Syllabus 2021 (Finalized Sept 1st)

Anthropology 244a Fall 2021	Professor Erik Harms
Course Meetings: T,Th 9:00 am – 10:15 am Teaching Fellow: Vanessa Koh Office hours: Thursday, 10:30-12:30, room 204	Office Hours: Tuesdays, 2:00-4 pm Room 120, 10 Sachem St
Location: WTS A48 - Watson Center 60 Sachem Street A48	Department of Anthropology 10 Sachem Street erik.harms@yale.edu

THIS COURSE WILL BE HELD IN PERSON

Default will be to not record sessions, unless an expressed need arises for accessibility reasons.

Enrollment will be capped at 18.

USEFUL LINKS

Course Canvas page: https://yale.instructure.com/courses/69385

Reading Signup page: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W_m5uU0AoMXvURplWqb6cI4oOiBJ3vWNgorD…

Course Collaboration Page: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RGE6lwqhEEk3NpxGxvBZbBdr6l4L6BDt9XHQ…

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course offers a comprehensive introduction to the extraordinary diversity of Southeast Asian peoples, cultures, and political economy. Broadly focused on the nation-states that have emerged since the end of World War II (Brunei, Burma [Myanmar], Cambodia, Indonesia, East Timor, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam), the course explores the benefits and limits to a regional perspective. Crossing both national and disciplinary boundaries, the course will introduce students to key elements of Southeast Asian geography, history, language and literature, belief systems, marriage and family, music, art, agriculture, industrialization and urbanization, politics and government, ecological challenges, and economic change. In addition to providing a broad and comparative survey of “traditional” Southeast Asia, the course will place special emphasis on the intellectual and practical challenges associated with modernization and development, highlighting the ways different Southeast Asian nations contend with the forces of globalization.

The principle readings will include key works from a multidisciplinary range of fields covering anthropology, art, economics, geography, history, literature, music, and political science. No prior knowledge of Southeast Asia is expected.

GRADING AND COURSE WORK

Grades will be based primarily on the written assignments (including drafts and final essays, and in-class writing assignments), and student participation in the class.  The total course grade will be calculated as a percentage of accumulated points. (A = 93-100; A- = 90-92; B+ = 87-89; B = 83-86; B- = 80-82; etc.).

• Major assignments are indicated in the chart below, and include blogging assignments, one short essay concerning a Southeast Asian news event chosen by the student, and one independent research paper on a topic chosen by the student. A map assignment will be worth 50 points. Students will also contribute five short responses on select course readings, worth 10 points each. Students will select which five readings they would like to write about after week two.
• Attendance and classroom participation are essential to success in the course, and students who fail to attend all class meetings, or who consistently arrive late or fail to participate, will see their final course grade affected.

Major assignments and their due dates are as follows:

Date Due	Topic	Weight of Paper
Periodic (2 per semester)	Reading Responses	25 X 2 = 50
All Semester	Classroom Participation and Preparation	100
Tuesday Sept. 21	Map Assignment	50
Friday, Oct. 15th	Ripped from the Headlines Paper	100
Dec. 2 and Dec. 7	Final Paper Draft and Presentation	50
Friday Dec. 10th	Final Research Paper	200

 Course Policies

• Students must attend all of the scheduled classes, unless excused in advance by the instructor.  Students anticipating the need to miss class for religious holidays or for approved participation in University athletics should inform the instructor during the first two weeks of class.
• Students must hand in papers on time at the beginning of class on the date indicated on this syllabus.  Unless otherwise indicated, papers should be double-spaced, using standard 12 point font, with 1 inch margins.  Unexcused late papers will not receive anything higher than a “B”.  Students anticipating the need for an extension must forewarn the instructor at least one week in advance.  On occasion, I will ask you to submit papers online using the “canvas” course website or via email.  In addition, for several of the writing assignments, students will be asked to post revised versions to the course website, which is viewable by the public. Papers or assignments submitted electronically through canvas should always be saved as Microsoft Word documents with standardized filenames according to the following format:

          yourlastname.assignment#.doc  (e.g.: “harms.1a.doc”)

• Unless otherwise noted, the readings indicated for a particular week should be completed by the first class meeting of the week.
• Don’t plagiarize!  Students should be familiar with Yale’s policy on academic integrity, located in the student handbook (pages 42-44):

          http://catalog.yale.edu/undergraduate-regulations/regulations/academic-d…

And students should visit the following useful guide to citing sources at:

https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/using-sources

If you have questions about citing sources or remain unclear about plagiarism, please feel free to ask prof. Harms, a reference librarian in any of the Yale libraries, or staff members at the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning. If you plagiarize you will fail the class.

