Description:
The essays in Knowing Southeast Asian Subjects ask how the rising preponderance of scholarship from Southeast Asia is de-centering Southeast Asian area studies in the United States. The contributions address recent transformations within the field and new directions for research, pedagogy, and institutional cooperation.
Contributions from the perspectives of history, anthropology, cultural studies, political theory, and libraries pose questions ranging from how a concern with postcolonial and feminist questions of identity might reorient the field to how anthropological work on civil society and Islam in Southeast Asia provides an opportunity for comparative political theorists to develop more sophisticated analytic approaches. A vision common to all the contributors is the potential of area studies to produce knowledge outside a global academic framework that presumes the privilege and even hegemony of Euro-American academic trends and scholars.
Brief description: Laurie J. Sears is the Walker Family Endowed Professor in History at the University of Washington. She is the author of several books, including Situated Testimonies: Dread and Enchantment in an Indonesian Literary Archive(U. of Hawai'i Press, 2013) and Shadows of Empire: Colonial Discourse and Javanese Tales (Duke University Press, 1996).
Review Quotes:
"[Knowing Southeast Asian Subjects] advances the reflective nature of South East Asian studies in a new and different direction. . . there is much practical information and points for serious consideration raised in these essays, all by established and recognised scholars in their respective fields."
-- "Asian Affairs"