Philippines’ New Society through the Songs of the Marcos Administration, Lady Aileen A. Orsal (Northern Illinois University)
Recording Disappearance in Post-Coup Myanmar, Anne Greenwood (UC Berkeley)
When David takes on Goliath – Transgressing the boundaries: A comparative study of the youths-led movements in Thailand and Myanmar between 2020 and 2021, Sai Htong Kham (The Education University of Hong Kong)
Discussant: Doreen Lee (Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Northeastern University)

14:35-16:20 Panel 6: Labour, Migration, and Radicalized Borders
Modern cartographical representations depict Southeast Asia’s borders as clear-cut, continuous lines, but this obscures their complexity and conceals flows, connections, and crossings. This panel explores subjects-in-transit within and across geographic and social borders, with a particular focus on themes of labor (imm)mobility, across time and space. We define labor broadly, as the exertion of body or mind, and include physical labor as well as affective, symbolic, ethical, and contemplative labor.

In the Wake of Disconnection: Labor Immobility and Political Thought in the Bay of Bengal, 1930–1950, Kelvin Ng (Yale University)
Permeable Borders: The Impact of Genocidal Trauma and the Transnationalism of Rohingya Religious Practices, Camilla Gray (Harvard Divinity School)
Infrastructuring Migration: The Logistics of Labor in the East Coast of Sumatra, Robin Hartanto Honggare (Columbia University)
The State Enclosure and the Bamar Muslims Who Came “Late”, Phianphachong Intarat (University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa)
Discussant: Michael Puett (Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University)

16:40-18:15 Panel 7: China, Chinese-ness, and Change
The movements of migrants, capital, and knowledge across the borders in and around “Southeast Asia” have, for centuries, shaped the human experiences of power and ethnicity in the region. This panel focuses on the ways in which personal intimacies, financial projects, and diplomatic relations have given rise to the way “Chinese-ness” was and is negotiated across different spaces in the area.

The “Great Wall” in the Philippines: The Discourse Regarding Interracial Marriage Between Ethnic Chinese and Filipinos
Edward Joseph C. Ofilada (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
In the Name of Asian Solidarity: Sino-Japanese Competition for Technology Diplomacy in Burma, 1955-1965, Bohao Wu (Harvard University)
Chinese Investment and Chinese-run Online Scams in Cambodia, Zhou Zhou (Rice University)
Deconstructing ‘Skill’ in East Indonesia Nickel Belt — On Speaking (and Not) Speaking Chinese, Jiahui Zeng (Tsinghua University)
Discussant: Mattias Fibiger, Harvard Business School

18:15-18:25 Closing remarks by Conference organizing committee