International Institute, March 6—Speaking at a well-attended lecture at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Cathy J. Schlund-Vials explained that Cambodian American artists were creating alternative sites to remember and reclaim the history of the Khmer Rouge era, achieving a measure of justice for the Cambodian people and its diaspora in the process. In the absence of international or state-sanctioned justice for the genocide of 1.7 million Cambodians by the Pol Pot regime, Prof. Schlund-Vials pointed out that Cambodian American memory work is changing the narrative of the Khmer Rouge epoch in both the United States and Cambodia.

The speaker explained that “cultural producers” of Cambodian heritage in the United States were using film, memoir, music and performance to transcend the linear narrative imposed by human rights’ tribunals, which are limited solely to the years in which the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia (1975–1979). The work of these artists, she said, highlights the “strategic amnesia” in the United States about the illegal U.S. bombing of Cambodia (1969–1973) and the subsequent Khmer Rouge regime.  Rather than end the killing in Southeast Asia, she remarked, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam led to the deaths of millions of innocent victims at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. In addition to evacuating the cities and forcibly relocating residents to re-education labor camps in the countryside, the regime engaged in widespread brutal torture and mass killings (of, among others, schoolteachers, doctors and court musicians and dancers), and burned books and schools. The resulting flight out of Cambodia created an enormous diaspora, with approximately 510,000 Cambodians ending up in Thailand, 100,000 in Vietnam and 150,000 in the United States.

Drawing on the analytical paradigms of memory and holocaust remembrance of James Young (“memory work”) and Jenny Edkins (“the politics of mourning”), Schlund-Vials pointed out that the Khmer Rouge regime itself engaged in violent practices of “dis-remembering” the Cambodian past. The installation of Prime Minister Hun Sen by Vietnam subsequently led to a policy of “burying the past” in which Sen negotiated agreements with former Khmer Rouge leaders. The People’s Revolutionary Tribunal, which was organized in 1979 and sentenced several of these leaders to death, was considered a “show trial” organized by the Vietnamese to inculcate loyalty in the country. Although the United Nations rejected the work of that tribunal because it did not meet accepted human rights’ standards, the contemporary U.N.-Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia tribunal is using the 1,000 pages of testimony generated by it. Schlund-Vials pointed out that the present tribunal is suffering from a lack of international monetary support and that its defendants are unlikely to survive the proceedings. One hundred million dollars have been spent, she observed, and the tribunal has so far sentenced only one individual.

Today, there are 19,733 mass graves and 196 Khmer Rouge former prisons in Cambodia, but no state-sanctioned memorial to the victims of the regime. The 81 private genocide memorials in existence were largely intended to foment anger at the Khmer Rouge regime, explained the speaker. Unfortunately, these private memorials are encouraging what Schlund-Vials labeled “atrocity tourism,” in which only one out of eight visitors are Cambodian. In a country with a majority Buddhist population, it is profane to keep human bones at such sites, she continued. Traditionally, these remains would be cremated, yet they—and the memorial sites—are evidence in the ongoing U.N.-Cambodian tribunal. Ironically, the idea of “justice” is really a Judeo-Christian concept, she observed, with Buddhist cultures understanding karma and reincarnation as the vehicles by which the past is addressed.

Against this background, Cambodian American artists such as Anida Yoeu Ali, a poet and performance artist, and praCh, a rap musician (who attended the lecture), are generating works that engage in memory politics at home and in Cambodia. praCh, for example, has not only brought hip-hop to Cambodia, said Schlund-Vials, he has initiated dialogue with young Cambodians about the era of genocide. She emphasized that memory work is also occurring in Cambodia itself, but that her focus was on the work of the Cambodian diaspora in the United States. These artists are providing both new readings of the Khmer Rouge period that go beyond the previous frame established by the movie “The Killing Fields,” they are also rescripting the Cambodian experience so that it is not exclusively about trauma.

Schlund-Vials is Associate Professor of English and Asian American Studies and Director of the Institute of Asian American Studies at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of the recently published book, “War, Genocide and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work” (University of Minnesota, 2012). Her lecture was cosponsored by the UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies of the International Institute, the Asian American Studies Center, Asian American Studies Department and Charles E. Young Research Library Oral History Project, together with the Southeast Asian Studies programs of the University of California, Riverside and the University of Southern California. Many students of the cosponsoring academic departments and institutions attended the event.

