H019: The Articulation of Area Studies and Ethnic Studies in Southeast Asian Studies

Organizer(s)

• 

  Abigail Cohn

  Linguistics
  Cornell University, United States
• CL

  Celia Lowe

  Anthropology and International Studies
  University of Washington, United States

Chair(s)

• 

  Abigail Cohn

  Linguistics
  Cornell University, United States

Discussant(s)

• CL

  Celia Lowe

  Anthropology and International Studies
  University of Washington, United States
• CB

  Christine Bacareza Balance

  Asian American Studies
  Cornell University, United States
• FN

  Fiona Ngo

  University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, United States
• LC

  Lina Chhun

  American Studies Department
  University of Texas at Austin, United States
• TN

  Thu-Huong Nguyen-Vo

  Asian Languages and Cultures and Asian American Studies
  University of California, Los Angeles, United States

We explore the relationship between area studies and ethnic studies in the context of Southeast Asia. While some recent works have addressed the intellectual space between Southeast Asian and Asian American Studies (e.g. Ngo, Nguyen & Lam 2012) and others have critiqued the construct of area studies in the context of Asia (e.g. Walker & Sakai 2019), assessed the relationship between area studies and global studies (Stevens, Miller-Idriss, & Shami 2018) or the nature of ethnic studies (e.g. Okihiro 2010), here we focus specifically on Southeast Asia and the Southeast Asian diaspora in North America. We explore the framing of these intellectual spaces while considering their institutionalization at a range of American academic institutions, and their interdisciplinarity or disciplinarity across the humanities and social sciences, from the perspectives of Southeast Asian national and regional studies within area and ethnic studies.

Each discussant will briefly frame how their work engages across geographic and disciplinary space and present their perspectives on the following questions with the goals of fostering conversations about these issues across our campuses:

• Institutional framing: How are regional and international appointments made? Who controls faculty lines? How is funding allocated? How does field specificity function in institutional efforts aimed at equity, diversity, and inclusion?


• Student constituencies: What is the academic space created for students to study these areas? How is curriculum developed? How is student interest addressed?


• The relationship between scholarship and advocacy: How do scholars pursue inquiries within local and broader contexts of advocacy? Do critical race studies, gender studies, or queer studies from ethnic studies reconfigure the politics of area studies?