INDONESIAN RANDAI THEATRE AT UHM: INSIGHTS INTO THE ADAPTATION AND REHEARSAL PROCESS

Professor Pauka and some of her collaborators will share insights into the rehearsal and production process of training and performing Randai theatre from West Sumatra. This is the third Randai production Pauka has directed in the Department of Theatre at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa; UHM is the only place outside of Indonesia where audiences can see Randai theatre. 

This Spring, the UHM’s Department of Theatre and Dance presents the rare theatre form of Randai with its production of “The Genteel Sabai,” a folk dance-drama from the Minangkabau ethnic group in West Sumatra, Indonesia. Randai comes from the Minangkabau ethic group in Sumatra, and features beautiful traditional music and singing, martial arts, dance and acting; and its signature pants-slapping percussion!

Kirstin Pauka is a professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She is uniquely suited to the career of director, performer, scholar and most especially teacher of Asian and cross-cultural theatre.

For more information on The Genteel Sabai, times, and performance dates, please follow this link.

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“INDONESIAN RANDAI THEATRE AT UHM: INSIGHTS INTO THE ADAPTATION AND REHEARSAL PROCESS”
A Presentation by Kirstin Pauka, professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

Professor Pauka and some of her collaborators will share insights into the rehearsal and production process of training and performing Randai theatre from West Sumatra. This is the third Randai production Pauka has directed in the Department of Theatre at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa; UHM is the only place outside of Indonesia where audiences can see Randai theatre. 

This Spring, the UHM’s Department of Theatre and Dance presents the rare theatre form of Randai with its production of “The Genteel Sabai,” a folk dance-drama from the Minangkabau ethnic group in West Sumatra, Indonesia. Randai comes from the Minangkabau ethic group in Sumatra, and features beautiful traditional music and singing, martial arts, dance and acting; and its signature pants-slapping percussion!

Kirstin Pauka is a professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She is uniquely suited to the career of director, performer, scholar and most especially teacher of Asian and cross-cultural theatre.

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FALL 2011 PHILIPPINE STUDIES COLLOQUIUM SERIES

Weaponizing Language: U.S. Counterinsurgency and the Politics of Translation Dr. Vicente Rafael
Co-sponsored with The History Workshop, Department of History
Location: Honolulu, HI USA
October 7, 2:30pm – 4:30pm
Manoa Campus, Sakamaki A201

Summary
Professor Vicente Rafael (University of Washington, Seattle) will present “Weaponizing Language: U.S. Counterinsurgency and the Politics of Translation,” as the next talk in the History Workshop series “War and Society: Considering Justice, Violence, and the Military in History.” Much has been written recently about the rise of counterinsurgency stressing the “protection of the population” as the preferred strategy of the U.S. in its permanent “global war on terror.”

This talk will focus on two of the most prevalent tropes in the discourse of counterinsurgency: the “weaponization” and “targeting” of foreign languages. How is the counterinsurgent notion of languages as “weapons” and “targets” linked to the strategic imperative of deploying translation as a means for colonizing the lifeworld of occupied populations?

How does the American military seek to expropriate the practice of translation through the development of automatic translation systems and exploitation of the mediating power of native interpreters? What are the limits and contradictions to the targeting of speech and the militarization of linguistic exchange between occupiers and occupied? What do these limits on the weaponization of translation tell us about the vicissitudes of counterinsurgency as a strategy for sustaining the U.S. empire? Finally, are there other ways of conceiving translation in ways that exceed the terrifying demands of war?

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Vicente L. Rafael is Professor of History at the University of Washington. His research and teaching specialties include the following fields: Southeast Asia (especially the Philippines), Comparative Colonialism (especially Spain and the United States), and Comparative Nationalism. Professor Rafael also maintains an active interest in the related fields of cultural anthropology, literary studies and European continental philosophy. Through his location in the department of history, he have sought to touch on topics that include language and power, translation and religious conversion, technology and humanity, the politics and poetics of representation.

