Center for Southeast Asian Studies - International Institute ...

Center for Southeast 

Asian Studies 

Inside this Issue 

Letter from the Director 

Undergraduate Research in SEA 

Summer 2005 

Introducing our Visitors: 

Students, Scholars, &Artists from SEA 

Faculty, Student, and Alumni News 

SEA Student Network 

Kyai Telaga Madu: 

The University of Michigan Gamelan 

An Appreciation ofJudith Becker 

In Memoriam: Les Adler

Much has happened over the past two years since a CSEAS newsletter was 

published. We hope that this new issue will catch you up on our news and encourage 

you to participate in and support the Center’s activities. 

In the last year we have undergone several visible and important changes. In 

September 2004 we moved into a new suite of offices just down the hall from 

our old location. Please come visit us at Suite 3603 in the School of Social Work 

building. We’ve got a great lounge, very comfortable for meeting and catching up 

with other South and Southeast Asia people! 

And, as of July 2005, Linda Lim has come on board as Director, replacing Judith 

Becker, who headed CSEAS for six years. Please help us welcome Linda and thank 

Judith, who we are happy to report will still take an active role in Center activities 

as a member of the CSEAS Executive Committee. Please see page 18 for an 

article on Judith. 

1 

Letter from the Director 

11 

SEA Student Network 

Faculty News 

3 New Center Faculty 

3 Center Faculty News 

Southeast Asia 

Around the University 

5 At the Ross School of Business 

5 At the School of Natural 

Resources and Environment 

6 SEA Speakers at Ross 

School of B usiness 

12 

Kyai Telaga 

Madu: 

The University 

of Michigan 

Gamelan 

Student News 

6 

6 

7 

7 

8 

9 

FLAS Awards 

FLAS Deadline 

Incoming Masters Students 

Continuing MA students 

SEA Students around the University 

Recent Graduates 

17 

18 

18 

14 

In Memoriam: Les Adler 

An Appreciation of Judith Becker 

CSEAS Staff 

Alumni News 

19 

Visiting Students, Faculty, 

Scholars, and Artists 

10 

Undergraduate Summer 

Research 

20 

Center Activities/Events

From the CSEAS Director 

Professor Linda Lim 

1 

Greetings! It is an honor to serve as the new director of our fortyfour-year-old 

Center. 

The Center Today 

We owe a debt of gratitude to Judith Becker for her sterling 

stewardship of the Center since 1998, and to Nancy Florida, who 

was interim director in 2002–03 (and is now 

Chair of the Department of Asian Languages and 

Cultures). During this time we have continued to 

receive Title VI National Resource Center (NRC) 

funding from the U.S. Department of Education, 

as well as gifts and grants from various University 

sources and from the Ford, Luce, and Freeman 

foundations for new initiatives. 

We have maintained our faculty strength 

and extended it to new areas, particularly in 

professional schools (urban planning, public 

policy, law), and in the study of Thailand, 

Cambodia, and the Philippines. Our faculty 

continue to produce outstanding research and 

win prestigious awards. Our language offerings 

are intact, despite severe university-wide budget 

pressures, and Judith also spearheaded the 

development of new courses, including an 

interdisciplinary seminar for our MA students 

that introduces them to the “state of the field” 

in Southeast Asian studies as well as to our own 

faculty and distinguished visitors. 

We have welcomed an unprecedented number 

and variety of visitors from Southeast Asia, 

including many distinguished academics, a 

former president of Indonesia, a ministerial 

delegation and university presidents from Singapore, the ASEAN 

secretary-general, dance and music artistes from Java, scholars and 

journalists of Southeast Asian Islam, historians from Burma, and 

students from Indonesia and Thailand. Center students continue 

to benefit from research and other field experiences in the region, 

and to win awards, and our outreach activities to schools and the 

community have expanded considerably. 

The Center staff is experienced and stable and capably manages our 

ever-expanding portfolio of activities, including greatly increased 

participation in collaborative programs with other area centers 

within the International Institute, which has had the effect of 

“mainstreaming” Southeast Asia in international studies more 

generally. Charley Sullivan especially initiated our growing linkages 

with the Southeast Asian student communities on campus. The 

Center community at large has responded promptly, flexibly, and 

creatively to unexpected new challenges posed to our field by the 

events of 9/11 and their continuing aftermath, and by the tsunami 

of December 26, 2004. 

Looking Ahead 

“My main goals 

as director will 

be to increase 

University-wide 

faculty, student, and 

alumni involvement 

in Center activities, 

and to expand 

student enrollments 

at both the 

undergraduate and 

graduate levels, 

including developing 

new courses, 

study-abroad and 

exchange programs.” 

We have Judith to thank for much of this. Besides maintaining her 

legacy, my main goals as director will be to 

increase University-wide faculty, student, and 

alumni involvement in Center activities, and 

to expand student enrollments at both the 

undergraduate and graduate levels, including 

developing new courses, study-abroad and 

exchange programs, and new sources of 

funding. 

Our most urgent need is for funding to 

augment the $11,500 a year that our FLAS 

recipients get towards their $28,500–$38,500 

out-of-state Michigan tuition, with funds that 

must come from non-Federal government 

sources. University support is limited, and 

we cannot expand our FLAS and student 

numbers unless the Center itself can make 

up the difference, especially for our MA 

students. I hope that many of you will help 

us meet this need. It comes at a time when 

national and international events make it 

vital for us to maintain if not increase the 

number of graduates with Southeast Asia area 

and language competence. The quality of the 

applicants to our MA and PhD programs 

remains very high, given the strong academic 

ranking of our university, its departments and 

professional schools, as well as of our Southeast 

Asia program. It is our goal to help assure that highly qualified 

graduate students continue to be able to afford their studies at U-M. 

This past summer, while conducting research in Southeast Asia, I 

had the opportunity to initiate and advance several Center interests. 

As part of our desire to build closer relations with Southeast Asian 

student and alumni groups, we convened the first-ever gathering of 

University of Michigan alumni in Indonesia, where the U-M has 

350 graduates. This reunion was held in Jakarta and attended by 

about forty alumni, invited by word-of-mouth, as well as current 

CSEAS students Shawn Callanan (MA), Mya Gosling (MA), and 

Jenny Epley (PhD, Political Science). It was generously cosponsored 

by David Yaory (MBA). The speakers, besides myself, were Svida 

Alisjahbana (BA), Vice-President of her family-owned Femina

2 

magazine group, and Manggi Habbir 

(MBA), financial consultant and board 

member of Bank Danamon. The alumni 

attending expressed enthusiasm for 

organizing themselves, and for developing 

ongoing linkages with the University and 

with alumni associations elsewhere in 

the region, particularly the already active 

associations in Singapore (550 U-M alumni) 

and Thailand (500 alumni). 

Our alumni base in Indonesia is particularly 

strong in engineering, business, finance 

and public health. As an example, Rizal 

Matondang (BA, MBA) has been seconded 

from the Asian Development Bank to 

work with the Indonesian Rehabilitation 

Left to Right: Jenny Epley, David Yaory, MBA 2000, Herianto Pribadi, MBA 

1999, Shawn Callanan, and Mya Gosling. 

and Reconstruction Executing Agency for 

Aceh and Nias, to disburse $300 million 

of ADB tsunami relief funds over the next 

three years. He expressed interest in hosting 

U-M professional 

graduate student 

projects in Aceh. 

Amanda Katili- 

Niode, PhD from 

the School of 

Natural Resources 

and Environment, 

Special Assistant 

to the Minister 

of Environment, 

is interested 

in developing 

collaborative 

projects with our 

(Business/SNRE) 

environmental 

management 

program and visited to discuss this. 

In Yogyakarta, I met with the Dean of Social 

Sciences at Gajah Mada University, and 

with the Director of their American Studies 

program, to discuss possible future student 

and faculty exchanges. In March I had 

represented Michigan at the U.S.-Indonesia 

Society-organized U.S.-Indonesia Bilateral 

Higher Education Forum in Jakarta, an 

initiative to increase such exchanges. 

My brief stay in the Yogya area also 

illustrated how wide the Center 

network is. My family and I enjoyed 

traveling with Shawn Callanan, 

Gabriel Tuomi (incoming MBA), 

and Jesse Johnston (PhD Music), 

who were there studying Javanese, 

Bahasa Indonesia, and gamelan 

respectively, and with Ari Nugroho 

and Ami Priwardhani, who had been 

our Freeman undergraduate scholars in 

2003–04. The group was joined in Solo by 

our 2003–05 visiting gamelan and dance 

artistes Wasi Bantolo and Olivia Widyastuti, 

and also met with 

Bambang Irawan, visiting 

artiste in 2001–02. In 

Jakarta we had met up 

with the family of Muchlis 

Ainuraffik, a Metro TV 

reporter and Knight- 

Wallace Journalism Fellow 

visitor in 2002–03, 

whose wife, Yuni, is 

completing her PhD in 

the Netherlands. 

In Singapore, I visited the Dean of the 

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the 

National University of Singapore, and 

other staff 

and faculty 

(including 

Kulwant 

Singh, U- 

M Business 

PhD), to 

discuss student 

and faculty 

exchanges. I 

had a similar 

discussion with 

the Dean of 

the Lee Kuan 

Yew School of 

Public Policy 

at NUS (who 

visited U-M in 

2004 and 2005), and with staff at Singapore 

Management University including their 

President and Business Dean, who visited 

U-M last year. I also visited the Director 

and Deputy Director of the Institute of 

Southeast Asian Studies, who suggested 

possible collaborations. Together with 

my Business School faculty colleagues 

Aneel Karnani and Gunter Dufey, I met 

Left to right: Jesse Johnston, Shawn Callanan, Mya 

Gosling, Ari Nugroho, Wasi Bantolo, Olivia Widyastuti, Ami 

Priwardhani, Prof. Emeritus Peter Gosling 

with some of our MBA alumni, including 

Choon-Peng Ng and K. J. Tan who are 

interested in organizing an ASEAN-wide U- 

M alumni reunion in the region. 

Left to right: Svida Alisjahbana, Linda Lim, Manggi Habir 

My last stop was Burma, to further a 

project that Judith initiated with a Luce 

Foundation grant originally intended to 

bring two historians to Michigan to help 

develop their research capabilities. In 

part because of difficulties bringing the 

historians, we decided to explore bringing 

an archaeologist. Professor Henry Wright, 

a distinguished archaeologist in our 

Department of Anthropology, joined me in 

Yangon for meetings with senior scholars 

from the Department of Archaeology. 

Henry also visited archaeological sites and 

the Field School of Archaeology in Pyay. 

The above suggest only a few of the 

many initiatives that I hope to undertake 

and follow up over the next three years, 

with your assistance and support. In the 

meantime, my most important task in the 

next few weeks will be to prepare, with the 

Center staff, our next Title VI proposal, for 

Department of Education NRC funding for 

2006–10. I welcome your ideas, and I look 

forward to working with you all during my 

three-year term. 

Left to right: Pete Gosling, Shawn 

Callanan, Ami Priwardhani, Mya 

Gosling, Linda Lim, Gabriel Tuomi, 

Jesse Johnston, Ari Nugroho

3 

SEA Faculty News 

New Center Faculty 

CSEAS Faculty News 

Christi-Anne Castro, an ethnomusicologist who specializes in 

Philippine and Philippine/American music, joined the School of 

Music faculty in winter 2005. Dr. Castro received her PhD from 

the University of California, Los Angeles. 

Her dissertation dealt with nationalism and 

music in the Philippines with special attention 

to cultural politics and the construction of 

identity in a post- and neocolonial setting. She 

is currently exploring issues of transformation 

and the reinscription of meaning in musics of 

the Philippine diaspora, particularly as found 

in the United States. 

Steve Ratner joined the Law 

School in 2004 as Professor of 

International Law after serving 

as the Albert Sidney Burleson 

Professor in Law at the University of Texas School 

of Law at Austin. He holds a JD from Yale, an 

MA (diplôme) from the Institut Universitaire de 

Hautes Études Internationales (Geneva), and an 

AB from Princeton. His research focuses on new challenges facing 

new governments and international institutions after the Cold 

War, including ethnic conflict, territorial borders, implementation 

of peace agreements, and accountability for human rights 

violations. In 1998–99, he served as a member of the UN 

Secretary-General’s three-person Group of Experts for Cambodia. 

Dean Yang came to the U-M in July 2003 as 

Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Assistant 

Professor of Economics. He wrote his dissertation 

on international migration from the Philippines. 

His research concerns the economic problems of 

developing countries. Current research interests 

fall into the following areas: crime and corruption; 

international migration; disasters; health and 

development; and the causes and consequences of war. Dean 

completed his undergraduate and PhD degrees in economics at 

Harvard University. 