"A magnificent work by a stellar Filipino/a American scholar attuned to the transnational and cross-racial dimensions of embodied struggle....The book displays the very astonishing creativity and sense of possibility that it brings to light."
       —Neferti Tadiar, Barnard College

Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns, an Associate Professor in the Asian American Studies Department at UCLA, has come out with a new scholarly work, exploring the emergence of Filipino American theater and performance from the early 20th century to the present. Puro Arte: Filipinos on the Stages of Empire stresses the Filipino performing body’s location as it conjoins colonial histories of the Philippines with U.S. race relations and discourses of globalization.

“Puro arte,” translated from Spanish into English, simply means “pure art.” In Filipino, however, puro arte performs a much more ironic function, gesturing rather to the labor of over-acting, histrionics, playfulness, and purely over-the-top dramatics. In this book, puro arte functions as an episteme, a way of approaching the Filipino/a performing body at key moments in U.S.-Philippine imperial relations, from the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, early American plays about the Philippines, Filipino patrons in U.S. taxi dance halls, to the phenomenon of Filipino/a actors in Miss Saigon. Using this varied archive, Puro Arte turns to performance as an object of study and as a way of understanding complex historical processes of racialization in relation to empire and colonialism

CLICK HERE to read the Introduction.

PURCHASE YOUR COPY through NYU Press.

By Wendy Soderburg

"I arrive in Kanazawa and my family takes me around the house, and they’re talking to me in Japanese, of course," said Detels, who had studied as much Japanese as he could on the boat trip from Hawaii to Kanazawa. "And I could tell that they were apologizing for how small the rooms were."

Wanting to say something nice, Detels said, "Ah, kirai desu." He got no reaction. The same thing happened with each room. Finally, Detels discovered that he and the older daughter both spoke a little bit of German. "And what had happened was, I meant to say, ‘Ah, kirei desu,’ which means, ‘It’s beautiful.’ But I said, ‘kirai,’ which means, ‘I don’t like it.’ "

He laughed heartily at the memory. "We managed to survive that one," he said.

That first experience in Japan actually turned out to be the first of many Asian adventures for Detels, who received his B.A. from Harvard later that same year. He went on to New York University where, while working toward an M.D. that he earned in 1962, he served his elective period at the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit (NAMRU-2) in Taipei, Taiwan.

"That experience made me realize that one-on-one medicine was not very efficient; that if I really wanted to have an impact, I should get into the area of epidemiology and public health," Detels said. "I realized that was going to have a much greater impact than seeing patients one at a time."

While in Taipei, Detels worked with Professor Thomas Grayston, who had organized a department of preventive medicine and started a residency program in epidemiology at the University of Washington. Detels completed the residency program and also earned an M.S. from the University of Washington in 1966.

After graduation, Detels was drafted into the U.S. Navy and requested to be sent back to NAMRU-2 in Taipei, where he lived for three years with his wife, Mimi, and their two sons, Martin and Edward. During his tour of duty he did research in the Philippines, Bangkok and Taiwan, field-testing the rubella vaccine and studying tropical diseases. Once his Navy service was fulfilled, Detels took a position as a medical officer for the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

Two years later, in 1970, Detels joined the UCLA faculty as an associate professor in what is now UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health. "When I got here, there was only one faculty member in epidemiology, and he promptly retired upon my arrival," Detels said, laughing. As a young professor, Detels quickly learned how to teach courses and set about recruiting new colleagues and expanding the department, which today has approximately 40 faculty, including in-residence and adjunct appointments.

In 1981, Detels started a study of AIDS in young homosexual men in Los Angeles and, in 1983, he formed a collaborative study with centers at three other institutions: Pittsburgh, Northwestern and Johns Hopkins. This study, known as the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS), is still going strong some 30 years later.

Detels also runs the UCLA/Fogarty AIDS International Training and Research Program for health professionals from China, Southeast Asia and India, who come here to earn advanced degrees in epidemiology. "But I insist that they go back to their home countries to do the field work for their dissertations," Detels said. "I feel that doing their dissertations in the United States is irrelevant for them. One of the requirements is that they can’t get into the program unless they agree to go back to their home countries."

