Amanda

Amanda is born and bred in Singapore. She was interested in this course because she realised that her knowledge of Southeast Asia was very scant despite living in Singapore all her life and travelling to various Southeast Asian countries for many of her holidays. To her, ‘Southeast Asia’ was a term to refer to a geographical region but lacked any real essence or character. She holidayed in Cambodia twice and visited the Angkor Wat thrice! However, her impression of Cambodia was incoherent. She merely had two distinct but separate images of Cambodia – the rich kingdom that thrived in the Angkor Wat and the modern – day Cambodia, which to her, seemed to be defined by its cheap food and massage parlours. Through this course, she hopes to develop a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of Southeast Asia and her own positionality as a member of a country in this region.

She is a sophomore her prospective major is Anthropology. She likes creative writing. Currently, she has been quite obsessed with the frailty of the human body (disease, cuts, decay) and the contradictory but equally intense feelings of disgust and fascination these images evoke. She is attempting to write a piece about the curry murders in Singapore.