For a complete 

list of our faculty, 

visit our website: 

www.umich-cseas.org/ 

Nancy Florida, Professor of Indonesian Literature, is chair of the 

Department of Asian Languages and Cultures from 2004 through 

2007. Her research continues to focus on Indonesian and Javanese 

language and culture. This term she is teaching a new graduate 

seminar on Cultural and Comparative Studies 

of Asia with Professor Abé Mark Nornes. 

In addition, Nancy and Budi Susanto S.J., 

Director, Realino Study Institute, Yogyakarta, 

codirected a Ford Foundation grant for a 

collaborative research project and workshops 

on the documentation and writing of the past 

for the peoples of Indonesia today, 2001–04, 

The project took U-M graduate students 

Andrew Conroe, Julia Byl, and Siew- 

Min Sai to Indonesia for intensive training 

workshops in 2001 and 2002 and funded 

residencies (including English language 

training) at U-M for three Indonesian 

workshop participants: Nerfita Primadewi, Institut Seni Indonesia, 

Yogyakarta (2002); Tri Chandra Aprianto, Jember University, East 

Java (2003); and Iip Dzulkifli Yahya (2004). 

Allen Hicken, Assistant Professor of Political Science, spent 2004 

doing research in Southeast Asia on a Fulbright Fellowship. He 

had visiting positions at the Asian Institute of Management in 

Manila, the Thailand Development Research Institute in Bangkok, 

and the Asia Research Institute in Singapore. Over the course of 

2004–05 Professor Hicken presented his work at meetings of the 

American Political Science Association, the Midwest Political Science 

Association, and the Thai Studies Association and gave presentations 

at Stanford University, Michigan State University, the University of 

Michigan, Khon Kaen University (Thailand), De LaSalle University 

(Philippines), and the National University of Singapore. 

Webb Keane, Associate Professor of Anthropology, received a 

fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences 

in Stanford, California, where he worked on his book about 

Christian missions in the colonial and postcolonial world. 

Stuart Kirsch, who works on Papua, was appointed Assistant 

Professor in the Department of Anthropology in Fall 2003, after 

Continued on page 4

4 


continued from page 3 

several years as a visiting professor. Stuart and Vincente Diaz, 

Assistant Professor of American Culture, received a grant from the 

Freeman Foundation through the Department of Asian Languages 

and Cultures to develop and teach a course on “Pacific Places and 

Routes: Anthropology and History in Oceania.” 

John Knodel, Institute for Social Research researcher and retired 

Professor of Sociology who for almost three decades has been 

conducting social demographic research in Cambodia, Thailand, and 

Vietnam, received a National Institute of Humanities grant to study 

the impact of AIDS, poverty, and social upheaval on the elderly in 

Cambodia. 

Rudolf Mrázek, Professor of History, was Steelcase Research 

Professor at the Institute for the Humanities in 2003. He published 

articles in Comparative Studies in Society and History in 2003 and in 

Social History in 2004 and has an article forthcoming in Social Text. 

On sabbatical in 2004–05, Rudolf worked on his next book, Jakarta 

Promenades: An Inquiry into a Late-Colonial Urbanity. He delivered 

a conference keynote address on “Literature or Revolution” at the 

University of California-Berkeley in April 2004; a talk at Harvard 

University in April 2005; and the keynote address at a conference 

at the University of Washington in May 2005. His book Engineers 

of Happy Land (Princeton University Press 2002) continues to 

be favorably reviewed, including by Clifford Geertz in American 

Anthropologist (June 2004). The book has been translated into 

Indonesian and will be published by Yayasan Obor Indonesia in 

Fall 2005 and illustrated by Arahmaiani, a fine Indonesian artist. 

Gayl Ness, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, continues to work 

with the Japanese organization, the Asian Urban Information 

Center of Kobe (www.auick.org), which collects data on, 

conducts and publishes research on, and trains administrators 

from nine Asian cities, including Olongapo City, Philippines; 

Surabaya, Indonesia; Danang, Vietnam; Khon Kaen, Thailand; 

and Kuantan, Malaysia. Gayl and Prem Talwar recently edited 

a volume for AUICK on Asian Urbanization for the New 

Millennium (2004). Gayl spent February and March 2005 at 

Khon Kaen University in northeastern Thailand teaching a 

seminar on rural development for the university's international 

students. He is currently (Fall 2005) in Tokyo, teaching a 

seminar on population-environment-development at Nihon 

University's new Advanced Research Institute for Science and 

the Humanities. 

Montatip Krishnamra, Lecturer in Thai Language, presented a 

paper at the Asia Lexicography Society in Singapore entitled “And 

the Tiger Cries: Animal Metaphorical Expressions in the Thai 

Language.” In summer 2003 Montatip led a Global Intercultural 

Experience for Undergraduates (GIEU) team in Thailand. Nine 

U-M students stayed with Thai families in Bangkok while exploring 

issues of urban poverty and AIDS, and then conducted field study in 

other regions of Thailand. 

Linda Lim, Professor of Corporate Strategy and International 

Business, conducted research in Cambodia and Indonesia in 2004– 

05 on the response of the local textile industry to competition from 

China. She gave lectures on ASEAN regional economic integration 

to the Globe CEO Forum in Jakarta and on Southeast Asian Chinese 

business at the University of Indonesia and was appointed to the 

International Advisory Council of the Institut Teknologi Bandung’s 

new English-language MBA program. She gave lectures on economic 

development at Khon Kaen University, Thailand, and the Royal 

University of Law and Economics in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 

June 2004, and at the Yangon Institute of Economics in Myanmar in 

January 2005. 

Victor Lieberman had a stellar 2004. He was named the Marvin B. 

Becker Collegiate Professor of History. His book Strange Parallels: 

Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830, vol. 1 (Cambridge 

University Press, 2003) won the World History Book Award 

from the World History Association. He also won a U-M Faculty 

Distinguished Award for excellence in research and teaching. Triple 

congratulations, Vic! 

Thi Nga Nguyen, Lecturer in Vietnamese Language, led ten 

U-M undergraduates in a Global Intercultural Experience for 

Undergraduates (GIEU) trip to Vietnam in summer 2004 to 

improve their language skills and expand their cultural horizons. 

She also works with the Michigan Vietnamese Student Association 

(VSA) and different Vietnamese communities in Detroit, Lansing, 

Grand Rapids, and Kalamazoo to promote the study of Vietnamese 

language and culture. 

Larry Pintak came to U-M in Fall 2003 as the Howard R. Marsh 

Visiting Professor of Journalism. He taught courses on terrorism, 

Islam, and the media in the Department of Communications and 

the Ford School of Public Policy through Winter 2005. Larry is 

now director of the Adhman Center for Television Journalism at the 

American University in Cairo, where he will be expanding the scope 

of the center into policy research and training on the relationship 

between government and media in emerging democracies. He can be 

reached at lp@pintak.com. 

Gavin Shatkin, Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban 

Planning, received a two-year grant from the National Science 

Foundation for a project on “Growth and Inequality in Global City- 

Regions: A Comparison of Bangkok and Metro Manila.” He has 

completed the Manila portion of this research and will conduct the 

Bangkok portion in summer 2006. Gavin has recently published 

articles in Urban Studies, the International Journal of Urban and 

Regional Research, Pacific Affairs, and the International Development 

Planning Review. He has also presented his research at conferences in 

the United States, Taiwan, Singapore, and the Philippines.

Southeast Asia Around the University 

5 

At the Ross School of Business 

Anocha Aribarg recently joined the School 

as Assistant Professor of Marketing. Anocha, 

who is from Thailand, obtained her PhD 

from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Her research interests include the statistical 

techniques used in brand management and 

the modeling of consumer decision-making. 

Gunter Dufey, Professor Emeritus of 

Finance and International Business, now 

spends much of his time in Singapore. 

He recently directed an in-house U-M 

Executive Program for Thai company 

Charoen Pokphand’s Indonesia managers, 

which also involved Professors Nejat Sehun, 

Bill Lanen, Neil Sendelbach, James 

Taylor, and Aneel Karnani. He served on 

continued from page 4 

Laura Ann Stoler, Professor of History and 

Anthropology from 1989 to 2004, has left 

U-M to head a new anthropology program 

at the New School for Social Research in 

New York. 

Margaretha Sudarsih, Lecturer in 

Indonesian Language, received funding from 

the U-M Center for Research on Learning 

and Teaching to take a six-week course in 

Old Javanese in 2003, and to learn to teach 

beginning modern Javanese in 2005, both at 

Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta. 

Ashutosh Varshney, Professor of Political 

Science, is conducting research in Indonesia 

to develop a database on collective 

violence in Indonesia (1990–2003), and to 

study why some cities have had so much 

violence but others have not. The project 

is funded by the Ford Foundation, Open 

Society Institute, and the United Nations 

Development Programme. Ashu’s research 

in Malaysia seeks to explain why Malay- 

Chinese relations have been peaceful 

since 1969 with no mass rioting. His 

collaborators are Prof. Johan Saravanamuttu 

of Universiti Sains Malaysia-Penang and 

Dr. Patricia Martinez of Universiti Malaya- 

Kuala Lumpur. 

an international panel for Asian Banker 

Magazine to select the “best retail bank in 

Asia” and gave presentations to U-M alumni 

clubs in Singapore and Bangkok. 

Aradhna Krishna, Professor of Marketing, 

was Distinguished Visiting Professor at 

the National University of Singapore 

Business School in 2004–05. During her 

sabbatical, she also gave seminars at the 

National University of Singapore, Singapore 

Management University, INSEAD 

(Singapore), and the Hong Kong University 

of Science and Technology. 

Priscilla Rogers, Associate Professor of 

Business Communications, continues to 


Deling Agas Weller, Lecturer in Filipino 

Language, led ten U-M undergraduates 

on a GIEU-sponsored research trip to 

the Philippines in the summer of 2004. 

Students visited United Nations Heritage 

Sites, including the Ifugao rice terraces and 

old Augustinian churches in Luzon. Deling 

heads up the Philippine Studies Group at 

U-M and has been spearheading a project 

to help catalog and provide explanatory 

materials for the extensive Philippiniana 

collection at the Frank Murphy Museum in 

western Michigan. 

John Whitmore gave presentations at 

the Mekong conference at Khon Kaen 

University, Thailand, the Champa 

conference at National University of 

Singapore, a symposium at the University 

of Osaka, and the annual meetings of the 

Association of Asian Studies in Chicago 

and the Toho Gakkai in Tokyo. His writing 

covers the history of the Mekong region, 

the last great king of Champa, and the early 

history of Dai Viet. 

visit at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological 

University Business School, where she gave 

a presentation at the Center for Cultural 

Intelligence. She published a refereed article 

in the Business Communication Quarterly on 

MBA communication training in Singapore 

and received a “Best Article” Award from 

the National Council of Teachers of English 

At the School of 

Natural Resources and 

Environment 

Arun Agrawal, Associate Professor of Natural 

Resources and Environment, focuses on 

research related to environmental conservation 

and sustainable development. He is a member 

of International Forestry Resources and 

Institutions (IFRI) global research network 

(funded by Ford, MacArthur, NSF, and FAO). 

In Asia IFRI is active in India, Nepal, Bhutan, 

and Thailand and is currently discussing 

collaboration with Doris Capistrano of the 

Center for International Forestry Research 

(CIFOR) in Bogor. Research there is likely to 

start in 2006. Arun has worked closely with 

PhD students on forestry- and developmentrelated 

issues in Indonesia, Thailand, and 

Burma. 

James Diana is Professor and Associate Dean 

of the School of Natural Resources and the 

Environment. His major research interest 

has focused on the energetics of fish, and he 

is best known for work on northern pike, 

which has elucidated the behavioral ecology 

and production of natural pike populations. 

He has been involved since 1983 in studies 

of extensive aquaculture systems in Southeast 

Asia, particularly Thailand. The focal point 

for all of these studies is understanding 

the energy accumulation and use of fishes, 

either in natural populations or in controlled 

aquaculture systems. A secondary focus has 

been the conservation of natural resources, 

either through work on endangered species 

such as the Paiute trout and lake sturgeon, 

or through the understanding of ecologically 

sensitive aquaculture practice.

6 

Foreign Language and Area Studies Awards 

FLAS (Foreign Language and Area Studies) awards are competitive fellowships funded 

through the Title VI program of the U.S. Department of Education. They are awarded 

to current and incoming U-M graduate and professional school students whose work is 

focused on Southeast Asia, for the study of Filipino, Indonesian, Thai, or Vietnamese. FLAS 

fellowships require matching tuition funds from CSEAS’s nonfederal budget (which currently 

has no funds available for this purpose), or from their PhD departments and professional 

schools. Please consider contributing to this fund so that more students can study Southeast 

Asia at U-M. 