Besides currently serving as adviser to 15-20 doctoral students, teaching two graduate courses and an introductory public health course for 280 undergraduates, and delivering guest lectures, Detels is also senior editor of the recently published book, "Public Health in East and Southeast Asia: Challenges and Opportunities in the 21st Century" (UC Press, 2012).

Said Professor of Epidemiology Zuo-Feng Zhang of his colleague, "It is hard to identify any faculty who has had such outstanding academic achievements as Dr. Detels at UCLA, in terms of his research (as a pioneer in many different areas such as HIV/AIDS, air pollution and cancer) and his lectureship. In addition, he has trained more than 300 health professionals, including over 100 Ph.D. graduates in epidemiology."

Added Zhang, who nominated Detels for the Faculty Research Lectureship, "The UCLA Academic Senate has made a great decision to choose Dr. Detels from a very competitive pool of candidates."

Of the honor, Detels said that he was thankful to UCLA for giving him the opportunity and the support to conduct his research.

"A lot of [thanks] goes to my fellow faculty and my students. One of the things I’ve tried to teach students — and this is particularly difficult with students from Asia — is to tell me I’m crazy," said Detels, who encourages them to argue or question research on a collegial basis. "I’m reasonably successful. They don’t let me get away with anything; they ask me questions and they demand an explanation."

This give-and-take, Detels said, has resulted in a circle of colleagues in the medical school and in the school of public health and epidemiology "who are constantly contributing ideas or arguing with ideas. I can have bull sessions with them. That is the way research advances, and it’s a very exciting process."

That Detels’ work satisfies and sustains him is quite clear.

"You know, I’m 76 years old and I haven’t retired. And the reason I haven’t retired is because I revel in the collegiality and excitement of research and teaching."

Detels will present his Faculty Research Lecture, "Hang In and Have Smart Friends: The Road to HIV Resistance," on Nov. 15 at 3 p.m. in Schoenberg Hall. For more information, visit this website.

By NICOLE CHIANG

UCLA alumna Ivana Darmawan recently launched Kasih Co-op, a company that sells the jewelry in the U.S. and raises money to sponsor children’s education in developing countries.

“Kasih” is understood to have two meanings in the Indonesian language: “to give” and “to care,” said Darmawan, who graduated UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in business economics and a graduate degree in financial entrepreneurship.

Darmawan’s business is for-profit, meaning money made from sales goes to an outside sponsor to pay for the education of elementary-aged children. The rest of the money goes back to Kasih Co-op in order to continue business operations, she said.

Darmawan meets with Indonesian women, who create the jewelry, during her once-a-year visits to her home country, Darmawan said. She then brings back the products to sell to American consumers from her website.

“I want to be able to do this for others – give them the opportunities that I was lucky enough to have,” she said.

Kasih Co-op’s focus on childhood education in developing countries stems from Darmawan’s experiences in high school in Indonesia and college, she said.

She said she attributes her own success to her experiences attending high school on a scholarship in Singapore and the opportunities that have arisen because of it.

“Getting a full scholarship for high school in Singapore exposed me for the first time to competition outside of Indonesia and the idea of education as a way to escape poverty,” Darmawan said.

Her experience at school in Singapore left a lasting impression.

“I still keep in touch with my (high school) friends – a lot of them are researchers now,” Darmawan said. “It’s weird to think that had it not been for their scholarships, they would never be where they are now, and neither would I.”

Growing up in Indonesia, then 16-year-old Darmawan watched as her mother struggled to start her own business since women typically could not own their own businesses in Indonesia.

Knowing that her mother had encountered numerous challenges because of her gender, Darmawan also decided to focus on women entrepreneurs, Darmawan said.

Darmawan left Indonesia in 2003 to attend UCLA. She said she came to UCLA to have opportunities she would not have had otherwise if she stayed in Indonesia.

After graduating from the UCLA Anderson School of Management in 2009 and a brief stint at Yahoo!, Darmawan started Kasih Co-op. Darmawan said while attending UCLA she was inspired to use social entrepreneurship to make money to help others.

