Two Indonesian artists, one from Bali and one from Java, come together to create Migrating Shadows, a multimedia production centered around wayang, Indonesian shadow puppet theater. Gusti Sudarta (Indonesian Institute of the Arts, Denpasar) and Darsono Hadiraharjo (SEAP Visiting Critic) are joined by Christopher J. Miller, Kevin Ernste, and graduate student composers from Cornell's Department of Music. They will also present a program of excerpts from traditional wayang.

The event is free and open to the public; no ticket is required.

This fall, the Broadside Reading Series will feature six writers from various backgrounds and writing disciplines, collaborating with the Center’s Artists-in-Residence to create a collection of limited edition letterpress-printed broadsides. The collaboration explores the relationship of text, image, and design, incorporating the artists’ visual conveyance of the writers’ poetry and prose.

The Center will host a series of readings featuring these works throughout the Fall season. This evening’s reading will feature writers Yanyi & Gina Apostol.

This CSEAS Brown Bag Seminar, “Mosquitoes and the Making of the Annamite Hill Country: A Parasitical Speculative History,” explores the science of acquired immunity in the context of the upland-lowland divide in mainland Southeast Asia. The possibility that highland people may become asymptomatic carriers of malaria during much of their adult lives has important implications for how social scientists and historians interpret the history of social relations between upland and lowland societies. Speaker Jonathan Padwe is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa.

(Image c/o UH Mānoa)

How did Myanmar transform from a nation cheered for its new democracy to a nation charged with condoning crimes against humanity? Thant Myint-U has been an insider and outsider, witness to the turmoil in his own country and also the global reaction to it. His new book, The Hidden History of Burma, is a powerful and provocative look at the country, its leaders, and the tough questions surrounding its unsettling transformation.

(Image credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas/Flickr)

This fall, the Broadside Reading Series will feature six writers from various backgrounds and writing disciplines, collaborating with the Center’s Artists-in-Residence to create a collection of limited edition letterpress-printed broadsides. The collaboration explores the relationship of text, image, and design, incorporating the artists’ visual conveyance of the writers’ poetry and prose.

This evening's reading will feature Joseph Legaspi & Pichchenda Bao.

WORLD PREMIERE: After the patriotic themes of her first hit song launch her to stardom in Vietnam, Mai Khoi’s personal and artistic growth places her and those around her in jeopardy. A shift from pop star to activist sees Khoi run for office, advocate for women’s rights and sit down with President Barack Obama. Her aspirations to release an album with her new band, The Dissidents, are challenged by looming retaliation by the authoritarian Vietnamese regime, leading the young activist to take drastic measures.

Expected to Attend: Director Joe Piscatella, producer Mark Rinehart, Matthew Torne, executive producer Andrew Duncan, editor Matthew Sultan, subject Mai Khoi

WORLD PREMIERE: After the patriotic themes of her first hit song launch her to stardom in Vietnam, Mai Khoi’s personal and artistic growth places her and those around her in jeopardy. A shift from pop star to activist sees Khoi run for office, advocate for women’s rights and sit down with President Barack Obama. Her aspirations to release an album with her new band, The Dissidents, are challenged by looming retaliation by the authoritarian Vietnamese regime, leading the young activist to take drastic measures.

Expected to Attend: Director Joe Piscatella, producer Mark Rinehart, Matthew Torne, executive producer Andrew Duncan, editor Matthew Sultan, subject Mai Khoi

US PREMIERE: In 2016, 50 years of military rule in Myanmar ended when power was transferred to former political prisoner and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. While her ascendancy represented a victory for democracy, she came under fire after military involvement in the ethnic cleansing of Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya minority. Archival footage and candid interview access to Aung San Suu Kyi and other key players in the government provide a wide-ranging look into the troubling complications and compromises of a regime change decades in the making.