FLAS Awardees 2005-2006 

Incoming 

Mira Yusuf, Center MA and MSW (Indonesian) 

Continuing 

Saul Allen, Center MA (Indonesian) 

Shawn Callanan, Center MA (Indonesian) 

Joel Selway, PhD, Political Science (Thai) 

Joanna Tatomir, PhD, Anthropology (Thai) 

Jason Tower, PhD, Political Science (Indonesian) 

FLAS Deadline for 

Academic Year & Summer: February 1, 2006 

The deadline for next year’s FLAS 

competition is February 1, 2006, for 

both Academic Year 2006–07 and a 

summer 2006 competition (new this year). 

Previously, all summer FLAS money for 

CSEAS was transferred to the Southeast 

Asian Studies Summer Institute (SEASSI), 

held in Madison, Wisconsin, with at least 

one U-M student guaranteed a SEASSI 

FLAS award. For 2006, we have extra 

money to hold an additional competition 

here at the Center. Awards may be used for 

SEASSI at any level or for intermediate or 

advanced language study abroad, for any 

Southeast Asian language. Academic Year FLAS 

awards are available in Filipino, Indonesian, 

Thai, and Vietnamese. There will be a FLAS 

information session on Tuesday, November 1, at 

4:00 pm at the International Institute. For more 

information, contact Gigi Bosch Gates, 764- 

5261 or gigib@umich.edu. 

SEA Speakers hosted 

by the 

Ross School of Business 

in 2004-2005 

The ASEAN panel at the fifteenth 

annual Asia Business Conference in 

February 2005 was moderated by 

Linda Lim and featured speakers 

Dr. Yos Ginting, Human Resources 

Director of Sampoerna Corp. of 

Indonesia, and Cecilio Pedro, CEO 

and President of Lamoiyan Corp. of 

the Philippines. The Entrepreneur and 

Venture Capital Club hosted a talk in 

March 2005 by Tom Gottlieb, U-M 

alumnus who founded Mandara Spa 

in Bali. The Department of Corporate 

Strategy and International Business 

(World Economy core course) together 

with the Emerging Markets Club 

sponsored a lecture in November 2004 

on “Multinationals and Corporate 

Social Responsibility” by Bama 

Athreya (U-M PhD Anthropology), 

Deputy Director of the International 

Labor Rights Fund. 

The School’s April 2005 

commencement speaker was U-M 

Executive MBA graduate Jerry White, 

Executive Director of Landmine 

Survivors Network (LSN), a leader 

in the International Campaign to 

Ban Landmines, which won the 1997 

Nobel Peace Prize. Jerry, himself 

a landmine victim, spoke about 

Cambodian landmine victims and 

called on his fellow graduates to use 

their managerial skills to “help heal a 

hurting planet.” In summer 2004 LSN 

sponsored two teams of MBA students 

who undertook IMAP projects in 

Vietnam and Cambodia to encourage 

companies to provide employment for 

landmine victims. 

The Center for International Business 

Education (CIBE) together with the 

School of Public Health undertook 

an evaluation in summer 2005 

of the efficacy of the educational and 

organizational model of the Global 

Alliance health programs in shoe and 

apparel factories in Thailand, for Nike 

Corp. The project was undertaken by 

MPH student Bree Kessler under the 

supervision of Bradley Farnsworth, 

CIBE Director, and Sioban Harlow, 

School of Public Health professor 

and former Associate Director of the 

International Institute.

C E N T E R S T U D E N T S 

7 

Incoming MA Students 

Adam Mele is a Connecticut native who recently graduated 

from the University of Toronto with a BA in Anthropology. His 

undergraduate study focused on issues of identity in Southeast Asia 

and included research essays on relations between lowland and 

highland groups in Sarawak, and on P. T. Barnum as an impresario 

of orientalist spectacle, 

both through the shows he 

organized and on the residence 

(“Iranistan”) that he built. 

Adam’s primary area of interest 

in his MA will be on issues 

of ethnicity, nationalism, and 

other forms of social identity 

in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the 

Philippines. He spent this past 

summer getting a head start 

on his Indonesian language at 

SEASSI. 

Jack Merchant is at U-M to 

study rural development in 

Vietnam, and how it has been shaped by culture and politics. After 

completing a BA in International Relations and Development at 

the University of Washington in Seattle, Jack taught elementary and 

middle-school Spanish for two years before heading off to Vietnam 

for three years. He held two positions at An Giang University, as a 

researcher in the Social Science and Humanities Research Center, 

and as a lecturer in American Studies and English. 

Kate Skillman spent the last three years on and off in Central Java. 

Traveling to Yogyakarta on a Shansi Memorial Scholarship from 

Oberlin College, her alma mater, Kate spent two years having her 

program cancelled and reinstated with each wave of bombings in 

Indonesia. Eventually, showing the grit she must have developed 

as President of Oberlin’s Rugby Football Club, she chucked the 

scholarship and stayed at Gadjah Mada University on her own, 

teaching in several departments and serving as 

a translator. Kate is interested in Indonesian 

colonial and postcolonial history, and particularly 

in language. (Besides her fluent Indonesian, she’s 

been studying Javanese and Arabic, to add to her 

Spanish, Italian, and French.) She hopes to use her 

studies to work in public diplomacy. 

Mira Yusef will pursue two degrees at U-M, an 

MA in Southeast Asian Studies and a Masters of 

Social Work. Born in Pampanga province in Luzon 

in the Philippines, Mira is a Filipina-American, a 

Muslim, a women’s rights and domestic violence 

activist, a wife, mother, and stepmother, and a 

graduate of Drake University. Already a native 

speaker of Tagalog and Pampango, Mira is studying 

Indonesian language at U-M as part of her plans to expand her 

research on Southeast Asian Muslim women employed as domestic 

workers in the Middle East, a project she began last year by 

looking at Filipina Muslim women in this situation on a Fulbright 

scholarship in the Philippines. 

Continuing MA Students 

Saul Allen was born in Missouri, and 

since leaving is yet to return. After a 

peripatetic childhood, Saul took 

his undergraduate degree in the 

burgeoning field of “Interdisciplinary 

Studies.” He renewed his interest in 

Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia, 

where he had lived for a few years 

with his family. Saul seeks to enhance 

his understanding and appreciation 

of the country through the study of 

its contemporary literatures. Ideally 

he will continue on to PhD studies in 

Comparative Literature. He received 

FLAS awards to study Indonesian 

language in 2004–05 and 2005–06 

and spent the summer 2005 at a 

language course in Manado. 

Shawn Callanan spent part of 

summer 2005 in Yogyakarta, studying 

Javanese and gamelan, and trying 

not to insult people by speaking to 

them at an inappropriate language 

level. He is interested in, among other 

things, Indonesian literature, especially pre- 

Independence 

and oral 

literature. He is 

looking forward 

to continuing 

his participation 

in the U-M 

gamelan and 

is hoping for a 

better result at 

the upcoming 

annual 

performance 

than he 

obtained last 

year when, 

through 

trickery, his 

Shawn Callanan performing with the 

University of Michigan Gamelan in 

Mahabrahta 

Kurawas lost 

the great 

Bharatayuda 

war and he 

was, unfortunately, disemboweled. Shawn 

is the recipient of two FLAS awards for 

studying Indonesian, for academic years 

2004–05 and 2005–06. 

Mya Gosling received the Usha Mahajani 

Memorial Prize awarded by the Association 

for Asian Studies for the Best Graduate 

Student at SEASSI at the University of 

Wisconsin-Madison in summer 2004, 

where she studied second-year Thai, for 

which she also received a summer FLAS. 

A sucker for tales of action and adventure, 

Mya is currently studying the popularization 

of the Ramayana in contemporary Southeast 

Asia, an absolutely fascinating topic that 

allows her to read comic books as part of her 

MA thesis "research." When not embroiled 

in frivolous academic pursuits, she can be 

found studying Thai language and playing 

the kethuk in the U-M gamelan ensemble. 

Mya received FLAS awards in academic 

years 2003–04 and 2004–05. 

Continued on page 8

Continuing MA Students 

Continued from page 7 

Siafa Hage is currently working on his 

MA thesis on the Khmer Rouge's seizure 

of an American merchant marine ship in 

1975. His second child was born in January, 

and he is searching for a postgraduation job 

to support his growing family. Although 

he'll settle for anything right now, he is 

hoping in the long run to find a job in 

national security. During his coursework 

Siafa worked for the CSEAS and CSAS staff. 

Brendan Kavaney, a native of Minnesota, 

found his way to Thailand in 1997 as 

an exchange student. He enjoyed the 

experience so much that he decided to 

stay until 2004, working in business and 

developing fluent spoken and written 

Thai. As his interest and understanding of 

the region grew he thought it was to time 

to supplement this life experience with a 

three-year academic hiatus in Ann Arbor. In 

addition to his CSEAS MA degree, Brendan 

is also studying for his MBA. He spent 

this past summer participating in the Law 

School’s Cambodia Project, working at the 

Ministry of Commerce, and assisting with 

Linda Lim's research on the Cambodian 

garments industry. He hopes the MA/MBA 

combination will allow him to return to 

Southeast Asia as a well-rounded, welleducated, 

culturally sensitive, and, most 

importantly, highly employable Michigan 

graduate. 

Shad Kidd is entering his final year of a 

dual-degree JD/MA program and plans 

on writing his thesis on how governmental 

legitimacy is affected by the rights 

governments claim to enforce and their 

ability to do so. Most of Shad's free time 

is spent with his remarkable wife, Heather, 

and their two children, Justice and Felicity. 

He spent two years in Thailand as a 

missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ 

of Latter-day Saints and speaks, reads, and 

writes Thai. 

Jennifer Tatomir received a Rackham grant, 

the Dr. Lorne Banta Discretionary Award 

Fund, to allow her to study Thai language 

over the summer of 2004 at U-M. Jennifer, 

who is working toward her MA at CSEAS, 

is visually impaired, and Thai instructor 

Montatip Krishnamra has been trained in 

using Thai Braille to help with Jennifer’s 

language study. Jennifer also received FLAS 

awards for the study of Thai in 2004–05 

and 2005–06. 

Nadiya Ahmed, U-M Masters in Social 

Work student, has won a Fulbright for her 

work on Singapore, “Between East and 

West: Singapore's Islamic Financial Market.” 

Ed Chao, Joint MBA/MS Natural 

Resources and Environment, interned in 

summer 2005 at Byun & Co. in Singapore, 

funded by the William Davidson Institute. 

Among other projects, he advised a fledgling 

Indonesian independent power producer 

seeking to reduce costs through installing 

its own biomass cogeneration plant, using 

“carbon finance,” a system established by 

the Kyoto Protocol whereby developing 

countries can receive credit and earn hard 

currency for reducing greenhouse gases. 

Takashi Dohi is a Global MBA student 

at the Ross School of Business this year. In 

his career at Mitsubishi Corp., a Japanese 

international trading and investment 

company, he spent five years in Thailand 

as the expatriate manager of a Mitsubishi 

subsidiary, during which he learned Thai 

language and Thai kickboxing. Takashi 

loves the martial arts, does karate, and was 

selected for Japan's national and Olympic 

teams in Taekwondo. 

Jennifer Epley, PhD student in Political 

Science, received a U.S. Department 

of State Fulbright Grant for 2005–06, 

a U.S.-Indonesian Society (USINDO) 

Travel Grant Award, and an International 

Institute Individual Fellowship to fund her 

predissertation field study trip to Indonesia 

during summer 2005. In addition, Jenny 

received a grant from the International 

Institute’s Advanced Study Center as 

part of the Graduate Seminar on Global 

Transformations to assist her while doing 

field research. Jenny is interested in the 

involvement of religious organizations in 

politics. She was able to gather valuable 

information on religion and politics, 

SEA Students A 

political participation, and civil society, 

learning new ideas such as the concept of the 

Madani Society. Her blog while she was in 

Indonesia can be read at 

http://lautjenny.blogsome.com/. 

Jason R. (Jay) Field is in his second year as 

an MBA at the Ross School of Business. Jay 

is a Foreign Service Officer in the United 

States and Foreign Commercial Service and 

served as commercial attaché in Italy, the 

Philippines, and Japan, working on trade and 

investment issues and sales and marketing for 

small and medium-sized firms. In 2004 he 

received the U.S. Department of Commerce's 

William Morton Memorial Award for his 

work in bringing economic development to 

conflict areas in Mindanao, Philippines. In 

summer 2005 Jay returned to the Philippines 

to marry actor Bernadette Punzalan, who is 

back with him in Ann Arbor. 