“I was her sounding board, but this was entirely Ivana’s vision,” said her husband Arthur Wang, who is an entrepreneur in internet marketing. “She’s always had the drive to use entrepreneurship to work for women’s rights and (to work for) her own country.”

Wang said he gave Darmawan advice about how to start a business and market it.

Although Darmawan currently resides in and manages her business from Los Angeles, she still visits Indonesia and her family once a year, she said.

Though the Darmawan family in Indonesia was not used to the idea of social entrepreneurship at first, she said her family and friends are fully supportive of her doing something she finds meaningful.

“(Darmawan) is always motivating others and probably the most generous person I know,” Mayinda said. “She’s sincere in her giving, and this is great for her company,” said Natasha Mayinda, Darmawan’s friend since junior high school. Mayinda, who likened Darmawan to a sister, also gives ideas and advice to her about Kasih Co-op.

Business for Darmawan’s company, which is only a little older than a month, is currently slow but promising, said Mayinda.

Darmawan hopes the business will continue to grow and even provide jobs for local communities in developing countries, she said.

Wang said Darmawan’s life experiences bring ideas that others who grew up in a developed country would not necessarily have.

“She had a lot of other options in life, but she chose to pursue something more than just for economic profits,” he said. “It’s great that she’s found something that can give a greater return than just financial rewards.”

George E. Dutton, Vice Chair and Associate Professor of the UCLA Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, is co-editor of a new volume, Sources of Vietnamese Tradition, along with Jayne S. Werner of Columbia University and John K. Whitmore of the University of Michigan.  The book has been published by Columbia University Press, and is available on amazon.com, as part of the Introduction to Asian Civilizations series.

Sources of Vietnamese Tradition provides an essential guide to two thousand years of Vietnamese history and a comprehensive overview of the society and state of Vietnam. Strategic selections illuminate key figures, issues, and events while building a thematic portrait of the country's developing territory, politics, culture, and relations with neighbors. The volume showcases Vietnam's remarkable independence in the face of Chinese and other external pressures and respects the complexity of the Vietnamese experience both past and present.

The anthology begins with selections that cover more than a millennium of Chinese dominance over Vietnam (111 B.C.E.--939 C.E.) and follows with texts that illuminate four centuries of independence ensured by the Ly, Tran, and Ho dynasties (1009--1407). The earlier cultivation of Buddhism and Southeast Asian political practices by the monarchy gave way to two centuries of Confucian influence and bureaucratic governance (1407--1600), based on Chinese models, and three centuries of political competition between the north and the south, resolving in the latter's favor (1600--1885). Concluding with the colonial era and the modern age, the volume recounts the ravages of war and the creation of a united, independent Vietnam in 1975. Each chapter features readings that reveal the views, customs, outside influences on, and religious and philosophical beliefs of a rapidly changing people and culture. Descriptions of land, society, economy, and governance underscore the role of the past in the formation of contemporary Vietnam and its relationships with neighboring countries and the West.

About the Editors

George E. Dutton is associate professor of Southeast Asian languages and cultures and vice chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on social movements, historiographical issues, and colonial culture and education, and he is the author of The Tay So’n Uprising: Society and Rebellion in Eighteenth-Century Vietnam. Jayne S. Werner is associate research scholar in the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University and professor emerita of political science at Long Island University. Her most recent book is Gender, Household, and State in Post-Revolutionary Vietnam. John K. Whitmore is research associate at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan, and a specialist on premodern Vietnamese and Southeast Asian history. He has taught at Yale University, the University of Virginia, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Originally published in the UCLA Today.

Composed of three doctoral candidates in ecology and evolutionary biology and a new graduate with a B.S. in marine biology, the Barber Lab Quartet came together to share their research with the world using sweet a cappella harmonies and a clever video.

The idea for “The Longest Time (Coral Triangle Edition)” came to the women while they were doing field research in Bali, said Allison Fritts-Penniman, group member and video director.

“We'd always be singing along to the radio, or someone's iPod, or whatever was playing in the car for those long road trips to field sites or day trips to the Balinese countryside,” she explained.