Expected to attend: Director Karen Stokkendal Poulsen

In this event, Hung Cam Thai examines the formation of hierarchies in situations where individuals seek to establish themselves as “social betters.” Focusing on microlevel social interactions in the homeland, this lecture explores the projection and achievement of superiority within the context of Vietnamese diasporic and transnational repertoires.

LOST AND FOUND: Kamal Hussein is a Rohingya refugee who has dedicated his life to reuniting children who have been separated from their parents during the campaign of ethnic cleansing and violence perpetrated by the Myanmar military, which has driven more than 700,000 Rohingya from their homes.

THE NIGHTCRAWLERS: A revealing look at the terrible human cost of Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, following a group of fearless photojournalists known as the Manila Nightcrawlers on their mission to expose the truth. 

Join Pace University and NYSEAN for a full day of presentations and a film screening of Exiled. Scholars and activists will present their work on a range of topics and questions: How and what role are religious communities and leaders playing in civic life in Southeast Asia today? Politics in Southeast Asia is in a dramatic state of flux. Populist and anti-democratic rule has taken hold in the Philippines, there is continued military rule in Thailand, louder and more forceful activism from conservative Muslim groups is taking place in Indonesia, and leaders are using Islam for political purposes, and we see victory for opposition parties in Malaysia. These are just some of the political dynamics in today's Southeast Asia.

Join us for a full day of presentations, a film screening of The Venerable W. Scholoars, and presentations by activists on their work addressing a range of topics and questions.

From Cinelle Barnes, author of the memoir Monsoon Mansion, comes a moving and reflective essay collection about finding freedom in America.

Lyrical, emotionally driven, and told through stories both lived and overheard, Cinelle’s intensely personal, yet universal, exploration of race, class, and identity redefines what it means to be a woman—and an American—in a divided country.

Acclaimed photographer and filmmaker Lauren Greenfield (The Queen of Versailles, Generation Wealth) continues her exploration of extreme wealth with the most political work of her career. Filmed over five years, this portrait of Imelda Marcos chronicles her efforts to exert control in the Philippines through support for President Rodrigo Duterte and the candidacy of her son Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos. Greenfield includes the voices of political dissidents who give damning testimony against the Marcos family. Courtesy of Showtime Documentary Films.

Expected to Attend: Director Lauren Greenfield

This panel discussion will look at the broad question of whether changes in society are happening as a result of political manipulation from the top; or because of substantive changes within culture, values and beliefs.

Acclaimed photographer and filmmaker Lauren Greenfield (The Queen of Versailles, Generation Wealth) continues her exploration of extreme wealth with the most political work of her career. Filmed over five years, this portrait of Imelda Marcos chronicles her efforts to exert control in the Philippines through support for President Rodrigo Duterte and the candidacy of her son Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos. Greenfield includes the voices of political dissidents who give damning testimony against the Marcos family. Courtesy of Showtime Documentary Films.

Expected to Attend: Director Lauren Greenfield

Shortly before his death in December 1873, the renowned Javanese court poet R. Ng. Ronggawarsita composed a short work of social criticism and Islamic ethics that is among the most celebrated of Javanese literary texts. Serat Kalatidha (The Time of Darkness) reflects upon the avenues that remain open to the ethical subject in what Ronggawarsita calls the “time of madness,” the time of darkness and error that marked his dismal present in high colonial Java. Most celebrated as a prophecy, the poem is, in part, a critical reworking of an early nineteenth-century prophetic reflection on the Javanese past.

This talk by Professor Nancy Florida explores the troubled context in which the author wrote this twelve-stanza (108-line) poem and how its text forms both a critical commentary on the state of the poet’s current-day society and a pensive reflection on the ethical imperatives of Islam.

Organized by Nguyễn Dịu-Hương, the 2019-2020 Mellon Symposium, “Voices from the Everyday South: Civilian Lives during the Viet Nam War,” brings together Vietnamese civilians from southern Viet Nam who lived through the war (1954-1975) for a conversation on varied aspects of daily life in the wartime South.