For ethnic Lao living along the Mekong River and its tributaries, hydropower dams have negatively impacted their lives and livelihoods. Many impacts, however, remain invisible in social and environmental impact assessments but have profound repercussions for the well-being of these communities. This talk  by Akarath Soukhaphon, Geography PhD Candidate at University of Wisconsin-Madison, makes visible some of these impacts among ethnic Lao communities in and around the Pak Mun Dam in northeastern Thailand, the Don Sahong and Xe Pian Xe Namnoy Dams in southern Laos, and the Lower Sesan 2 Dam in northeastern Cambodia.

Ashley Thompson, the Hiram W. Woodward Chair of Southeast Asian Art at SOAS University of London, uses Buddha’s life story—his return from heaven and the socio-political order organized around the dissemination of his image afterwards—to contemplate how ideas of absence, return, and transformation shape identity and cultural restitution in Southeast Asia today.

This event was hosted by the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University, a NYSEAN Partner.

Andrew Mertha, Director of the China Global Research Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, discusses his new book. Bad Lieutenants explores the surprising endurance of the Khmer Rouge as a political force in Cambodia for decades after Vietnam’s 1979 invasion. How did the Khmer Rouge retain power, and why were they ultimately unsuccessful in forming a legitimate governing structure? What role did their leadership and political strategies play in their success and failures?

Chiara Formichi discusses her new book, Domestic Nationalism (Stanford University Press, 2025), asserting that Muslim women in Java and Sumatra in the early to mid-20th century were central to Indonesia’s progress as guardians and promoters of health and piety through gendered activities of care work. While sidelined in the Dutch colonial project of hygienic modernity, women’s labor of social reproduction became increasingly visible during the Japanese Occupation and early years of independence. Women from all walks of life were called upon to fulfill domestic and motherly roles for the production and socialization of laborers, soldiers, and citizens.

This discussion was moderated by Sidney Jones and was hosted by NYSEAN.

Vina Orden presents her essay published in CUNY FORUM Volume 11:1, examining how narratives in popular media can perpetuate or challenge existing power structures and colonial mentalities. Orden explores this through the complex dynamics behind the pop culture success of comics like “The United States of Captain America.” Her analysis delves into the diverse creative team behind these comics, including queer, Filipino, First Nation, and South African writers. And she critically questions whether Captain America, despite such diverse creative input, must still operate within a context of “imperial power dynamics” and the realities of the U.S. nation state.

In this webinar, Deconstructing Indonesia confronts the uncomfortable truth that mainstream education, especially STEM, has been a weapon of coloniality. It has enforced a destructive divide between humans and nature, privileging extraction over reciprocity and silencing millennia of indigenous wisdom.

This talk is presented by Nathanael Pribady, MS student in Learning Analytics at Teachers College, Columbia University. This seminar was hosted by NYSEAN Partner, Deconstructing Indonesia.