Fritts-Penniman and fellow singers Andrea Chan, Abril Iñiguez and Sara Simmonds chose to riff off the the classic Billy Joel crooner because their work in evolutionary biology is heavily dependent on the long(est) times (Get it?).

In fact, Professor Paul Barber’s laboratory, where they met, is focused on studying the factors that contribute to the evolution of biodiversity in a region known as the Coral Triangle — the waters around Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines that contain the highest number of marine species in the world.

“We look at genetic divergence among species or populations, and try to determine what causes this divergence,” explained Fritts-Penniman. Her research is focused on whether the development of a new species of nudibranch (sea slug) was encouraged when the slugs moved to a new type of coral species. 

The women are all studying different subjects — Simmonds is examining host/parasite relationships in coral-eating snails while Chan, a research intern in the lab, is looking at single-celled algae living on isopods.  But they all wanted to make something special to commemorate their work and their mentor.

“Our goal at the time was to surprise Paul with the song,” said Fritts-Penniman. “We just thought the idea of the Barber Lab Quartet was a funny tradition to start.”

Sara Simmonds looks for coral-eating snails in Bali, Indonesia. Credit: Herton Escobar.

The rigors of field work and the students’ return to campus last fall meant that completing the song was postponed until winter quarter.

That’s when Fritts-Penniman decided to take advantage of a fellowship-mandated video project to finally debut the Barber Lab Quartet.

They finished up the lyrics, divided up the parts, practiced, recorded the vocals and finally filmed the video in just three days.

Their work and passion paid off.  Barber, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, said it was a total surprise.

“I was completely blown away,” he explained. “I had no idea that they were making it and had no idea that they were all such good vocalists.”

The video has become a hit with the online science community and garnered more than 52,000 YouTube views, a tweet from Hayden Planetarium Director Neil deGrasse Tyson and (most excitingly) an endorsement from the Piano Man himself. Tyson, who often appears as a media spokesman for science, sees the video as a way to market science to young girls.

But as wonderful as recognition from the stars can be, Fritts-Penniman explained that it was the feedback from teachers, students and fellow researchers that was the most meaningful.

“The goal became to educate the general public about the Coral Triangle in a fun and engaging way.  … It's been much more gratifying than I ever imagined,” she said.

Barber agrees that the video is a particularly effective method for outreach for an area of study that isn’t very well known. “One of the biggest issues with conservation in the Coral Triangle is that, unlike the Amazon, no one knows what it is or why it is important,” he said.

Tagged snails cling to their preferred coral host in Dumaguete, Philippines. Credit: Sara Simmonds.

He explained that about 30 percent of the Coral Triangle has disappeared, despite being both an ecologic and economic marvel (some 120 million people are employed in the area it spans). The Barber Lab Quartet’s video is a way to learn without feeling like that’s what you’re doing.

“With all of the environmental challenges we face, I'm not sure that people want to be lectured about conservation,” said Barber. “We need ways to reach people that are fun and engaging and make people want to know more.”

Currently three of the four Barber Lab Quartet members are once again in Indonesia conducting field research, which Fritts-Penniman has been documenting on her blog. When asked if the quartet would reunite, her response was enthusiastic.

“Of course! We're already working on lyrics for a couple of other songs.”

A film series produced by cultural anthropologist and award-winning ethnographic filmmaker Robert Lemelson, an adjunct professor in UCLA’s Department of Anthropology, is featured in the June 24, 2012, English-language edition of Tempo, a magazine based in Indonesia. Lemelson’s six-part series, titled “Afflictions: Culture and Mental Illness in Indonesia,” chronicles the lives of people living with mental illness and neuropsychiatric disorders in Java and Bali. For his efforts, Lemelson earned a Cine Golden Eagle Award and was nominated in the “Best Limited Series” category by the International Documentary Association.

View full article from Tempo.

By Barbara Gaerlan
(with files from Rebecca Kendall)

Just 50 days into his appointment as Thailand’s Ambassador to the United States, His Excellency Chaiyong Satjipanon visited UCLA to learn about the UCLA’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies and how the Royal Thai Government’s annual gift of $50,000 is making an impact on Thai Studies.  Consul General Jesda Katavetin; Maleewan Chinaprayoon, first secretary, Royal Thai Embassy; and Consul Komkrich Chongbunwatana also attended the June 7 gathering.