Event Sponsor
History and the Center for Philippine Studies, Manoa Campus

More Information
Suzanna Reiss and Matt Romaniello, 956-7407, histwork@hawaii.edu

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“English-teachers as moral guides in Vietnam and China: Maintaining and re-traditionalizing morality”

Dr. Phan Le Ha
Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia
Vietnam National University Hanoi

Thursday, May 5, 2011
Tokioka Room, Moore Hall 319

“The nation state, globalization and new ways of understanding brain drain: Vietnam as a case study”

Dr. Phan Le Ha
Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia
Vietnam National University Hanoi

Friday, May 6, 2011
Sakamaki Hall A201

Dr. Phan Le Ha lectures in the Faculty of Education Monash University Australia. She also holds visiting professorship at the University of Reading UK and Vietnam National University Hanoi. Her expertise includes identity studies, cultural sociology of education, language teacher education and internationalization of education. She has published and conducted a wide range of projects in these areas. She is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

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Co-Sponsored by the Women’s Studies Program, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Friday, April 1st, 12 Noon, Tokioka Room (Moore 319)

Presentation by Intan Paramaditha
Department of Cinema Studies
New York University

One crucial feature of the Indonesian cinema revival after the downfall of the New Order authoritarian regime in 1998 is the entrance of more women into the film scene. Within a relatively more democratic political climate, this coincides with the emergence of new women writers, artists, and activists who challenge the New Order gender constructions and frankly examine how women experience their bodies, desires, and sexuality. Today women have significant roles in film production, exhibition, and distribution as producers, directors, scriptwriters, and film festival organizers. This dynamic situation is a new privilege in the history of Indonesian cinema, as records indicate that there were only four women who directed and produced their films before 1998. Through this presentation, I would like to revisit the New Order film culture and trace how gender discourse was produced by state paternalism and cultural paternalism underpinning the male-dominated film scene. Contrary to the assumption that the New Order film artists were compliant to state power as a result of the severe control on cinema, I will show spaces of resistance in which the (male) artists posed their critique towards the official visions of nationhood and how opposing voices were articulated through gender metaphors. The two faces of paternalism, hence, operated in different ways, yet both have largely ignored women’s perspectives and limited women’s involvement as decision-makers in the New Order film culture.

Ms. Intan Paramaditha is a Ph.D candidate at the Department of Cinema Studies, New York University, currently writing her dissertation on film culture and sexual politics in post-Suharto Indonesia. Her writings on Indonesian cinema appear in Jump Cut, Asian Cinema, Criticine, and Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures. She also writes fiction and has published two collections of short stories in Indonesia.

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Internship experience at the National University of Singapore Central Library

Friday, March 4th, 12:00 pm, Tokioka Room (Moore 319)
Presented by Erenst Anip, Masters Student in the Department of Library Information Services (LIS)

In July 2010, Erenst went to Southeast Asia to be the LIS program’s first intern at the National University of Singapore Central Library where he was introduced to the inner workings of a premier university library in Asia. There, he learned about a different library system and organization. In this second talk story session, he will share his experience in ‘finding a missing librarian’ and being a ‘junior operative’, the library’s outreach and social media initiatives, KPIs and PMS, and Singapore’s favorite past time of ‘makan’. Update from the first talk includes internship experience and relevancy with our own library system.

Mr. Erenst Anip is a 2nd year LIS student from Indonesia. As a future academic librarian, he focuses on digital technologies and social media features to enhance the library’s appeal to the users while keeping abreast of (Southeast) Asia area studies. He is also the project manager of Hawaii’s Digital Newspaper Project, part of Library of Congress’ National Digital Newspaper Project (NDNP).

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12:00 p.m., Friday, 04 February 2011, Tokioka Room (Moore 319)
Presented by Dr. Michael Douglass, Professor of Urban & Regional Planning, Executive Director of the Globalization Research Center at UHM
Henry Mochida, Ph.D. student in Urban & Regional Planning, Associate Director for Digital Media and Filmmaking at the Globalization Research Center at UHM
Hao Nguyen, Ph.D. candidate in Urban & Regional Planning, Associate Director of the Globalization Research Center at UHM

This presentation is about a film which is the story of social life in Hanoi, a city in the midst of its 1,000th anniversary as the capital of Vietnam. Every morning Hanoians from across the city gather at Thong Nhat Park for relaxation, exercise, chatting and ballroom dancing. As the city enters a new epoch as an open market economy, the park has quickly become a target for global investment seeking to privatize public spaces. The film shows how park users share in creating and managing activities for social engagement and how they view the importance of the park in their daily lives. It also follows how NGOs and journalists in Hanoi mobilized Hanoians to confront the immanent threat to this vital social space.