Jesse Johnston, PhD student in Music and 

Graduate Student Instructor for the gamelan, 

spent a month in Solo and Yogyakarta in 

2005 studying gamelan with a grant from 

the Center for World Performance Studies, 

before continuing on to Poland to carry out 

his field research for his dissertation. 

Joshua Karnes, Global Health 

Interdepartmental Concentration (GHIC) 

student from the Health Management and 

Policy department, School of Public Health, 

spent the summer on an internship in 

Indonesia. He documented his experiences 

in a blog called “Tsunami Tsummer.” He 

writes, “I started this blog to chronicle my 

experiences as a relief worker and logistics 

delegate with an international NGO working 

in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. This is the area 

that was so totally devastated by the Tsunami 

that happened on December 26, 2004. 

Some villages in the province have had up 

to 95% mortality. The town of Banda Aceh, 

where I live, lost over 80,000 people. Even

ound the University 

though I have international working experience in the Middle East and Europe, I have never 

experienced a disaster of this magnitude. These are my experiences, my rants, and my raves.” 

His blog, which offers both text and photos describing the area, the people, and Joshua’s 

experiences, can be accessed at http://tsunami-tsummerblogspot.com. 

Kenneth MacLean, PhD candidate in Anthropology, won CSEAS’s 2004 Albert D. Moscotti 

Best Paper Competition, receiving $500 for his paper entitled “Reconfiguring the Debate on 

Engagement: Burmese Exiles and the Changing Politics of Aid.” Ken also won the same award 

in 2005 for another paper entitled “The General and His Bodies: Corruption, Patriotism, and 

Apostasy in Late-Socialist Vietnam.” 

Cynthia Marasigan, PhD candidate in History, has been granted a Fulbright award for 2005– 

06 for her work on the Philippines, on “Ambivalent Belligerents: African Americans, Filipinos, 

and War.” 

Sumana Rajaretnam, U-M Masters in Public Policy (MPP) 2005, was admitted into the 

Public Policy/Political Science PhD program, where he currently plans to study the use of 

information and communications technology by rebel movements in Southeast Asia. Sumana 

spent the summer in Ann Arbor doing research assistance work for Profs. Ann Lin (Ford 

School) and Linda Lim (Ross School) and writing a book on his bicycle trip with a friend 

through peninsular Malaysia in summer 2004. 

Will Redfern, PhD student in History, received a 2005 Fulbright-Hays fellowship for 

Indonesia. This award is funded by the U.S. Department of Education. He will carry out field 

research for his dissertation on Indonesia in the 1950s. 

Ronit Ricci, PhD student in Comparative Literature, was named the Mary Fair Croushore 

Graduate Student Fellow for 2004–05 by the Institute for the Humanities to continue her 

work on, "Islamic Literary Traditions in Javanese and Tamil" She is also a Global Ethnic 

Literatures Seminar Fellow in the Comparative Literature program. 

Aaron Stern, currently finishing up his PhD in Political Science, has accepted an offer to 

become a Development Officer at the United 

States Agency for International Development 

(USAID), starting in late January 2006. He and 

his family will be in Washington DC for six to 

twenty-four months, following which they will 

be sent abroad, changing countries about every 

four years. Aaron will help to manage large 

programs in primary education, public health, and 

women's rights. He will maintain his U-M email 

sterna@umich.edu. 

Gabriel Thoumi joins the Ross School of Business 

as an MBA student in Fall 2005, after working 

for five years in banking and three in art history, 

and obtaining a previous Master's degree in 

International Finance. He has worked and traveled 

extensively in seven Southeast Asian countries. 

Gabriel spent summer 2005 studying Bahasa 

Indonesia in Yogyakarta and conducting research 

on market risk, oil subsidies, and natural resource 

wars, which he published in The Jakarta Post. His 

career focus is on small business development and 

assisting the Global South with regional economic 

development. 

Recent 

Graduates 

9 

Congratulations to our recent CSEAS 

MA graduates! 

Daniel Birchok (MA August 2004) 

received a travel grant from the United 

States-Indonesia Society (USINDO) to 

allow him to pursue advanced language 

study in Indonesia in summer 2004. He 

is now a PhD student in Anthropology 

and History at U-M. He describes his 

experiences in summer 2005 in Medan, 

North Sumatra (funded by the Roger 

Dashow Fund) where he was studying the 

Acehnese language, in his “Rumors of Aceh: 

Post-Tsunami Impressions from Medan.” It 

is the lead article in the Fall 2005 Journal of 

the International Institute. 

Amber Blomquist received her CSEAS MA 

in August 2004 and has since received her 

certification in Secondary Education. She is 

planning on applying to PhD programs in 

History. 

Jared Cahners, MA April 2004, who 

studied Vietnamese at U-M, is a secondyear 

Anthropology student at the University 

of Wisconsin-Madison and 

is interested in the Central 

Highlands and discourses in 

the multi-ethnic countryside. 

In summer 2005 he won the 

Usha Mahajani Memorial 

Prize for the outstanding 

graduate student at SEASSI at 

the University of Wisconsin, 

where he was studying Khmer. 

Richard Smith, MA 

December 2003, studied 

Vietnamese and the 

development of the electric 

power industry in Vietnam. 

He is working in the private 

sector in Pennsylvania. 

Maggie Zhou, PhD student in Corporate Strategy 

and International Business, received a Fellowship 

from the Mitsui Life Financial Research Center 

for her research on the behavior of family firms 

in Thailand during the late 1990s Asian financial 

crisis.

10 

Undergraduate Summer Research Abroad 

Thanks to a generous one-time donation 

from a private donor, CSEAS was able 

to initiate a new program to support 

undergraduate research in Southeast 

Asia and the Pacific Islands this summer. 

Students were invited to submit 

independent research proposals in the 

region last winter, and four students were 

fully funded to carry out three projects 

over the past summer. 

Juniors David Duong (Zeeland, 

MI) and John Leahy (Okemos, MI) 

worked with Project Vietnam, an NGO 

based in California that is seeking to 

improve baseline 

neonatal outcomes 

in Vietnamese 

hospitals. David and 

John carried out a 

number of projects 

for them, including 

doing basic 

healthcare system 

assessments and 

helping with rural 

health education 

programs. 

Both John and David have family 

connections to Vietnam. David was 

born there and came to the United 

States when he was six years old with his 

parents after his father was released from 

“re-education.” John’s father served in 

Vietnam during the war. John and David 

traveled to Vietnam in the summer of 

2004 on their own, as tourists, and were 

glad to be back doing this work in health 

care, which connects to their major in 

ethnomedicine. John is now studying 

Vietnamese language at Michigan. 

Junior Rachael Hudak (Lake Orion, MI) 

traveled to Thailand, where she studied 

various aspects of Buddhism, looking 

particularly at the role of women in 

the sangha, and interviewing Buddhist 

“nuns” known as mae chiis. Rachael will 

use these interviews to produce work for 

her major in Creative Writing. Rachael is 

studying her third year of Thai language 

at Michigan. 

Preliminary applications 

for summer study will be 

due in mid-October, 

with final applications 

due November 14, 

2005 

Junior Mia Browne (St. Vincent, West 

Indies) participated in the Pacific Island 

Field Training Program in the Solomon 

Islands. The four-week program involved 

training in ethnographic and marine 

science field methods, cultural immersion 

and study of Roviana language, and 

an independent research project on 

the interaction of society and lagoon 

ecosystems. Mia is working on a joint 

major in Anthropology and the LS&A 

Program in the Environment and hopes 

to use what she learned in the South 

Pacific to study her own island home in St. 

Vincent and the Grenadines. 

You can check out 

the blogs of David, 

John, and Rachel at 

the CSEAS website: 

www.umich-cseas.org. 

(The Solomon Islands 

communities where 

Mia studied aren’t 

yet easily connected 

to the e-world!) 

All four students 

will present their 

research findings at a special Fridayat-Noon 

Lecture on October 7 at the 

International Institute. They will be joined 

by U-M undergraduates from the student 

organization Students of the World, who 

traveled to Cambodia this summer to 

study the Cambodian educational system 

there. 

CSEAS is happy to announce that we 

have secured funding from various 

sources to allow us to send more students 

to Southeast Asia this coming summer. 

Preliminary applications for summer 

study will be due in mid-October, with 

final applications due November 14. We 

are hoping to secure further funding for 

future years. The cost of supporting one 

student in an overseas summer research 

project is currently $3,500. Please contact 

Charley Sullivan at rowcoach@umich.edu 

at CSEAS if you are interested in helping 

with this initiative. 

John Leahy in Vietnam with children in one of 

the orphanages he helped assess as part of his 

research with David Duong 

Mia Browne (front row, third from left) in the Solomon 

Islands 

Rachael Hudak (center) in Thailand with former U-M 

students 

David Duong in Vietnam

SEA Network: Representing UM Students from 

Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore 

11 

By Linda Lim 

The University of Michigan has one of the 

largest concentrations of Southeast Asian 

students in the United States. During the 

2004–05 academic year there were 125 

undergraduates and 14 graduate students 

from Malaysia, 71 undergraduates and 

27 graduate students from Indonesia, 29 

undergraduates and 71 graduate students 

from Thailand, and 151 undergraduate and 

45 postgraduate students from Singapore. 

The vast majority are studying engineering, 

and many are on scholarships from their 

governments. 

Daniel Tan, who graduated in engineering 

in April 2005 and was president of the 

twenty-one-year-old Singapore Students 

Association, 

won a 

campuswide 

award for 

Outstanding 

Student 

Leader. 

Among other 

achievements, 

he was 

recognized 

for organizing 

a new 

Southeast 

Asia Network involving undergraduate 

students from these four countries. The 

first-ever Southeast Asia Culture Night, 

held in March 2005, was a huge success, 

attracting a diverse crowd of several 

hundred and winning another award for 

Outstanding Student Collaboration. 

Each student group cooked and sold 

Malaysian Wedding 

Thai students dance 

food from their country and took part in 

two different cultural shows, including a 

traditional wedding celebration from each 

country. The Malaysians contributed dikitbarat 

and a hilarious wayang-kulit skit; 

the Indonesians a gamelan performance 

and a skit on life in Indonesia; the Thais 

a traditional dance and a kickboxing 

demonstration; and the Singaporeans a 

lion dance and a skit on the Singapore 

educational system. All involved much 

humor and laughter. 

The SEA Network also initiated a first-ever 

SEA Games in October 2004, featuring 

contests in volleyball, basketball, soccer, 

and track. Despite the fact that it was 

Ramadan, 

everyone 

participated 

enthusiastically, 

and Indonesia 

emerged as 

the overall 

champions, with 

Singapore in 

second place. 

Says Daniel, 

“In addition to 

the satisfaction 

gained from each event’s success, we get 

to know each other better as individuals, 

and are also introduced to different 

aspects of each country’s culture. The 

events help to remind us of who we are 

and give us a stronger identity while on 

campus. They also make us realize certain 

common characteristics all the Southeast 

Asians share—like we are all always late to 

meetings and events!” 

In March the Thai Students’ 

Association mounted their annual 

Thai Cultural Festival, complete 

with delicious Thai food, cooking, 

and games demonstrations, 

arts and crafts displays, and a 

wonderful cultural show featuring 

CSEAS MA student Brendan 

Kavaney as the hilarious Master 

of Ceremonies. TSA also made 

their November celebration of 

Loy Kratong a public event. Over two 

hundred people took them up on their 

offer of food, games, and making kratong, 

decorated floats sent down rivers for good 

luck. 

Lion dance from Singapore 

In these and other ways, many experiences 

of Southeast Asia in America could not 

be replicated in the region itself. Being 

“away from home” helps draw students 

from neighboring countries closer to each 

other and gives them access to business 

and political leaders, and student friends, 

whom they would probably never meet or 

bond so closely with, “at home.” 

Thai kickboxing 

Photos from SEA Network’s “Southeast Asia Culture Night”

12 

The biggest gathering in Ann Arbor on 

Super Bowl Sunday 2003 wasn’t to watch 

the game. And the largest gathering on 

Easter Sunday 2004 wasn’t at a church 

service. Instead, both days saw crowds 

pack into Hill Auditorium for Javanese 

Gamelan-Dance dramas choreographed 

by visiting artists Wasi Bantolo and 

Olivia Widyastuti. Their versions of the 

Ramayana and Mahabarata were the most 

public evidence of the University’s strongly 

resurgent offerings in the Javanese arts over 

the past five years. 