The majority of this generous funding, which has been provided annually since 2009 in various amounts, goes to support Thai language instruction.  The reminding funds are directed to cultural programming and travel grants for students to study in Thailand, said Michael Ross, Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies.  UCLA is one of seven universities in the United States that have been supported by the Royal Thai Government as part of its effort to expand Thai Studies abroad.

Ross also reported on the activities related to Thai Studies of several UCLA faculty who were unable to attend the meeting:  Robert L. Brown from the Department of Art History teaches about Thai art as well as insuring that Thai material is exhibited at the large Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where he serves as South and Southeast Asia Curator.  Professor Robert Buswell includes Thailand in the programming of the Center for Buddhist Studies, which he directs.  Buswell also serves as the head of the International Institute’s UCLA-Thailand Executive Committee.  Finally, Professor Roger Detels from the Department of Epidemiology in the UCLA School of Public Health coordinates the Fogarty program which brings medical doctors from Thailand and other Asian countries to UCLA to receive graduate training in HIV-AIDS prevention and treatment.  A number of Thai graduates of this program are serving in significant positions in the Thai Ministry of Health and other public health agencies.

Interim Vice Provost Cindy Fan of the International Institute presented welcome gifts to the delegation.  She also reported on her own visit to Thailand several months earlier where she gave the keynote address at a conference on globalization, and met with several hundred Thai high school students and their parents who were interested in the future possibility of studying at UCLA.

Ambassador Satjipanon was especially impressed with UCLA’s language teaching program.  “From the information given to us by the consulate in Los Angeles, we realize that UCLA is the best among all seven universities [because of its ability to teach] language at the three levels” to a large number of students, said Satjipanon.  He added that the university is also fortunate to have Dr. Kantathi Suphamongkhon, the 39th Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Thailand, teaching here as a professor in the International Institute, as well as serving as a senior fellow at the Burkle Center for International Relations.  Suphamongkhon was present at the meeting, and provided some information about the course that he is teaching on “Diplomacy, Globalization, and Development” in the Global Studies program.

Dr. Supa Angkurawaranon, the Thai language instructor, briefed the ambassador about the language program.  In Fall 2011, a record 28 students were enrolled in the introductory Thai language class. Intermediate and advanced level enrollment was also strong, she reported. She also pointed out that UCLA students studying Thai include both heritage learners (those with some informal knowledge of the language from home or travel), as well as second language learners.  It is challenging to have students with different backgrounds and needs in the same class, but she has worked hard to make the class useful to everyone.  In the process she has developed her own materials, some with financial assistance from the Center for Southeast Asian Studies.

UCLA boasts some of the highest enrollments in Thai language classes in the United States, said Professor George Dutton, vice chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures (where Thai language is taught), who spoke about the history of Thai language teaching at UCLA. “Our program supports undergraduates majoring in a number of degree programs – Southeast Asian Studies, International Development Studies, political science, and history,” said Dutton. “It also provides language support to graduate students who are working in Thailand.”

Student interest in Thailand results in five to 13 UCLA students travelling to the nation each year (and approximately 30 going from the entire University of California), said Danilo Bonilla, international programs counselor in UCLA’s International Education Office. He told the delegation about the Education Abroad Program at Thammasat University, located in Bangkok, as well as other UCLA exchanges and summer travel programs.

Jade Alburo spoke about her role as Southeast Asia Librarian in the Young Research Library. She explained that UCLA is one of just a dozen university libraries in the U.S. that houses a substantial collection of materials from Southeast Asia.  Of the 100,000 items on SE Asia in the UCLA collection, which include books, microfilm, periodicals, CDs and music representing more than 30 languages, 15,000 are from Thailand. Nearly half of the Thai materials have been secured over the past five years, she said. She went on to say that the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, through funding from the U.S. Department of Education, has provided support to help the library catalogue its Thai materials, something that Alburo is grateful for. Alburo reported that she is working with other SEA librarians in the U.S. to develop these holdings further, ultimately creating a comprehensive national collection of Southeast Asian materials even in difficult budgetary times.