Course Materials

All course readings indicated in the course schedule are available as electronic text reserves accessible online via the links on this syllabus or alphabetically at the course bibliography:

http://seasia.yale.edu/course-portal/course-bibliography

• Note that the readings for the course are actually physically stored on the canvas website, in the “files” section of canvas. If a link to the reading from the webpage is not working does not work, you can find the reading there.
• On an experimental basis, I will be periodically uploading map-based lecture notes and study guides. Students wishing to access those will need the free version of Google Earth, available at:

https://www.google.com/earth/

COURSE SCHEDULE

INTRODUCTION

Week 1: Course Introduction: Encountering Southeast Asia

Thursday, September 2nd: Introduction to the class.

PART ONE: Geographical, Social-Cultural, and Political Diversity

Week 2: Geography and the Human Landscape

Tuesday, September 7th: Southeast Asia is No(w)here

• Rafael, Vicente L. 1994. “The Cultures of Area Studies in the United States.” Social Text (41): 91-111. https://doi.org/10.2307/466834.
• Anderson, Benedict. 1998. “Intorduction” in The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World. New York: Verso.
  • (Optional) Paul H. Kratoska, Remco Raben, and Henk Schulte Nordholt. 2005. “Locating Southeast Asia.” In Locating Southeast Asia: Geographies of Knowledge and Politics of Space, 1-19. Singapore Athens: Singapore University Press ; Ohio University Press.
  • (Optional) Osborne, Milton (2004). What is Southeast Asia? Southeast Asia: An Introductory History. St. Leonards, NSW, Australia, Allen & Unwin: 1-17. [Note: this reading is purposely simple. Read it first if you feel totally lost about SE Asia, just to get situated. Then read the other required articles.]

Thursday, September 9th: Rainy Season / Dry Season, Land / Water, Islands / Mainlands

• Rigg, Jonathan (1990). Southeast Asia: Physical and Historical Threads. Southeast Asia: A Region in Transition. London ; Boston, Unwin Hyman: 1-18.
• Padawangi, Rita, and Mike Douglass. 2015. “Water, Water Everywhere: Toward Participatory Solutions to Chronic Urban Flooding in Jakarta.” Pacific Affairs 88 (3): 517-550.
• Padwe, Jonathan. 2020. “Cambodia’s Northeast Hills.” In Distrurbed Forests, Fragmented Memories: Jarai and Other Lives in the Cambodian Highlands, 26-47. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Week 3: Ethno-Linguistic Diversity (As well as Ethnonationalism, Racism, and also “Spacism”)

Tuesday, September 14th: Upland / Lowland, Rural / Urban

• Cham H’Roi Girl, and H’Mong Thai School-Girl in Barker, Harms & Lindquist (2012) Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
• Anderson, Benedict. (1996) “Census, Map, Museum.” In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso.
• Scott, James C. (2009). Hills, Valleys, and States. in The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven, Yale University Press: 1-39.
  • (Optional) Duncan, Christopher (2004). Legislating Modernity Among the Marginalized. Civilizing the Margins: Southeast Asian Government Policies for the Development of Minorities. Christopher R. Duncan, Ed. Ithaca, Cornell University Press: 1-23.

Map assignment for next week: https://yale.instructure.com/courses/69385/assignments/240492

Thursday, September 16th: Linguistic Diversity and Socio-Linguistic Relationships

• The Beauty Contestant in Barker, Harms & Lindquist (2012) Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity.
• Geertz, Clifford (1960). Selections on Javanese Language. The Religion of Java. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
• Rafael, Vicente L. 1995. “Taglish, or the Phantom Power of the Lingua Franca.” Public Culture 8 (1): 101-126.
• Hsieh, Jessica. (2011). Speak Good English Lah!: Prescriptive language policy in Singapore. New Haven, Student Final Paper Modern Southeast Asia, Yale University:1-14.
  • (Optional) Goddard, Cliff (2005). Language Families, Linguistic Areas and Language Situations.The Languages of East and Southeast Asia: An Introduction. Oxford, N.Y., Oxford University Press: 27-51.