The University of Michigan Gamelan, Kyai 

Telaga Madu, or Venerable Lake of Honey, was acquired by Prof. William Malm in the 

1960s. Since then, gamelan concerts have been a regular part of the university music 

scene, and the gamelan was directed for many years by Judith Becker, who has now passed 

that mantle on to Susan Walton. 

Kyai Tela 

The Universi 

Gam 

auspices of an Asian Theater Workshop 

in the Department of Asian Languages 

and Cultures. During his year here, he 

worked with Japanese Butoh artist Jun 

Wakabayashi on combining modern idioms 

based on traditional Javanese dance with 

the otherworldly movement of the Butoh 

avant-garde. In addition to this stunning 

work, Pamardi also joined wholeheartedly 

Occasionally, U-M has been lucky to have Javanese artists in residence for a semester 

or year, and these visitors have brought a renewed energy to the program, teaching new 

music and enriching their students’ experience with a depth of knowledge only gained by 

a lifetime of immersion in Javanese artistic traditions. 

Since Fall 2001, the program has been particularly fortunate to have had two pairs of 

Javanese artists in residence: Bambang Irawan and Noor Farida Rahmalina in 2001–02, 

and Matheus Wasi Bantolo and Olivia Retno Widyastuti in 2003–05. Their residencies 

were made possible through significant funding from the Freeman Foundation of New 

York and Stowe, VT, and from the International Institute’s Hughes Endowment. They 

also reflect the Center’s long-term relationship with the Sekolah Tinggi Seni Indonesia 

(STSI) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia’s premier conservatory of traditional Javanese performing 

arts. 

Bambang and Lina laid an exceptionally solid foundation in gamelan music and dance, 

beginning to build a renewed interest among students beyond those taking gamelan as an 

ensemble credit within the School of Music, or the hard-core “gongers” who have played 

for years. 

Wasi and Olivia were able to build on this foundation during their time here. Their open 

and engaging teaching style, along with Wasi’s superb choreography and composition, 

attracted record numbers of students to their gamelan and dance classes, to the point that 

over a hundred U-M students were involved in performing over the past two years. The 

students have been a combination of Indonesians, Malaysians, and Americans, providing 

an interesting point of cross-cultural meeting on campus. 

During their second year at Michigan, Wasi and Olivia were joined by Pamardi 

Tjiptopradonggo, recognized as one of the finest halus (refined style) dancers of his 

generation, and a senior faculty member at STSI. Pamardi came to U-M under the 

in Wasi’s creation of a dance drama version 

of the Mahabarata. 

But perhaps the highlight of the Javanese 

arts at Michigan in recent years was the 

“Asian Artists Respond” tsunami benefit 

concert held in Rackham Auditorium on 

January 26, 2005, just one month after 

the disasters in South and Southeast Asia. 

The concert featured professional dancers 

and musicians from Indonesia, India, Sri 

Lanka, and Japan, all in residence at U-M, 

who came together on very short notice to 

produce an evening of artistic response to 

the tragedy from within their own cultural 

traditions. Likely it was the only event of

ga Madu: 

ty of Michigan 

elan 

By Charley Sullivan 

its kind in the United States and was only 

possible because of the ongoing support for 

Visiting Artists at the University. The event 

raised over $12,000 for Oxfam-America, 

which supports relief programs in both 

South and Southeast Asia. 

The headliner of the evening was another 

visiting Javanese dancer, Didik Nini 

Thowok, who was, coincidentally, in Ann 

Arbor for two weeks as the U-M King- 

Chávez-Parks Visiting Professor. Didik 

is one of Indonesia’s foremost dancers, a 

specialist in cross-gendered performance, 

a television personality, and a genuine 

Indonesian superstar. He led the concert 

off with a superbly refined traditional court 

dance and finished it with his trademark 

dance-comedy, which humorously 

celebrates different styles, shapes, and 

ages of women. In between, Wasi led the 

U-M gamelan in a piece designed to bring 

slamet, or calming peace, to the world. 

V. A. Gayathri, a dancer from New York 

and Tamil Nadu in India, performed 

Bharata Natyam dances, and U-M sitar 

13 

instructor Dr. Rajan Sachdeva played ragas based on Southern Indian fisherman’s songs 

with tabla player Sam Jeyasingham. 

The emotional highlight of the evening came from Pamardi and Jun Wakabayashi, who, 

accompanied by Wasi Bantolo on various gamelan instruments, created a modern version 

of a Javanese ruwatan, or ritual exorcism of evil spirits, on the stage. Pamardi, in batik 

and a refined topeng, or Javanese dance mask, represented humanity, while Wakabayashi, 

naked save for a small pouch but completely covered in Butoh’s haunting chalk white 

makeup, stood in for the forces of evil and chaos. As the two danced around and with 

each other, intertwined as humanity and evil are, Pamardi’s mask, with its refined features 

and intensely stoic gaze, was passed from humanity and placed on the breast of chaos, 

which, overcome, swirled and collapsed to the stage. In the immediate aftermath of the 

tsunami, when so many people could not find words to express their emotions, the arts 

conveyed—stunningly and beautifully—the anguish and hopes of the world. 

The Javanese Arts program at U-M remains an important part of the Center’s mission to 

expose students and the community at large to all of Southeast Asia. It is a critical entry 

point to the region for many people, including the children who come to the spring 

concerts and elementary students who receive class visits from our visiting artists or who 

take field trips to play the gamelan at the Stearns Collection. 

We are fortunate to have funding for one more year of Javanese artists coming to 

Michigan. This year, we are joined by Sigit Adji Sabdoprijono, a renowned young dalang 

(puppet master) from Banyumas, and his wife, Yulisa Mastati, a superb professional 

classical dancer from the royal courts of Central Java. They will teach gamelan, 

puppetry, and dance both at U-M and at Dicken Elementary School in Ann Arbor, and 

this year’s spring concert will be a lavish wayang (shadow puppet) performance featuring 

multiple puppeteers, dancers, and music. Their residency is made possible in part by the 

Hughes Endowment, which brings visitors from South and Southeast Asia and China to 

U-M, with significant support from CSEAS, the Center for World Performance Studies, 

Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, Michigan Undergraduate Asian Studies 

Initiative, Residential College, Dean’s Office of LS&A, and Office of the Vice President 

for Research. 

One of CSEAS’s main development goals is to develop a fund or endowment to support 

a regular Visiting Professor and Artist in 

Residence of Javanese Performing Arts, to 

assure that such visits become a regular 

and reliable part of the University’s 

offerings, and to continue to build the 

program and the courses that support 

it. If this is a program you would like to 

support, please contact Charley Sullivan, 

the Center’s Program Coordinator, who 

is in charge of our development efforts. 

He can be reached at 734.764.4568, or at 

rowcoach@umich.edu, and he will be glad 

to discuss possibilities with you. 

Photos by Sutejo Kurnaiwan

14 

Southeast Asia 

A L U M N I 

This section will be a regular feature in the Newsletter. Alumni, please do 

keep in touch with us by dropping us a note letting us know where you 

are, what you are doing, and how we can get in touch with you. Send 

your email to Ellen McCarthy emcc@umich.edu. 

Bama Athreya, PhD Anthropology 1998, is Deputy Director for 

the International Labor Rights Fund, a Washington DC-based 

nonprofit organization, which she joined in 1998 after returning 

from a two-year assignment in Cambodia as the AFL-CIO’s Country 

Representative. Before that, she spent three years in Indonesia, first 

as a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State and 

later as an independent researcher. She wrote her PhD thesis on 

Indonesia’s labor movement. Bama is on the Advisory Board of U-M’s 

Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise and also serves on the 

Board of Directors of Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based human 

rights organization, and the International Career Advancement 

Association, a network of professionals of color in the field of 

international affairs. Bama's e-mail is bama.athreya@ilrf.org. 

Robert J. Bickner, MA 1979, PhD Linguistics 1981, is Professor of 

Thai Language and Literature and former chair of the Department 

of Languages and Cultures of Asia at the University of Wisconsin- 

Madison. He is also the Director of the College Year in Thailand 

Program, an undergraduate study abroad program, hosted by Chiang 

Mai University, Thailand, which he 

founded with his wife, Patcharin 

Peyasantiwong, PhD Linguistics 

1981. Bob was Director of the 

Consortium for the Advanced Study 

of Thai for the first five years of its 

existence, and for the past six years he 

has served as Language Director for 

the Southeast Asian Studies Summer 

Institute (SEASSI). He supervises Thai 

language instruction at Wisconsin 

and teaches courses in Thai linguistics 

and vernacular literature. His email is 

rbickner@wisc.edu. 

Jon Blumenauer, MBA/MA 

2002, worked for a local company in Indonesia before moving to 

Bangkok, where he served as regional director of operations for Asia 

for OneService International, an American company specializing 

in shipping and insurance of high-value items. The company was 

recently purchased by Group 4 Securicor, a publicly owned British 

company, and Jon has assumed regional responsibility for European 

operations and new business development based in Belgium. He can 

still be reached at jblume@umich.edu. 

Paul Boesen, MA 1989, joined Goldman Sachs in New York and 

Frankfurt, Germany, after graduating from U-M. Work with the 

World Economic Forum then took him to Switzerland and Beijing, 

Lef to right: Andreas Bunanta, MBA 1992, David Yaory, MBA 2000, 

Rizal Matondang, MBA 2001, in Jakarta with Linda Lim, March 2005. 

after which he earned 

a law degree from 

Harvard in 1998 and 

then returned to Goldman 

Sachs in their Singapore office. An avid interest in online education 

took him to UNext, in Chicago, and then to InterEd, a consulting 

firm that focuses on adult-centered higher education. He lives in 

Falls Church, VA, with his wife, Elizabeth, who works with Ashoka: 

Innovators for the Public, and they have two children, Erik (5) and 

Megan (2). Paul may be reached at pboesen@gmail.com. 

Bonnie Brereton, PhD Buddhist Studies 1992, the Center’s former 

Program Coordinator, is now living in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where 

she is involved in various projects. In addition to teaching courses 

on Thai art and culture for Payap University's Thai and Southeast 

Asian Studies Certificate Program, she also works as a freelance 

editor and is currently editing a series of essays, "Islam from Within," 

for the Rockefeller Foundation. She is also conducting research on 

Isan shadow puppet theater for Khon Kaen University's Center 

for Research on Plurality in the Mekong Region. Bonnie’s email is 

brereton.b@gmail.com. 

Michael Charney, PhD History 1999, is Lecturer at the Department 

of History, School of Oriental 

and African Studies, University 

of London, where he teaches 

Southeast Asian History. 

His research focuses on the 

premodern cultural history of 

Burma, Southeastern Bengal, 

and the Straits of Melaka and the 

role of migration and settlement 

patterns in Burma's early modern 

history. CSEAS is delighted to 

be publishing his book Powerful 

Learning: Bhuddist Literati 

and the Throne in Burma’s Last 

Dynasty, due out in Fall 2006. 

Steve Dean, MBA/MA 1987, has just relocated to Singapore with 

his wife, June, and their ten-year-old son, Brendan. He works with 

Standard Chartered Bank in their Priority Banking group. Prior to 

that he spent seven years in New York and North Carolina working 

as a consultant with PIPS, an Australian-based organizational 

development consultancy group. After graduation, Steve spent two 

years with NBD Bancorp, followed by five years with Gerber Baby 

Products Singapore doing regional business development, and four 

years in financial services in Singapore with Smith Barney and GK 

Goh. He can be contacted at sdean@singnet.com.sg. 

Larry Dohrs, MA 1985, has been active in support of Burma's

democracy movement since 1993, as a consultant to the Burma 

Project of the Open Society Institute, as Director of Public 

Education for the Free Burma Coalition, and now as Co-Chair 

of the Board of the Washington DC-based U.S. Campaign for 

Burma www.uscampaignforburma.org. He founded the Seattle 

Burma Roundtable, raising thousands of dollars to provide 

basic education for Burma's internally displaced children. Larry 

established the Trade and Human Rights Project at Global Source 

Education and is a national volunteer leader with Amnesty 

International USA's Business and Human Rights program. He 

is currently Vice President at Newground Social Investment 

www.newground.net. Larry and his wife, Wiworn Kesavatana, 

PhD Political Science 1989, have two children who attend Seattle 

public schools. Larry can be reached at LDohrs@yahoo.com. 

Michael Dunne, MBA/MA 1990, moved in July 1990 to 

Bangkok, where he worked on assignments for the Thai Board 

of Investments and published a report on the Thai Automotive 

Industry. In 1992, Mike established Automotive Resources Asia 

www.auto-resources-asia.com. The company assists automakers 

and suppliers to enter and compete in Asia’s growth markets— 

ASEAN, China, and India. Mike is currently living and working in 

Shanghai but maintains offices in Bangkok and Beijing as well. He 

is writing a book entitled Same Bed Different Dreams: The Chinese 

Automotive Revolution. In July 2005, he married Merlien Murdibrono 

of Java, in Jakarta. See his wedding photo. His email is 

michael.dunne@auto0resources-asia.com. 

