Muse Mentor 2024: Professor Saturnino ‘Jun’ Borras

We are delighted to share that, together with the Center for Cultural Studies, we will be hosting scholar-activist Professor Saturnino ‘Jun’ Borras at UCSC this winter quarter.

Jun Borras is Professor of Agrarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam, and is a long-time agrarian movement activist in the Philippines and internationally. He was a member of the International Coordinating Committee of the La Via Campesina during its formative years, in 1993-1996. He is a recipient of the European Research Council Advanced Grant, enabling him to study how land rushes shape global social life, and does fieldwork for this in Southeast Asia and China, Ethiopia and Colombia. He works in the tradition of, and at the same time studies, scholar-activism. He was Editor-In-Chief of Journal of Peasant Studies for 15 years until 2023. He co-organizes the regular International Writeshop in Critical Agrarian Studies and Scholar-Activism meant for PhD researchers and early career scholars from/in the Global South.

We invite you to be a part of our engagement with Jun Borras and his works at the two events we have planned (more details below). For Slow Seminar, please REGISTER HERE

Event flyer

For Slow Seminar, please REGISTER HERE.

Slow Seminar – Cynthia Fowler’s Biosocial synchrony on Sumba: multispecies relationships and environmental variations in Indonesia.

We are delighted to invite you to a slow seminar discussion of Cynthia Fowler’s Biosocial synchrony on Sumba: multispecies relationships and environmental variations in Indonesia. We are fortunate to have SEACoast Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Joseph Klein open the discussion with a few thoughts and questions. Dr. Klein’s dissertation looked at the Indonesian live coral trade supplying the global aquarium industry–focused on divers working in the coastal hinterlands around Kendari and across Southeast Sulawesi; he has also looked at land reclamation, bomb fishing, nickel mining, and other processes of coastal transformation, and is interested in the histories of war and commerce that have shaped movement patterns around maritime Eastern Indonesia.

Due to overwhelming registration for virtual participation, this event will be hosted entirely on zoom.

Please register here for the zoom link, and contact seacoast@ucsc.edu if you have any questions.

If this is your first time hearing about a Slow Seminar, we invite you to read our explainer and check out past seminars.

Slow Seminar- Pontianak

Happy Idul Fitri!

 

On May 19, Thursday, 9-11am PST, we will have a Slow (Spooky?) Seminar on Pontianak, the female vampire/ghost/monster in Malay cultures, as well as her conceptual kins throughout Southeast Asia, such as the famous Nang Nak in Thailand. We will use selected chapters of Rosalind Galt’s new book, Alluring Monsters: the Pontianak and Cinemas of Decolonization, as our point of departure & shared reference:

 

-Introduction [optional, provides some background if you have never heard of Pontianak]
-Ch.2 “Troubling Gender with the Pontianak”
-Ch.4 “Who Owns the Kampung? Heritage, History, and Postcolonial Space”
-Ch.5 only the “Point of View in the Forest” section, p.224-228

 

We see this event as a continuation of our discussion on feminist and gender theories in Southeast Asian studies from last year. Pontianak serves as a guiding figure for us to consider gender relations, aesthetics, ethnic politics, urbanization, environmental change, and secularism in and beyond Southeast Asia. If time allows, participants are encouraged to pick and watch a related movie on their own and bring it to the discussion. Personal ghost stories are also welcome!

 

Please fill out this form to RSVP. Feel free to circulate the attached flyer and invite your friends and colleagues. This is our last slow seminar for this academic year and we hope to see you there.

 

Slow Seminar – Traces of Trauma: Cambodian Visual Culture and National Identity in the Aftermath of Genocide

On May Thursday,May 27th 5-7pm PDT, UCSC SEACoast Center and University of Washington, Seattle Southeast Asia Center will be co-hosting a seminar to discuss Boreth Ly’s new book, Traces of Trauma. The discussion will be aimed at exploring the fraught and entangled projects of surviving genocide, re-constructing national identity, and healing in the aftermath of genocide.

We are grateful to have Jenna Grant, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and the Southeast Asian Center (SEAC) at University of Washington, join and open the discussion with a few questions. Also joining us is Amy Sanford, whose work is discussed in the book and is featured on the book cover.
Please email seacoast@ucsc.edu to RSVP for this event. For security reasons, the zoom link will be sent at least 30 minutes before the start of the event.

Skip to toolbar