**Ripped from the Headlines Assignment: Begin slowly posting blog posts about SEA Media. Eah student should have made 4 posts by Friday, Oct. 8th.**

Week 4: Kinship, Family and Gender

Tuesday, September 21st: Kinship, the Family, and Identity

• Shohet, Merav. “Everyday Sacrifice and Language Socialization in Vietnam: The Power of a Respect Particle.” American Anthropologist, vol. 115, no. 2, 2013, pp. 203-217.
• Carsten, Janet (1995). The Substance of Kinship and the Heat of the Hearth: Feeding, Personhood, and Relatedness among Malays in Pulau Langkawi. American Ethnologist. 22(2): 223-241.
• Conklin, Harold. (2011 [1960]). Maling, a Hanunóo Girl from the Philippines. Everyday Life in Southeast Asia. K. M. Adams and K. A. Gillogly. Bloomington, IN, Indiana University

**ASSIGNMENT 1 DUE: Map Assignment**

Thursday, September 23rd: Gender

• Miss Beer Lao and The Single Woman in Barker, Harms & Lindquist (2012) Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity.
• Brenner, Suzanne (1995). Why Women Rule the Roost: Rethinking Javanese Ideologies of Gender and Self-Control. Bewitching Women, Pious men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia. Aihwa Ong and Michael Peletz, Ed. Berkeley, University of California Press: 19-50.
• Cannell, Fenella (1999). “Beauty and the Idea of America” Power and Intimacy in the Christian Philippines. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
• (Optional) Peletz, Michael (1994). Neither Reasonable nor Responsible: Contrasting Representations of Masculinity in a Malay Society. Cultural Anthropology. 9(2): 135-178.

Film: Match Made (view clip in class, link to full film here)

Week 5: Religion and Cosmology

Tuesday, September 28th: Islam, Hinduism, Christianity

• Rudnyckyj, Daromir. (2009). “Spiritual Economies: Islam and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Indonesia.” Cultural Anthropology 24(1): 104-141.
• Smith-Hefner, Nancy. J. (2007). “Javanese Women and the Veil in Post-Soeharto Indonesia.” The Journal of Asian Studies 66(2): 389-420.
• Cannell, Fenella (1999). The Funeral of the ‘Dead Christ’. Power and Intimacy in the Christian Philippines. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 165-182.

Thursday, September 30th: Buddhism, Confucianism, and the World of the Spirits

• The Buddhist Ascetic and The Spirit Medium in Barker, Harms & Lindquist (2012) Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity.
• Keyes, Charles (1995). Selections on Theravada Buddhism. The Golden Peninsula: Culture and Adaptation in Mainland Southeast Asia. Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press: 78-90; 113-126.
• Soucy, Alexander. 2006. “Consuming loc—creating on: Women, offerings and symbolic capital in northern Vietnam.” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 35 (1): 107-131.
   

Film: Love Man Love Woman

Week 6: Political Systems

Tuesday, October 5th: Political Developments in Post-Colonial and Post-War SEA

• Selections from Southeast Asian Constitutions
• Reyes, Victoria. 2019. “Born in the Shadow of Bases.” In Global Borderlands: Fantasy, Violence, and Empire in Subic Bay, Philippines, 105-123. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Each Student in the class should read Sections of this text relevant to their own interests: Owen, Norman G. et al (2005). Industrialization and its Implications; Human Consequences of the Economic “Miracle”; Malaysia Since 1957; Singapore and Brunei; Indonesia: The First Fifty Years; The Kingdom of Thailand; The Philippines since 1972; Vietnam after 1975; Cambodia since 1975; Laos since 1975; Burma Becomes Myanmar. The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia: A New History. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press: 379-506.