Alan Feinstein was a PhD student in Music from 1981 to 1984. 

He conducted research for his dissertation in central Java for two 

years, then worked on various Ford Foundation cultural preservation 

projects before becoming the Foundation’s Program Officer for 

Education and Culture in Indonesia. Alan held this position from 

1986 through 1994, during which he outgrew his Java-centric 

perspective by traveling through the diverse cultural and political 

landscape of Indonesia and learned the business of philanthropy. 

After a visiting research fellowship at Leiden, he went to the Japan 

Foundation in Tokyo, where he worked on mainland Southeast Asia 

for four years before joining the Toyota Foundation for another three 

years, during 

which his work 

focused on 

Cambodia, 

Thailand, and 

Burma. Alan is 

now based in 

Bangkok and is 

learning Thai. 

He is Associate 

Director of the 

Rockefeller 

From MBA recruitment event at American Club, Singapore, 

March 2005. Left to right: Richard J. Smith, MBA/MA 

in SEAS 1988, Managing Director, SBG Inc. (Bangkok, 

Thailand), Steven Don Dean, MBA/MA in SEAS 1987, 

Senior Consultant, PIPS US (New Jersey), Prof. Emeritus 

Gunter Dufey, Matt Matthias, MBA 2000, Senior Consultant, 

Meta HR & Communications (Singapore) 

Foundation’s 

Southeast 

Asia Regional 

Program, 

focusing on the 

Greater Mekong 

Subregion 

Michael Dunne (MBA, MA 1990) and Merlien Murdibrono were married in Java in July 2005 

www.rockmekong.org and its 

Creativity and Culture Program. 

He may be reached at afeinstein 

@rockfound.org. 

Patrick Griffin, MBA/MA 

1998, and his wife, Jill, MBA/ 

MA Engineering 1998, are the 

proud parents of Graham, age 

three. Patrick is the Product 

Manager of the fitness, billiards, 

and table tennis product lines 

at Escalade Sports, based in 

Evansville, Indiana, which sells 

its goods through Sears, Wal- 

Mart, Costco, Sports Authority, 

and Dick's Sporting Goods. 

He was previously Director of 

Strategic Services at Edmondson/ 

Quest, an Austin-based strategic 

marketing consultancy for 

high technology and venture 

capital clients; and Director 

of Business Development for 

bottomdollar.com, a pioneer 

start-up in comparison shopping 

services. Patrick has also 

held marketing and strategic 

planning positions with Koch 

Industries, Inc. in Wichita, 

Kansas and DHL Worldwide 

Express in Jakarta, Indonesia; 

and he has worked for the U.S. 

Foreign Commercial Service in 

Singapore. His email is 

pgriffin@escaladesports.com. Jill 

expects to complete her PhD in 

Marketing from the University 

of Texas at Austin in November 

2005. 

Uve Hamilton, MA 1977, is 

the Program Manager of Arts for 

Academic Achievement for the 

Minneapolis Public Schools. The 

program supports arts integration 

as a primary strategy to engage 

K–12 students and to increase 

their academic achievement. 

Teachers in the program work 

collaboratively with community 

artists and arts organizations to 

design and implement rigorous 

standards-based learning in and 

through the arts. The program 

enables students to experience 

the arts of the multiple cultures 

that make up this large urban 

school district. Uve’s email is 

uveh@mpls.k12.mn.us. 

Robert W. Hefner, PhD 

Anthropology 1982, is Professor 

of Anthropology and Associate 

Director of the Institute on 

Culture, Religion, and World 

Affairs at Boston University, 

where he directs the program on 

Islam and civil society. Bob has 

carried out research on religion 

and politics in Southeast Asia 

for the past twenty-eight years 

and has conducted comparative 

research on Muslim culture and 

politics since the late 1980s. 

His current research funded by 

the Pew Charitable Trusts is on 

civic pluralism and democracy 

in the Muslim world. Bob has 

published more than a dozen

16 

SEA Alu 

Dra. Ni Wayan Pasek Aryati, has worked with him at CDU and at 

SIT, where they are currently working to reopen the Bali program. 

Tom spent 2003–04 as a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies 

at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and 2004–05 as Resident 

Director for the Study Abroad Program of the Australian Consortium 

for In-Country Indonesian Study at Universitas Gadjah Mada in 

Yogyakarta and Universitas Muhammadiyah in Malang. Tom has 

received Fulbright and NEH grants for his scholarly work on Old 

Javanese literature. He may be reached at csabali@indo.net.id and at 

tomryati@hotmail.com. 

From MBA recruitment event at American Club, Singapore, March 2005. Left to 

right: Choon-Peng Ng, MBA 2004, Product Manager, Scios Inc. (Singapore), Prof. 

Priscilla Rogers, K. J. Tan, MBA 2004, Managing Director, Trelleborg Engineered 

Systems (Singapore) 

books, including Civil Islam: 

Muslims and Democratization 

in Indonesia (Princeton 2000) 

and, as editor, Remaking Muslim 

Politics: Pluralism, Contestation, 

Democratization (Princeton 

2005). He is the invited editor 

for the sixth volume of the 

forthcoming New Cambridge 

History of Islam, Muslims and 

Modernity: Society and Culture 

since 1800. Bob and his wife, 

Nancy Smith-Hefner (see below), 

have a daughter, Claire-Marie, 

who is a specialist on Indian and 

Balinese dance and is studying 

South and Southeast Asian affairs 

at the University of Wisconsin- 

Madison, and a son, William 

Francisco Xavier, who lives with 

them in Newton, Massachusetts. 

Ariel Heryanto, MA 1984, 

returned to teach at Universitas 

Kristen Satya Wacana in his 

home country of Indonesia, 

where he was active in literary 

and theatrical production 

and wrote opinion columns 

for major newspapers and 

magazines. He obtained his 

PhD in anthropology from 

Monash University in Australia 

in 1994. From 1996 to 2000, 

Ariel taught at the National 

University of Singapore, where 

his wife, Yanti, tutored Bahasa 

Indonesia. He is now Senior 

Lecturer in Indonesian Studies 

at the University of Melbourne, 

continuing his research in issues 

of cultural signifying practices, 

especially the everyday politics 

of identity and representation. 

His latest book, State Terrorism 

and Political Identity in Indonesia: 

Fatally Belonging, has just been 

published by Routledge. Ariel 

and Yanti’s children, Arya 

(25, working) and Nina (23, 

studying), live with them in 

Australia. Ariel may be reached at 

arielh@unimelb.edu.au. 

Thomas J. Hudak, PhD 

Linguistics 1981, is Professor of 

Sociocultural Anthropology at 

Arizona State University. Current 

topics of his research include 

the translation of classical Thai 

poetry, the uses of repetition 

in literary discourse, and the 

compilation and editing of 

primary data from twenty Tai 

languages and dialects. Tom’s 

e-mail is thomas.hudak@asu.edu. 

Thomas Hunter, PhD 

Linguistics 1988, has since 

graduation worked as Academic 

Director of the Bali, Indonesia, 

Study Abroad Program of the 

School for International Training 

(SIT) of Brattleboro, Vermont, 

following a post as Senior 

Lecturer in Indonesian Studies 

at Charles Darwin University in 

Australia. Since 1992 his wife, 

Pam Joyce, MA 1991, joined the Asia Society in New York following 

the completion of her degree at Michigan. She developed programs 

on political, economic, and social issues in Southeast Asia for 

corporate, policy, media, and academic constituencies. In 1996 she 

moved to the Eisenhower Exchange Fellows in Philadelphia, engaging 

emerging leaders from around the globe in professional dialogue with 

their U.S. counterparts. Pam returned to the Asia Society in 1998, 

establishing its Northern California office in San Francisco. She and 

her husband, Dennis (MBA 1991), have two children and live in San 

Rafael, CA. Pam can be reached at pamjoyce@pacbell.net. 

Drew Kraisinger, MBA/MA 1994, his wife Phyllis Ngin, PhD 

Sociology 1993, and their two daughters, Elizabeth (5) and Anna 

(2), live in Rochester Hills, Michigan. Drew is currently leading the 

launch of the Buick Lucerne, a new luxury sedan. Previously, Drew 

managed new product development for production vehicles such as 

the 2006 Chevrolet Impala and for concept vehicles like the Buick 

Velite for General Motors in Warren, Michigan. Drew spent his first 

five years with GM in the Asia-Pacific region. Based in Singapore 

and Melbourne, Australia, his responsibilities initially covered the 

entire region and subsequently focused on Thailand to launch the first 

vehicle in GM's new plant in Rayong, Thailand. Drew and Phyllis 

may be reached at prnajk@umich.edu. 

Mohd Anis Md Nor, PhD Music/Southeast Asian Studies 1990, 

is Professor of Ethnochoreology and Ethnomusicology at the 

Cultural Centre of the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur. He 

has published extensively on Malay dance and music in Southeast 

Asia and serves on the committees of many international cultural 

organizations, including as President of the World Dance Alliance 

(Asia-Pacific) since 2003. Anis and his wife, Ana, who runs her own 

law practice in Kuala Lumpur, have three children: Ayesya (age 10), 

Ayenaa (8), and Ayezat (7). His email address is anisnor@um.edu.my. 

Patrick Pranke, PhD Buddhist Studies 2004, formerly a GSI and 

lecturer in Asian Languages and Cultures, is presently a Freeman Post- 

Doctoral Fellow of Religion and Asian Studies and Visiting Adjunct 

Assistant Professor at Hofstra University where he teaches courses on 

Buddhism and Asian religions. His area of specialization is Theravada 

Buddhism and Burmese religious history, and his current research 

concerns Burmese monastic chronicle writing of the early-modern 

period. Pat’s email is phipap@hofstra.edu. 

Richard J. Smith, MBA/MA 1988, in 1989 founded Siamerica 

Business Group, based in Bangkok, to provide corporate and 

financial advisory services to multinationals, Asian-based 

corporations, and financial institutions. Since 2002, he has advised

mni News 

on M&A, fundraising, pre- 

IPO preparation and planning, 

project development, and debt 

restructuring projects valued at 

over US$70 million. His recent 

focus is on small and medium 

enterprises, particularly in the 

real estate, manufacturing, and 

technology sectors. Richard 

is married to Dungta (Noi), 

and they are the parents of 

Devvyn (8) and Maya (5). 

He may be contacted at 

rjsmith@siamerica.biz. 

Nancy Smith-Hefner, PhD 

Linguistics 1983, is Associate 

Professor of Anthropology at 

Boston University, where she 

teaches on immigrants, Southeast 

Asian history, gender and 

socialization, and all varieties of 

sociolinguistics and linguistic 

anthropology. Nancy has several 

articles forthcoming from her 

current research on “Young 

Muslims: Religion, Education 

and Gender Transformation in 

Contemporary Java,” supported 

by a National Endowment for 

the Humanities Fellowship. 

Her previous research was 

published in the widely reviewed 

Khmer American: Identity and 

Moral Education in a Diasporic 

Community (University of 

California Press, 1999). 

Michael Wachtel, MA 1996, 

MBA 1998, is Vice-President 

of Foreign Exchange Sales at 

Citigroup in New York. He 

married Lynn Eberhardt in 2002, 

and they have a two-year-old 

daughter, Sophie Elizabeth. His 

email is 

michael.wachtel@citigroup.com. 

Jay Yoshioka, MBA/MA 1994, 

is working as Vice President, 

Direct Marketing and Product 

Management, in the Business 

Real Estate Financing group 

at Wells Fargo Bank in San 

Francisco, where he moved 

after six years at Northwest 

Airlines followed by two at 

Cendant Corporation. His e-mail 

address is fylintl@yahoo.com. 

Mary S. Zurbuchen, PhD 

Linguistics 1981, returned 

to Asia in 1982, where she 

worked until 1987 for the 

Ford Foundation, as Program 

Officer for Education and 

Culture in the Jakarta field office, 

working on culture programs 

in Indonesia, Thailand, and 

the Philippines. From 1988 to 

1991 she was Program Officer 

for Culture in the New Delhi 

office, handling grants in India 

and Sri Lanka, before returning 

to Jakarta as Representative 

for Southeast Asia in 1992, 

where she headed programs for 

Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, 

and the Philippines. In 2000 

Mary moved to the University 

of California, Los Angeles, 

where she was appointed 

Visiting Professor in the 

International Institute and 

served as Acting Director of 

UCLA's Center for Southeast 

Asian Studies in 2002–03. Her 

research project in historical 

memory led to the edited 

volume Beginning to Remember: 

The Past in the Indonesian 

Present (National University 

of Singapore/University of 

Washington Press, 2005). Mary 

now works as Director for Asia 

and Russia Programs with the 

Ford Foundation International 

Fellowships Program, based 

in New York, where she can 

be reached at mzurbuchenfordifp@iie.org. 