Finally, several students from UCLA’s large Thai Smakom club reported on their efforts to do outreach about Thai culture, both on campus and off.  Their annual Thai Culture Night is increasingly professional and well-attended.  In addition, they participate actively in four or five events each year in the Thai community such as at the large Songkran Festival in April, which takes over Hollywood Boulevard between Western and Normandie and which is attended by more than 100,000 people.

Overall, Ambassador Satjipanon received a portrait of the very broad scope of Thai Studies at UCLA.  All of the participants in the meeting joined in thanking the ambassador, in particular, and the Thai Foreign Ministry, in general, for their support in making this program such a success.
 

By Michael Palumbo for the Daily Bruin

Although Tito Carlos was born in the Philippines, he did not know very much about Filipino culture or history before going to college. That changed for Carlos, a first-year biochemistry student, when he came to UCLA and joined Samahang Pilipino club, a Filipino student group that has been on campus for 40 years and has more than 200 members.

On Saturday, the group will host its 35th annual Samahang Pilipino Cultural Night, an event where members of Samahang Pilipino will perform dancing suites along with a scripted show that focuses on social and economic issues that affect the Filipino community.

Carlos is featured as one of 200 performers involved in the production titled “Kayamanan,” a Tagalog word which translates to “Treasure.”

Brittany Lopez, a fourth-year microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics student and the executive producer of the cultural night, said the entire show is student-initiated with an original script and songs written by students.

“Last year’s theme was about the disappearance of our culture, and this year we want to celebrate our accomplishments as a community and embrace our culture as a treasure,” Lopez said.

Ethel Navales, a fourth-year English student and script director for the show, said she wanted to align the dances with particular moments in the performances as well as highlight the issues Samahang Pilipino is advocating.

“The challenge was to cover enough of the aspects of these social and economic issues while still making it entertaining and accessible to our audience. There are so many groups within Samahang Pilipino that want their voices and issues to be heard,” Navales said.

This year the group will explore and discuss “financial literacy” through the story of two different families, one in the Philippines and one in America, who are struggling financially.

“My biggest obstacle in writing and directing the actors was making sure that every member of the audience will at some point relate to these characters. I didn’t want the show to feel commercial or unnatural,” Navales said.

To accomplish this, Navales made one of the main characters a UC student and focused a plot around two families and how they challenge their own assumptions about American and Filipino culture.

Navales said she used her theater minor as well as her involvement with a high school tutoring subcommittee in Samahang Pilipino called SPACE (Samahang Pilipino Advancing Community Empowerment) to work the various components of the show into one cohesive script. Navales paired certain moments in the script, such as when two characters are fighting with the Igorot dance, which depicts tribal warfare.

“The point of the performance is to show that family, love and culture are the true treasures or ‘Kayamanan,’ not money, and the script and dances evoke that,” Navales said.

Lopez also said the dancers and performers were expected to learn the history behind the dances they were performing in order to grasp the cultural significance of each dance. For instance, the dance suites represent the general makeup of different tribes in the five different geographic locations of the Philippines.

Dances include the Igorot dance, which is based on an indigenous mountain tribe untouched by Western culture. The Maria Clara is a Spanish-influenced dance inspired by a woman who the dance is named after, while the Moro is a traditional Muslim-influenced dance. There is also a rural suite practiced in remote regions that employs a minimalist style to embrace and celebrate everyday life, while the traditionalist suite mimics rituals for harvesting.

Carlos, who dances in three different dance suites in the show, said he learned a lot of history from performing these dances, but the show has also allowed him to feel closer to home.

“This (cultural) night and this group allows our generation (of Filipinos) to come together and perform. We can be together as a kind of family even though we are all away from the Philippines,” Carlos said.

UCLA Today

There are many people in history who have set out to evoke positive change in their communities and who devote their entire lives to accomplishing their goals, but none have intrigued Professor George Dutton, vice chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, as much as a certain 18th century Vietnamese priest.

Philiphe Binh is the man at the center of Dutton’s current research, and one day Dutton plans to share Binh’s story with the world.