Thursday, October 7th: “Freedom,” ASEAN-style

• ASEAN Declaration and ASEAN vision 2020
• Zakaria, Fareed (1994). Culture is Destiny: A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew.Foreign Affairs. 73(2): 109-126.
• Chua Beng Huat (2017) “Introduction,” Liberalism Disavowed: Communitarianism and State Capitalism in Singapore. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

**Ripped from the Headlines Assignment: Be sure to have uploaded four blog posts about SEA Media by Friday, Oct. 8th.**

 

PART TWO: Political Economy and Conflicting Experiences of Modernity

Week 7: Modern Dreams and the Dark Side of Modernity

Tuesday, October 12th: The Cambodian Genocide and Other Modern Nightmares

• Kiernan, Ben (2004). The Cambodian Genocide, 1975-1979. A Century of Genocide Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts. Samuel Totten et al, Ed. New York, Routledge: 338-373.
• Zani, L. (2018). Bomb Ecologies. Environmental Humanities, 10(2), 528-531.
  • (Optional) McCoy, Alfred. W. (1972). Flowers of Evil: The CIA and The Heroin Trade. Harper’s Magazine: 47-53.

View film in Class: New Year Baby, A Film by Socheata Poev (2008). 57 minutes version:  https://search.library.yale.edu/catalog/8336081?counter=3

Thursday, October 14th: The Coup in Myanmar

• Prasse-Freeman, Elliott. 2021. “Necroeconomics: dispossession, extraction, and indispensable/expendable laborers in contemporary Myanmar.” The Journal of Peasant Studies:1-31.
• Thawda Aye Lei. “In the Heat of Laughter.” Adi Magazine, no. Spring, 2021.
• Aung, Geoffrey. “Dead Generations.” n+1 Magazine, April 8th 2021.

**ASSIGNMENT 2: Ripped from the Headlines Essay, due to Canvas by 5pm, Friday Oct. 15th. Students will post a copy-edited version to the course website after receiving comments**

**PAPER PROPOSALS**Before the start of October Recess please post a brief, one paragraph proposal for your final paper to the course collaboration page. Proposals should include a brief description of the topic, and a preliminary bibliography. As the semester progresses, we will schedule individual meetings to discuss your final paper proposals.

Week 8: Agricultural Economies, Social Change, and Resistance

Tuesday, October 19th: What Counts as Resistance? Southeast Asian Agricultural Diversity and Agricultural capitalism

• Scott, James C. (1985). Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press. [Read Preface. Ch 1, Ch 2]

**Final Paper Proposal Due Before October Recess. Preferably before class today, but you have some leeway**

OCTOBER RECESS Oct. 19th, 11p.m. to Oct. 25th, 8:20 a.m.

Week 9: Migration and Mobility

Tuesday, October 26th: Migration and Mobility

• The Bangladeshi Worker and in Barker, Harms & Lindquist (2012) Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity.
• Mills, Mary Beth (1995). “Attack of the Widow Ghosts” in  Aihwa Ong and Michael Peletz, ed. Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Zhou, Taomu. 2019. “Who Are the Chinese in the Book?” In Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia, and the Cold War, 5-11. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Lim, Nicole, and Anju Mary Paul. 2020. “Stigma on a spectrum: differentiated stigmatization of migrant domestic workers’ romantic relationships in Singapore.” Gender, Place & Culture: 1-23.

Thursday, October 28th: Migration and Mobility 2

• Carruthers, Andrew M. 2019. “Policing Intensity.” Public Culture 31 (3): 469-496.
• Menon, Alka V. 2019. “Cultural gatekeeping in cosmetic surgery: Transnational beauty ideals in multicultural Malaysia.” Poetics 75: 101354.

Week 10: Research and Writing Interlude

Tuesday, November 2nd: Research Interlude

• Two or three peer-reviewed articles of your choice on the topic of your final paper

There will be an in-class exercise in small groups to discuss some of the ideas emerging from your reading of sources for your papers.

Thursday, November 4th: Writing Interlude

• Lapcharoensap, Rattawut (2004). Farangs. Over there: how America sees the world. London, Granta: 189-203.
• Please bring to class one image that you feel “captures” your final paper. The image can come from any source, but please have it in a digital form (Like .tiff, .pdf, .jpg)

In class we will discuss the short story and also engage in some creative descriptive free-writing, using the image you bring as a prompt to get you thinking about your papers.