In Memoriam: Les Adler 

Editor’s note: On December 

31. 2003, the University of 

Michigan and the International 

Institute lost Les Adler, a valued 

colleague, scholar, and friend. 

The following memorial was 

written by his wife, Martha. 

Les Adler, Program Associate 

with the Center for Southeast 

Asian Studies at the University 

of Michigan, died on 

December 31, 2003. He was 

born on March 15, 1944, 

in San Francisco, California, 

the only son of Holocaust survivors, Alfred and Bertha (Weitzman) 

Adler. He is survived by his wife, Martha, his beloved daughters, Lily 

and Jennie-Marie, and his sister, Renee Harwin. He received a BS in 

History and an MSW from the University of California, Berkeley, and 

his PhD from the University of Michigan in Anthropology. As a Peace 

Corps volunteer in the Philippines he established a center for street 

children. Later he returned as a Fulbright Scholar, where he furthered 

his knowledge of Philippine culture, folk remedies, and language. His 

dissertation, “‘If the Devil Still Had Power, I’d Be Rich Now’: Power 

and Society and Some ‘Powerful’ Philippine Curers,” exemplifies 

his deep knowledge and analysis of the complexities of culture and 

practice within a community that reaches deep into his history. 

Les had a passion for knowledge and was multilingual. He never 

thought of education as something you completed; for him the 

journey was the destination, the process of learning was the end— 

whether studying on a fellowship or teaching a group of graduate 

students, he was never far from the teaching-learning relationship 

Throughout his career he received multiple research grants. 

Les also loved the simple things in life: chocolate, art, music, the 

ocean, shopping, running, and laughter. His lust for life could 

brighten up a room. While in the Philippines, he would engage his 

family over dinner with stories of the latest case of healing he had 

witnessed during the day. He entertained the local schoolteachers with 

stories that kept everyone laughing hours after the stories had long 

ended. Music connected to his soul. He had learned to play the piano 

at an age when such things can be learned well. He carted his old 

Steinway upright piano across the country with him on every move, 

holding on to the instrument through which his soul could listen to 

and contemplate the songs and poems of kindred souls from ages past. 

A friend wrote that during a wakeful night Les came to visit in 

memory and in imagination and called to mind the great loves of 

his life: his family, his studies, and his music. Music was one of the 

beauties of life, and he must have known this sorrowful farewell from 

ancient Roman tradition, for it seems to speak so well for him. It was 

as if I heard him singing for me that mournful farewell form Henry 

Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas: 

More I would, but Death invades me; 

Death is now a welcome guest. 

When I am laid in earth, May my wrongs create 

No trouble in thy breast; 

Remember me, but ah! forget my fate. 

17 

Reprinted with permission from the International Institute Journal.

18 

An Appreciation of Judith Becker 

By Ellen McCarthy 

At the end of June 2005 we bid 

Judith Becker adieu but not 

goodbye. She leaves the CSEAS 

directorship in the able hands 

of Linda Lim and returns to 

her research and teaching in 

ethnomusicology. 

Looking back on her time at the 

helm (spanning 1989 through 

2005), Judith reflects on the 

major transformations that 

have taken place at the Center, 

at the International Institute, 

and in area studies in general. 

During her tenure here, CSEAS 

separated administratively and 

financially from the Center for 

South Asian Studies, while still 

sharing space and overlapping 

staff. An enormous benefit 

of this split was in essence 

the doubling of each center’s 

budget. The emergence of 

the International Institute, 

which houses and supports 

most of the National Resource 

Centers at the University of 

Michigan, began providing 

critical institutional and 

administrative support for 

CSEAS and the other U-M 

centers. Both of these factors 

helped enormously during the 

1990s when overall support 

from the federal government 

and foundations shifted from 

area studies to globalization and 

cross-region studies. Now that 

emphasis has reversed (at least 

for private foundations), along 

with the recognition that the 

study of language and culture is 

inseparable from understanding 

of the world. “You have to hang 

in there,” Judith comments, 

in her understated fashion, on 

weathering these changes. 

Another critical component 

in the success of the Center 

is the staff, she says. With 

the increased budget and an 

enthusiastic group of people, 

CSEAS has been able to sponsor 

a greater number of visiting 

faculty, support more students 

coming here and traveling in 

Southeast Asia, and offer a far 

broader and more frequent 

program of events, lectures, 

outreach, and publications. Still, 

she cautions, funding needs to 

be continuously replenished for 

the Center to grow and thrive. 

Judith’s most visible—and 

audible—mark on the Centers 

and the larger community 

would have to be her role in 

establishing the gamelan in 

Ann Arbor (see page 12). We 

are most fortunate in having 

this phenomenon, with its 

musicians, teachers, dancers, 

students, and enthusiastic 

audiences, as an 

ongoing happening 

in our midst, and we 

cannot thank Judith 

enough for all her 

efforts and energy 

in this tremendous 

and unique collective 

experience. 

Among Judith’s 

favorite activities at 

CSEAS is the two-way 

exchange of scholars 

and students, between 

Southeast Asia and 

the U-M. She was 

instrumental, for example, in 

the development of our Burma 

Initiative, which fosters crosscultural 

scholarly exchange 

between Burma and the 

U-M. It is fragile, she says, and 

yet she remains hopeful of its 

persistence. 

While Judith is stepping down 

from her position as director, 

she is in no way leaving the 

CSEAS behind. Her presence 

as a member of the Executive 

Committee will help provide 

continuity for CSEAS and, 

happily, a regular appearance 

in our office space! She is 

already turning more of her 

attention to her own research, 

which involves monitoring 

individuals’ physiological 

and neurological responses to 

music. Currently her subjects 

are Pentecostal Christians from 

Ypsilanti. Intriguingly, she says, 

as the research progresses, new 

dimensions keep appearing. For 

anyone interested in learning 

more, her recent book, Deep 

Listeners: Music, Emotion and 

Trancing (Indiana University 

Press, 2004) will draw you into 

its magical realm. 

We thank Judith for everything 

and wish her success with all her 

future projects! 

CSEAS Staff 

Charley Sullivan is the CSEAS outreach and program coordinator. 

Charley joined the CSEAS staff in March 2004. A former graduate 

student in modern Southeast Asian history at the U-M, Charley 

grew up with his Foreign Service family in Jakarta, Cebu, and 

Singapore. His email is rowcoach@umich.edu. 

Gigi Bosch Gates returned to the Centers in July 2003, resuming 

many of her previous activities as Student Services Assistant. Over 

the course of time spent with the Center, she has developed strong 

interests in the cultures of both South and Southeast Asia. Her 

email is gigib@umich.edu. 

Ellen McCarthy, CSEAS publications manager, came to the 

Centers in March 2004 from the University of Michigan Press, 

where she worked as acquisitions editor for economics and 

anthropology. Her interest in languages, literature, and food 

drew her to the Centers, and she is delighted to be bringing her 

publishing experience to the CSEAS book publishing program. 

Her email is emcc@umich.edu. 

Last fall, after two years as the Center office assistant, Esther 

Whang left full-time employment to pursue a Masters degree in 

Social Work at U-M. She still works for the Centers on a parttime 

basis. Her full-time position was taken by Lesly Burgamy, 

who has just recently accepted the position of Marketing and 

Communications Specialist for the entire International Institute. 

We hope to have a new person in this position by mid-fall.

Visiting SEA Scholars, Faculty and Students 

19 

During the academic year 2003–04, CSEAS brought three students 

from Southeast Asia to U-M through a grant from the Freeman 

Foundation. Faculty sponsors Judith Becker and Gayl Ness used 

longstanding cooperative contacts with universities in Yogyakarta, 

Indonesia, and Khon Kaen University, Thailand, to select Maria 

Yosefa Ami Priwardhani (Ami) and Agustinus Aribowo Nugroho 

(Ari) from Indonesia (see their photo on page 2) and Kanokporn 

Nasomtrug from Thailand for one-year fellowships to study in Ann 

Arbor. Kanokporn spent one year studying at the Michigan Language 

Center before enrolling in spring and summer classes at U-M, while 

Ami and Ari enrolled at U-M for the academic year taking courses in 

English literature, communications, anthropology, and sociology. The 

three students were actively involved in Center activities and became 

an integral part of the CSEAS community. Ami and Ari even had the 

opportunity to dance in our annual gamelan concert. 

Ari writes that he is finishing his thesis at Sanata Dharma University, 

in Yogyakarta. “I chose to make an analysis of the American Dream in 

the novel version of Forrest Gump. I am also working as a part-timer 

in Realino Center of Studies in Yogyakarta, and we actually have just 

finished holding an annual workshop on postcolonial and history 

of Indonesia last July with some historians from all over Indonesia. 

Mostly we discussed the tragedies that occurred in 1965 and 1998. 

Realino conducts research focused on historical and social problems.” 

Ami writes, “I am still doing my last project, a criticism of Milan 

Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, partly because of its 

witty metaphors, ironies, and paradoxes. I also have a part-time job 

in Lembaga Studi Realino, a research institute owned by Jesuits. 

We are doing a small research project on how people use cell 

phones in Indonesia and how the cell-phone affects the way of their 

communication” 

Ulil Abshar-Abdalla, Coordinator of Indonesia’s Liberal Islam 

Network and Director of the Indonesian Freedom Institute, was 

Hughes Visiting Scholar from Indonesia in Fall 2003. He delivered 

four public lectures as part of CSEAS’s Friday-at-Noon series and 

taught a minicourse through the Department of Asian Languages and 

Cultures. 

Wasi Bantolo and Olivia Retno Widyastuti, master Javanese 

dancers, were in residence at U-M from 2003–05 as Hughes Fellows, 

teaching both beginning and advanced Javanese dance and gamelan 

and preparing a full-scale 

dance drama production 

of stories from the 

Ramayana in Winter 2004 

and the Mahabharata for 

performance in Winter 

2005. (See the article on 

gamelan, p. 12.) 

Yazid Basthomi, Lecturer 

at Universitats Negeri 

Malang, Indonesia, is 

a Fulbright doctoral 

dissertation research visitor 

Wasi Bantolo 

at the English Language 

Institute. He is conducting rhetorical analysis of research article 

introductions written in English by Indonesians. 

Marc Brunelle is a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of 

Linguistics. He is interested in 

the phonology, phonetics, and 

sociolinguistics of Southeast Asian 

languages, especially Vietnamese and 

Eastern Cham. Marc, who obtained 

his PhD from Cornell University, 

is teaching a course in Fall 2005 on 

Southeast Asia as a Linguistic Area. 

Jennifer Gaynor, PhD History 

2005, returns to us from the 

Australian National University for a 

Public Goods Council Postdoctoral 

Fellowship funded by the Andrew 

W. Mellon Foundation. She 

will be teaching undergraduate 

seminars in the Department of 

Pamardi Tjiptopradonggo 

History that introduce students 

to archival research using the rich holdings on campus. The courses 

will look at U.S. military intervention in Vietnam, Indonesia, 

and the Philippines, through both American and Southeast Asian 

perspectives. 

Mudagamuwe Maithrimurthi is Visiting Lecturer in Theravada 

Buddhism in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures in 

2005–06. He will teach courses and give guest lectures on campus; 

among his first courses at U-M is a highly subscribed “Love and 

Compassion in Buddhism” designed as an introductory course for 

undergraduates. He holds a DPhil in Classical Indology from the 

University of Hamburg. Originally from Sri Lanka, he has most 

recently been at the University of Leipzig, where he studied Sanskrit, 

Pali, Singhalese, and Buddhist Philosophy. His doctoral dissertation 

deals with the four brahmaviharas: benevolence, compassion, 

joyousness, and equanimity in the history of Buddhist thought. 

Currently he is examining some aspects of the Buddhist concept of 

Nirvana. 

Dr. Mochtar Naim was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar from Indonesia 

in Fall 2003. A sociologist and Islamic scholar from Minangkabau, 

Dr. Naim is a representative to the People’s Consultative Assembly 

in Indonesia. He stayed in Ann Arbor for six months to research a 

“Compendium of Quranic Verses Topically Classified.” 