In 1796, Binh left his home in Northern Vietnam determined to convince the king of Portugal to assign a bishop to serve his community. Binh travelled to Lisbon because he knew that the Portuguese ruler held papally-granted authority to appoint bishops to Asia. “He never succeeded,” says Dutton, adding that Binh spent the rest of his life in Portugal, where he finally died in 1833 at the age of 74.

“He’s probably the first Vietnamese person about whom one can write a full-fledged biography, one in which you get a sense of what made him tick as a person,” says Dutton. “There are obviously many significant historical figures in Vietnam before him, but very few of them left a sense of who they were as individuals.”

For the past several years, Dutton has been sifting through endless amounts of documents in search for words written by or about Binh.  Fortunately, the priest left a vast collection of writings, including 35 notebooks containing letters, journals and other materials, which are archived at the Vatican.  “We know whom he liked, whom he hated and what he liked to eat,” says Dutton. “He writes extensively about his life in Portugal, his observations about Portuguese life and his experiences with Portuguese bureaucracy as he went about his mission.”

Binh was in Portugal during the Napoleonic invasion, which forced the Portuguese king to flee to Brazil. Still driven by his dedication to his community in Vietnam, Binh attempted to follow the king by boat. He was forced to turn back, but remained undeterred; later buying a ticket to Brazil to continue his appeals, but unable to travel at the last minute.

“He nearly became the first Vietnamese to travel to the new world,” says Dutton.

Dutton first visited Southeast Asia in 1987 as a junior at Brown University, where he studied history and international relations, and participated in a study abroad program that landed him in Singapore. He says he made the most of his time there by traveling throughout the region, making stops in Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma and Thailand.

“That was my first chance to explore the area, and I fell in love with the place,” says Dutton, who later earned a master’s degree in international relations from Yale University and a PhD in history from the University of Washington. “At an emotional level, Southeast Asia is a fascinating place. There’s such enormous diversity of people, culture, religious practices, tradition. It’s really a place where you can study human society in so many forms.”

Upon graduation, Dutton was hired by a non-profit organization in Washington that was developing and running smoking cessation programs in Vietnam. As part of that internship, in early 1990 he helped lead an American tour group to Vietnam, a nation where tourism was still very much limited.

His passion for Southeast Asia led him to UCLA in 2001. At the time, the university’s Southeast Asian studies program was still very much in its infancy, and Dutton was keen to support its growth and development.

One of the program’s strongest features is its language programs, says Dutton, adding that there are consistently strong enrollment figures for Thai, Vietnamese, Tagalog and Indonesian classes. “For most of those languages, we have the highest enrollment of any language programs in the United States.”

In addition to his research and teaching duties, Dutton, whose work has been published in Xua va Nay, South East Asia Research, the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies and The Journal of Vietnamese Studies, to name a few, served as director of the Southeast Asian Languages Program from 2006 to 2009 and chair of the Southeast Asian Studies Interdepartmental Program from 2004 to 2010.

In 2006, Dutton released his first book, The Tay Son Uprising: Society and Rebellion in Eighteenth-Century Vietnam. His latest book is a co-edited volume, Sources of Vietnamese Tradition, translates primary texts that explore the multifaceted history, culture, politics and society of Vietnam. The book, which is scheduled for release in June, is the latest title in the highly respected “Introduction to Asian Civilizations” series published by Columbia University Press.

In addition to his role as vice chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, a position he accepted in 2009,  Dutton recently became chair of the Southeast Asia Council for the Association for Asian Studies. At UCLA he teaches courses on Vietnamese history and aspects of Southeast Asia. Among these is “Religion and Society in Southeast Asian,” which covers folk-religious practices, Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism, spirit worship, Islam and Hinduism, all of which, says Dutton, have unique manifestations in Southeast Asia.

Dutton is also involved with planning and organizing a number of the free public talks offered by the UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies, which promotes innovative, interdisciplinary teaching and scholarship, and sponsors research, student scholarships and fellowships, language instruction, public lectures and conferences, and outreach to schools and communities.

This includes talks by Lan Chu, an associate professor of diplomacy and world affairs at Occidental College, who discuss ed religious protest in Vietnam on May 9 and Muhamad Ali, an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of California, Riverside, who spoke about diversity of religious pluralism in Indonesia on May 15.