In class, read excerpt from Tsing (2011) “Dark Rays.”

 

PART THREE: The (Dark) Arts of Change

Week 11: Ambivalent forces of Social Change (Urbanization and Environment)

Tuesday, November 9th: Cruel Beauty, Dreams and the Dark Side of Development

• Harms, Erik (2012) “Beauty as Control” in American Ethnologist 29(4): 735-750.
• Dove, Michael (1996). Rice-Eating Rubber and People-Eating Governments.Ethnohistory. 43(1): 33-63.
• Pramodya Ananta Toer (1996). My Kampung [Kampungku]. Indonesia. 61(April): 25-32.

Thursday, November 11th: Apparitions of Modernity

• Ong, Aihwa (1987). “Selections” Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia. Albany: State University of New York: 179-221.
• Ho Anh Thai (2001). The Goat Meat Special. Old Truths, New Revelations. K. K. Seet and Asean Committee on Culture and Information, Eds. Singapore, Times Books International: 318-326.
• Wong, Cyril (2015 [2005]). The Boy with the Flower the Grew out of His Ass. Singapore, Math Paper Press. [**Note, this copy contains an essay and the story itself. You only have to read the story, but can read the essay if you like**]

Week 12: Art and Music

Tuesday, November 16th: The Politics of Southeast Asian Art and Music

• Mrázek, Jan (2000). More than a Picture: The Instrumental Quality of the Shadow Puppet. Studies in Southeast Asian Art: Essays in Honor of Stanley J. O’Connor. Stanley J. O’Connor, Nora A. Tayloret al, Eds. Ithaca, N.Y., Southeast Asia Program Publications, Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University. Studies on Southeast Asia no. 29: 49-73.
• Taylor, Nora (1999). ‘Pho’ Phai and Faux Phais: The Market for Fakes and the Appropriation of a Vietnamese National Symbol. Ethnos. 64(2): 232-248.
• Lockard, Craig. (1998). “Thailand.” in Dance of Life: Popular Music and Politics in Southeast Asia. Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press.

Thursday, November 18th: Music Party (and (hypo)thesis sharing workshop)

• Before class, please post a link to the shared class google slide with at least 2 slides, each containing a favorite song from Southeast Asia (past, present, or future). If you don’t have a favorite song from Southeast Asia, ask a family member, a friend, a lover or even an enemy to suggest some. If you feel inspired, consider picking a song that might work as the “soundtrack” to the paper you are writing for this class.
• Here’s the link to the Southeast Asian Musical Extravaganza

 In class, we will listen to some of the music selections, and also spend some time in small groups discussing your hypothetical thesis statements and tentative outlines for your papers.

**Be Ready to Give Short Presentations About Your Papers After November Recess**

November Break:  Nov. 19-28

Week 13: Emerging Research in Southeast Asia

Tuesday, November 30: Guest Speaker Vanessa Koh, PhD Candidate in Anthropology, Yale University

Before today’s class, please read Vanessa’s grant proposal and the first draft of a chapter from her in-progress PhD dissertation.

• Koh, Vanessa. 2019. “Making Nature: The Creation of Land in Singapore.” National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant. [Read “Introduction” and “Research Questions and Objectives” and skim the rest.]
• Koh, Vanessa. 2021. “Political Grains of Sand: A Granular Approach to Sovereign Grounds from Cambodia to Singapore.” Chapter Two of Dissertation.

In class, Vanessa will spend about 15 minutes presenting and contextualizing some of the research, and then we will engage in an open discussion of the chapter, as well as the research process more generally.

Thursday, December 2: Group A Presentations

workshop schedule here.

Presentation slides here.

Week 14: Course Conclusion

Tuesday, December 7th: ; Group B Presentations

workshop schedule here.

Presentation slides here.

Thursday, December 9th: Course Conclusion

**FINAL PAPER: due, Friday Dec. 10th. Extensions may be granted if requested in advance, but not at the last minute. Do inquire early in the semester if you expect conflicts with this due date.**