Felicidad Prudente, University of the Philippines Musicology 

Professor, was here for three terms in 2004 and 2005 as our Hughes 

Visiting Professor, conducting her own research and establishing a 

community kulintang ensemble. 

Pamardi Tjiptopradonggo, Indonesian modern choreographer, was 

in residence during the 2004–05 academic year in the Department 

of Asian Languages and Cultures, leading an Asia Theater workshop. 

(See the article on gamelan, p. 12.) 

Sigit Adji Sabdoprijono and Yulisa Mastati are Artists in Residence 

for the 2005–06 academic year. They will teach Javanese Wayang, 

gamelan, and dance at U-M and at Dicken Elementary School in 

Ann Arbor. (See the article on gamelan, p. 12.) 

Photos provided by Sutejo Kurnaiwan

20 

Center Activities 

CSEAS sponsors many events every year, too 

numerous to detail in this newsletter. See our 

website at http://www.umich-cseas.org and click 

on Events Calendar to access a complete list of 

recent and upcoming events. One of our strongest 

contributions to the community is combining 

resources with other U-M units to bring scholars and 

students from Southeast Asia to U-M, to send U-M 

students to Southeast Asia, and to reach out to our 

many constituencies. It would be impossible for us 

to continue carry out so many wonderful projects 

without supporting partners and donors, and to them 

we are most grateful. Here is but a sampling of recent 

CSEAS activities. 

To commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the 1965 

U-M teach-ins against the war in Vietnam, CSEAS 

sponsored a day-long symposium on “Putting 

Vietnam in the Vietnam War.” Speakers included 

Temple University Professor Sophie Quinn-Judge 

on Ho Chi Minh’s “lost” years; independent author 

Mai Elliott on tensions in the Vietnamese middle 

class during the 129502 and 1960s; Pomona College 

Professor David Elliott on the U.S. war in the Delta; 

and Lorain County Community College Professor 

and Poet Bruce Weigl on war poetry by Vietnamese 

soldiers, both North and South. Those poems were 

read in Vietnamese by U-M sophomore David 

Duong and then in their English translations by Prof. 

Weigl. John Whitmore and Vic Lieberman served as 

discussants, and Richard Mann, one of the teach-ins’ 

original organizers, shared his memories and thoughts 

on connections between American intervention in 

Vietnam and Iraq. 

With support from CSEAS, Michigan Quarterly 

Review published a two-volume special issue entitled 

Vietnam: Beyond the Frame, Fall/Winter 2004–05. 

This offers the richest assortment of writings about 

Vietnam ever assembled in an academic journal. 

Some 450 pages offer an unprecedented range of 

literary and discursive works about Vietnam past and 

present. For more information, or to order copies, 

please visit MQR’s web site 

http://www.umich.edu/~mqr. 

An informal event supported by CSEAS is the 

Indonesian Potluck. This is a monthly social 

gathering of friends of the Indonesian community 

in town. Everyone is welcome, including children. 

Please bring a dish, drinks, fruits, or desserts to share. 

If you don’t wish to bring any of those, you could 

bring fifty cups, spoons/forks, or paper plates. Some 

of us will share Indonesian dishes, but please feel free 

to bring anything you like. 

The contact person for the potluck is Menuk 

Sudarsih, our Indonesian Language instructor, at 

sudarsih@umich.edu. 

Judith Becker with Sumon Sakolchai, KKU President, and 

Peerasit Kamnuansilpa, Associate Professor and Dean of the Faculty of 

Humanities and Social Sciences. 

International Collaborations 

In summer 2005, CSEAS formalized an agreement with Khon Kaen University, 

Khon Kaen, Thailand, to expand scholarly ties, facilitate academic cooperation, 

and promote mutual understanding. Signatories of the Memorandum of 

Understanding present were Peerasit Kamnuansilpa, Associate Professor and 

Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; Judith Becker, CSEAS 

Director; and Paul Courant, U-M Provost at that time. Prof. Peerasit and the 

President of KKU, Sumon Sakolchai, visited Ann Arbor for the signing. Prof. 

Gayl Ness was instrumental in developing this agreement, which will focus on 

Southeast Asian Studies. 

CSEAS and KKU’s relationship precedes the agreement. In July 2004, KKU 

held an international symposium on the present and future status of the Greater 

Mekong Subregion. The symposium, “The Changing Mekong: Pluralistic Societies 

under Siege” was sponsored by Khon Kaen University’s Center for Research on 

Plurality in the Mekong Region (CERP). CSEAS faculty were among major 

contributors, including Gayl Ness as one of the keynote speakers, with papers 

by John Whitmore and Political Science PhD student Joel Selway, while Allen 

Hicken served as plenary session discussant. Former CSEAS Program Coordinator 

Bonnie Brereton, who was working at KKU as a Fulbright consultant from 

January to June 2004, was one of the event’s organizers. Symposium panels 

on historical and cultural contexts and current trends examined ways in which 

pluralistic coexisting ways of life are being impacted by global and market-driven 

views of the region. Symposium proceedings will be published later this year. 

Five U-M undergraduates have participated over the last two academic years 

in the Khon Kaen University Program for Undergraduates, sponsored by 

the Office of International Programs and the Council on International 

Educational Exchange: Abigail Smith, Amanda Altman, and Nicholas Olds in 

Fall 2005, and Alexis Serote and Orianna Cacchione in 2003–04. This program 

combines required Thai language study with courses taught in English about the 

host country and longer excursions to places of special interest. The fall semester 

program in Thailand is designed for students wishing to learn about a broad range 

of issues: effects of dams, urban slums, persons living with HIV/AIDS, organic 

farming, pollution, social movements, human rights, NGOs—primarily from 

a grassroots perspective within the social and political context of a developing 

country. The spring semester program is designed for students wanting to learn 

about globalization from both an academic and a grassroots community level and 

its overall effects on a developing nation.

Why Support Southeast Asian Studies at Michigan? 21 

The Center for Southeast Asian Studies will celebrate its fiftieth year as a National Resource Center for the study of Southeast Asia in 2011. 

In anticipation of this milestone, the Center is embarking on an ambitious campaign to build on an already illustrious history by further 

strengthening its capacity to foster real, dynamic interactions between U-M students and the people and cultures of Southeast Asia. Five 

years from now, CSEAS aims to have in place a series of targeted opportunities—to be named for their donors—that will support graduate 

and undergraduate study, language teaching, and visiting professors and artists from Southeast Asia. Through these, the Center will create 

even deeper, more vibrant understanding of this important region among some of the best students in the United States and from around 

the world as it enters the second half of its first century. 

The major projects we hope to support follow. For more information on each one, please visit our web site at 

http://www.umich-cseas.org/about/devel-priorities.htm. 

Name the Center Directorship 

Goal: $100,000 annual donation, named with a multi-year 

commitment 

Endowed Named Center Directorship: $2 million 

Increase Funding and Research Support 

Opportunities for Graduate Students 

• Five named scholarships for CSEAS MA and departmental PhD 

students 

Goal: up to five $18,000 named scholarships per year. 

Endowed Named Scholarships: $360,000 each 

• An endowed fund for graduate student research 

Goal: $10,000 per year; or $30,000 for a multi-year named pledge. 

Endowed Named Fund: $200,000 

Increase Opportunities for Undergraduate 

Students to Study in and about Southeast Asia 

• Undergraduate Field Research Fellowships in Southeast Asia 

Goal: $20,000/year, or $60,000 for a three-year named Fellowship Fund. 

Endowed Named Fund: $400,000. 

• Undergraduate Southeast Asian Language Scholarships 

Goal: Twelve $1000 scholarships annually, three for each language, 

or $4000 each for named four-year scholarships. 

Endowed Named Scholarships: $20,000 each. 

Support the teaching of advanced levels of 

Southeast Asian Languages 

• Advanced Southeast Asian Language Study Fund 

Goal: $20,000/year. A Named Fund available with a multi-year 

commitment. 

Assure the continued strength of the Javanese 

Performing Arts at Michigan 

• Visiting Professor and Artist-in-Residence of Javanese Performing 

Arts 

Goal: $75,000/year for a couple, $50,000/year for a single artist, 

as a Named Visiting Professorship 

Endowment Named Visiting Professorship: $1.5 million 

• Concert Principal Sponsorship 

Goal: $5,000–$7,500 annual donation, or a $12,000 corporate 

partnership to underwrite this portion of a two-year artist 

residency. 

Create Director’s Discretionary Accounts for 

ongoing country-specific funds and initiatives 

•Discretionary Country Program Funds 

• Indonesia 

• Philippines 

• Thailand 

• Vietnam 

• Burma/Laos/Cambodia 

• Singapore/Malaysia/Brunei/East Timor 

Goal: $10,000 per fund, from smaller individual donations. 

Naming opportunities for $5,000. 

Support Visiting Professors and Students from 

Southeast Asian universities 

• Southeast Asian Visiting Professorship 

Goal: $25,000/year. A Named Visiting Professorship available 

with a multi-year commitment. 

• Visiting Southeast Asian Undergraduate Fellowships 

Goal: Four scholarships of $45,000/year. A Named Fellowship 

with a multi-year commitment. An endowed Named Fellowship 

for $900,000.

CSEAS Fall Events 

Highlights from the Fall Semester 

September 19 “A Hazy Shade of Summer: Current Environmental 

Issues and Policy in Indonesia.” Amanda Katili-Niode, Special Assistant 

to the Indonesian Minister of Environment and U-M PhD in Natural 

Resources and the Environment, discussed current environmental issues 

facing Indonesia, including population and population control, tsunami 

damage and recovery, forest exploitation, endangered species, the human/ 

environmental conflict/dilemma, haze issues facing the entire Southeast 

Asia maritime region, and global warming. 4:30–6:00 pm, 2609 SSWB- 

International Institute. 

September 23 “The Year of Living Dangerously Forty Years On: Personal 

Reflections.” Joesoef Isak, Indonesian journalist and former political 

prisoner, joined University of Washington professor Daniel Lev in sharing 

their personal reflections on the coup in Indonesia in September 1965 

that led to calamitous killings and to establishing the military New Order 

regime, which has only recently given way to democracy. In English 

and Indonesian (translated). 12:00–1:30 pm 1636 SSWB-International 

Institute. 

Center for Southeast Asian Studies 

1080 S. University, Ste. 3603 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109 

734.764.0352 (Phone) 

734.936.0996 (Fax) 

www.http://www.umich-cseas.org/ 

October 7 Undergraduate Summer Research Colloquium. U-M 

undergraduates who carried out field research in Southeast Asia and the 

Pacific shared their projects. David Duong and John Leahy on Neo-Natal 

Health Care in Vietnam, Rachael Hudak on Buddhist nuns in Thailand, 

Mia Browne on Ethno-Biology and Lagoon Habitats in the Solomon 

Islands, and Students of the World on Cambodia’s recovery from the 

Khmer Rouge. 12:00–1:30 pm 1636 SSWB-International Institute. 

October 21 “The Traveling Goddess: Female Deities in Southeast Asia.” 

Barbara Andaya, University of Hawaii-Manoa, and President, Association 

of Asian Studies, shared her research on the images and culture of the 

female divine. 12:00–1:30 pm 1636 SSWB-International Institute. 

Tuesday Nights 

“An Introduction to Southeast Asia.” U-M faculty give lectures on their 

areas of specialization in conjunction with the introductory course for 

CSEAS MA students. Open to the public. A chance to hear about the 

research going on at our own campus. Weekly schedule available on our 

website. 6:00–8:00 pm, 2609 SSWB-International Institute. 

A Glimpse of Events to Come 

November 4 “Reflections on Current Tensions in Mindanao, Philippines.” 

Eugene Martin, Executive Director, Philippine Facilitation Project, 

United States Institute of Peace. Mindanao, site of both Muslim and 

Communist antigovernment armed insurrections in the Philippines, is 

(often rightfully) perceived as an unsettled place. Gene Martin speaks of the 

research and programs on conflict resolution in this area run by the United 

States Institute of Peace in Washington DC. 12:00-1:30, 1636 SSWB- 

International Institute. 

December 9 “The importance of serving halal (Islamically proper) food 

in Malaysia: Who is host and who is guest?” Robert McKinley, Visiting 

Professor, Department of Anthropology. Hospitality to visitors is an 

critically important element of Southeast Asian cultures. As Malaysia 

becomes increasingly Islamically orthodox, the changing etiquette and 

ritual of food provide an interesting insight into Malay society. 

12:00 - 1:30, 1636 SSWB - International Institute 

CSEAS Staff (clockwise from upper left): Charley Sullivan, Ellen 

McCarthy, Cynthia Middleton, Linda Lim, Gigi Bosch Gates

Center for Southeast Asian Studies - International Institute ...

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