Michael Douglass focuses his research on livable cities in Asia, with particular interest in Hanoi. His recent books include: Globalization, the Rise of Civil Society and Civic Spaces in Pacific Asia Cities (2010) and Building Urban Communities: The Politics of Civic Space in Asia (2008). He is the recipient of the Excellence in Research Award from the UHM College of Social Sciences (2008-2009 and 2001-2002) and was recently a Senior Visiting Research Scholar at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (2010).

Henry I. Mochida has dedicated the past 5 years in filmmaking for social research and planning. He is an award winning filmmaker with experience on over 100 productions with premiers in film festivals around the world. His research interests are on the image in the production of knowledge and in planning theory. He seeks to foster critical thinking and deliberative democracy through planning based filmmaking.

Hao Nguyen in his professional life prior to coming to UH was a researcher at the Institute of Sociology, under the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences in Hanoi. His main concerns include issues of urbanization and environment, migration and urban poverty, decentralization, and public spaces and city life in the developing world. He was awarded the Harvard-Yenching Institute’s Scholarship from Harvard University to pursue his doctoral degree in Urban and Regional Planning at UHM.

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Friday, 22 October at 12:00 pm in the Center for Korean Studies.
Presented by Dr. Patricio “Jojo” Abinales, Faculty Asian Studies

Dr. Patricio “Jojo” Abinales grew up in the northern side of the Philippine island of Mindanao. He graduated with a degree in History at the University of the Philippines-Diliman (UP) and worked at UP for nine years as research associate and lecturer. In 1988, he was awarded the Cornell University Southeast Asia Program Fellowship for Southeast Asians and headed to Ithaca, New York to pursue graduate studies in Government and Asian Studies under the supervision of Benedict R’OG Anderson. He completed his PhD in 1997, and while writing the second half of his dissertation was hired as assistant professor at Ohio University’s Department of Political Science.

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12:00 p.m., Friday, 19 November 2010, Tokioka Room (Moore 319)
Presented by Dr. Miriam Stark, Faculty of Department of Anthropology – UH Mānoa

Angkor Wat was a Hindu temple, built to honor God and King in the early 12th century CE in northwestern Cambodia. Through the centuries, the Khmers never abandoned Angkor Wat as their spiritual center. This lecture will review our current knowledge of Angkorian period economy and social organization, and discuss findings from the 2010 field season.

Dr. Miriam Stark joined the University of Hawai’i-Manoa in August 1995 as a Southeast Asian archaeologist. In 1996 she began co-directing the Lower Mekong Archaeological Project (LOMAP) in southern Cambodia, and have continued work in this region over the last 12 years. She edited the journal Asian Perspectives, the leading archaeological journal devoted to the prehistory of Asia and the Pacific region, published by the University of Hawai’i Press, from 2000-2006. Since 2007, with funding from the Henry Luce Foundation Initiative in East and Southeast Asian Archaeology and Early History, Dr. Stark has directed the Luce Asian Archaeology Program.

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Center for Chinese Studies Research Seminar
Co-Sponsored by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies
Friday, September 17th, 12:00 pm, Tokioka Room (Moore 319)
Presented by Dr. Liam Kelley, Department of History, University of Hawaii at Mānoa

The standard view of Vietnamese history argues that after 1,000 years of Chinese rule, Vietnam became independent because the Vietnamese had their own distinct identity, an identity which had supposedly emerged prior to the millennium of Chinese rule. This talk will present an alternative view of this same phenomenon, and will argue that a distinct “Vietnamese” identity only began to take form in the medieval period (7th–15th centuries). This identity was created by members of the Sinicized elite who employed information from various extant Chinese writings, as well as some local sources, to invent a local identity for themselves.

Dr. Liam Kelley is an associate professor of history. His research focuses on premodern Vietnamese history.

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