3rd Annual LIASE Southeast Asia Symposium at University of Puget Sound

Pacific Northwest scholars and students address environmental issues in Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia

Free and open to the public
The clash between those who want “progress” and those who want the “preservation” of our environment is as stark, and in some ways even more complex, in Southeast Asia as it is at home in the United States.
This fall the third annual LIASE Southeast Asia Symposium at University of Puget Sound will once again bring together Pacific Northwest scholars and students to help tackle these often sensitive and problematic differences.
The event, titled The Culture of Nature in Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia, will run Friday, Oct. 28–Saturday, Oct. 29, and is open to students and academics across the region. All events are also open to the public, except for a private dinner on Saturday night. Entrance is free to all and registration is not required. Community visitors may particularly enjoy the free batik-making workshops on both days and the Indonesian music performance on Saturday night. Many events take place in Murray Boardroom, Wheelock Student Center. See the link to the program below.
“This year marks our first faculty panel on Southeast Asia’s role in the liberal arts, as well as presentations by two exciting keynote speakers, two student research panels, a batik workshop, and a public gamelan performance,” said organizer Gareth Barkin, associate professor of anthropology at University of Puget Sound. “We are looking forward to a great symposium.”
Southeast Asianist scholars and student researchers will share their findings and observations at the symposium, with the aim of inspiring further work to explore and understand conflicts between people and nature in a region where solutions are complicated by politics, poverty, big business, and the aspirations of populations undergoing rapid change.
The event is one of many activities at Puget Sound supported by the Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment (LIASE). Backed by the Henry Luce Foundation, LIASE makes grants to universities and colleges around the country to promote a deeper understanding of Asian cultural, linguistic, and environmental issues. Symposium attendees will include campus members from the Northwest Five Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges, which serves as a forum for numerous collaborations.
Keynote speaker J. Peter Brosius, an influential ecological anthropologist from University of Georgia, will give a free public talk at 5 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 28, in Murray Boardroom, Wheelock Student Center, on the topic “Sea Gods and Social Movements: Environmental Activism in Southeast Asia.” Brosius has been at the forefront of efforts to transform the field of environmental anthropology. He has sought to foster interdisciplinary approaches to problems and to make space for multiple ways of thinking about the complex trade-offs between conservation and development. His talk will span his celebrated career, including fieldwork in Sarawak, Malaysia; his interest in the Tolak Reklamasi ecological movement in Bali, Indonesia; and his ethnographic work in various sites in Southeast Asia.
The second keynote speaker is the internationally renowned Indonesian performance and graphic artist Arahmaiani. One of Indonesia’s most respected and iconic contemporary artists, Arahmaiani has created provocative commentaries on cultural and environmental issues through installations, drawings, poetry, video, sculpture, dance, and music. Her free public presentation at 5 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 29, in Murray Boardroom, Wheelock Student Center, is titled Between the Mountain & the Sea. Her performances speak against social injustice, violence, political corruption, and the woman’s position in Muslim society.
On Saturday morning students who took part in Puget Sound’s 2016 LIASE field school in Thailand, under the guidance of Professor of International Political Economy Nick Kontogeorgopoulos, will present their research. Topics range from deforestation, to food insecurity, to organic agriculture, to changing generations in changing landscapes.
Southeast Asian experts from Willamette University, Lewis & Clark College, Whitman College, and The Evergreen State College will hold a Saturday afternoon panel discussing their current research and the relationship between Southeast Asian studies and teaching in the liberal arts.
Batik workshops, also open to the public, will be held 2:30–4:30 p.m. on both Friday and Saturday in Kittredge Hall, Room 202. Instructors Lely Shim and Lisa Long will help participants use the wax relief and natural plant dyes to create their own batik artworks in the traditional Javanese style.
The symposium will finish with a private Indonesian banquet, followed by a free public performance of Indonesian music by Gamelan Pacifica. Everyone is welcome to the gamelan music concert in Rasmussen Rotunda, Wheelock Student Center, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 29. Gamelan Pacifica, directed by noted composer and Cornish College of the Arts Professor of Music Jarrad Powell, creates diverse productions merging traditional and contemporary musical forms.
Each year the LIASE Southeast Asia Symposium attracts scholars, students, and faculty from the region to share their learning. The event draws together the disparate elements of the LIASE program at Puget Sound, including the Southeast Asian field schools, faculty research and initiatives, and the school’s new language programs, including Thai and Indonesian.