Full Essays
The ongoing construction of Chinese-funded hydroelectric dams in the upper Mekong region interferes with sediment flow, fish migration, and flood pulse of Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake. These changes reduce the diversity of fish and the area of land available for rice cultivation, jeopardizing the livelihoods of millions of Cambodians who depend directly on the lake. Governments and NGOs have addressed this crisis through education and infrastructure programs, scientific research, and...
Transboundary haze pollution from forest and peat fires in Indonesia continues to affect Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore on an almost yearly basis. Episodes of transboundary haze are linked to negative health and economic outcomes. Peat fires produce the thick and sooty smoke that travels long distances to blanket nearby countries in haze. Unsustainable farming practices on protected Indonesian peatlands by domestic, Malaysian, and Singaporean palm oil companies create the...
In December of 2017, Thailand broke ground on the construction of their first high-speed rail (HSR) line from Bangkok to Nong Khai. The first phase of the project from Bangkok to Nakhon Ratchasima is expected to be completed six years late in 2027 at a cost of US$8.5 billion after dozens of slowdowns and negotiations. This paper investigates the Prayut administration’s motivations for HSR by looking at infrastructure’s relationship with time, politics, and promise as...
Abstract
The coexistence of Myanmar’s burgeoning democracy and its ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya minority has drawn criticism that calls the nation’s claim to democracy into question. In this paper, I explore the political history of Myanmar as it pertains to ethnicity, division, and sovereignty. As Myanmar emerged from British colonialism, the government weaponized ethnicity and belonging to exclude minorities that threatened national unity. The nation’s grabs for...
Paper Description:
By the time we get to the end of this course, we will have explored, in survey fashion, the complexity of Southeast Asian social cultural, political and economic life. We began the course by trying to come to grips with this diversity. Building from a general understanding of the region, we then began to explore some of the challenges and fissures facing the...
Abstract
In 2015, US-born Prumsodun Ok established Cambodia’s first gay Khmer classical dance company. The company’s mission is to preserve the artistic tradition of Khmer classical dance, as well as to reflect the contemporary experiences of queer people in Cambodia. In this essay, I examine the intersection of the dance company’s success with diasporic formations and Cambodia’s economic investment in tourism, as well as explore the processes involved in the artistic production and...
Abstract: Queer studies in the Philippines have confounded native and foreign scholars alike due to concepts resistant to definition and classification. Using a brief study on Lloyd Cadena’s popular YouTube vlogs, this essay aims to examine the powers and limits of bakla success stories. In this, we see that in response to the globalizing forces of social media, bakla voices do not deconstr uct existing gender structures, but instead can perpetuate a marginalization of non-bakla voices. The...
Abstract
The American imagination of the Vietnam War is produced in part by personal experiences, oral histories, media representations, school lessons, and monuments. Yet popular art—and film, specifically—has had an outsized impact on the American understanding of the war. In his Pulitzer-prize-winning novel, The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen challenges the dominant cinematic histories of the conflict. Through two of the most popular and acclaimed American films about the war,...
Abstract
For almost a century, Thailand has been caught in a political “vicious cycle” of coups, military juntas, and manipulated elections. Throughout it all, the Thai government has consistently failed to properly address issues of socioeconomic inequities and human rights violations. This has provoked a small but vocal minority of artists, who have historically incorporated...