NIU Southeast Asian Series
A Sense of Place and Belonging examines a marginalized society, Chiang Tung (Keng Tung) in the Eastern Shan State of Myanmar, between the dominant cultures of the Burmese, Chinese, and Siamese/Thai. Chiang Tung sits at the historic borderland known as the Golden Triangle, an area marked by drug trade, human trafficking, and civil war. Hiding a glorious literary and visual cultural tradition from the fourteenth century, Chiang Tung is remarkable for how well it has maintained its Buddhist culture in the turbulent history of war and forced resettlement that formed northern Southeast Asia.
Klemens Karlsson examines the connection between the Buddhist traditions, the ancient cult of territory spirits—a cult of the earth, place, and village that forms a kind of religious map—and the monsoon culture of wet rice irrigation. Tying together myths and memories told by local people and written in local chronicles with the unique performance of the Songkran festival, which dramatizes a symbolic agreement between Tai Khuen people and the indigenous Lua/Lawa people, A Sense of Place and Belonging presents a historical, political, religious, and cultural context connecting the present with the past, the local with the global, and tradition with change and transformation.
"Light Out" and Modern Vietnamese Stories, 1930–1954, translated by Quan Manh Ha and Paul Christiansen, with an essay by Ngô Văn Giá, is the first anthology in English of colonial Vietnamese literature written by canonical authors. Light Out depicts colonial exploitation, impoverished peasants at the mercy of precarious crop cycles, and institutionalized corruption that pits peasants against village officials. Set over the course of a few days, the novella presents an intimate look into the rural society in northern Vietnam during the height of French colonialism, exposing the brutal realities of the period and the impact such deprivations have on the human spirit.
The eighteen short stories included in this book thematically delineate colonial abuses, class discrimination, patriarchal expectations, and livelihoods tethered to an unstable environment. Aesthetically, they illuminate the impact of French literary traditions and Western thought on Vietnamese traditions of storytelling.
Governor of the Cordillera tells the story of an American colonial official in the Philippines who took the unpopular position of defending the rights of the Igorots, was fired in disgrace, and made a triumphal return. During the first fifteen years of colonial rule (1898–1913), a small group of Americans controlled the headhunting tribes who were wards of the nascent colonial government. These officials ignored laws, carved out fiefdoms, and brutalized (or killed) those who challenged their rule. John Early was cut from a different cloth. Battling colleagues and supervisors over their treatment of the mountain people, Early also had run-ins with lowland Filipino leaders like Manuel Quezon. Early's return as governor of the entire Cordillera was celebrated by all the tribes.
In Governor of the Cordillera Shelton Woods combines biography with colonial history. He includes a discussion on the exhibition of the Igorots at the various fairs in the US and Europe, which Early tried to stop. The life of John Early is a testament to navigating political and racial divides with integrity.
Khmer Nationalist is a political history of Cambodia from World War II until 1975, examining the central role of Sõn Ngọc Thành. It is a story of nationalistic independence movements, political intrigue, coup attempts, war, and American intelligence. The rise of Cambodian nationalism, the brief period of Japanese dominance, the fight for independence from France, and the establishment of ties with the United States that kept Sihanouk on edge until his downfall—in all of these, as Matthew Jagel shows, Thành was fundamental.
Khmer Nationalist reveals how Cambodian nationalism grew during the twilight of French colonialism and faced new geopolitical challenges during the Cold War. Thành's story brings greater understanding to the end of French colonialism in Cambodia, nationalism in post-colonial societies, Cold War realities for countries caught between competing powers, and how the United States responded while the Vietnam War intensified.
The Saigon Sisters offers the narratives of a group of privileged women who were immersed in a French lycée and later rebelled and fought for independence, starting with France's occupation of Vietnam and continuing through US involvement and life after war ends in 1975.
Tracing the lives of nine women, The Saigon Sisters reveals these women's stories as they forsook safety and comfort to struggle for independence, and describes how they adapted to life in the jungle, whether facing bombing raids, malaria, deadly snakes, or other trials. How did they juggle double lives working for the resistance in Saigon? How could they endure having to rely on family members to raise their own children? Why, after being sent to study abroad by anxious parents, did several women choose to return to serve their country? How could they bear open-ended separation from their husbands? How did they cope with sending their children to villages to escape the bombings of Hanoi? In spite of the maelstrom of war, how did they forge careers? And how, in spite of dislocation and distrust following the end of the war in 1975, did these women find each other and rekindle their friendships? Patricia D. Norland answers these questions and more in this powerful and personal approach to history.
God, Tsar, and People brings together in one volume essays written over a period of fifty years, using a wide variety of evidence—texts, icons, architecture, and ritual—to reveal how early modern Russians (1450–1700) imagined their rapidly changing political world.
This volume presents a more nuanced picture of Russian political thought during the two centuries before Peter the Great came to power than is typically available. The state was expanding at a dizzying rate, and atop Russia's traditional political structure sat a ruler who supposedly reflected God's will. The problem facing Russians was that actual rulers seldom—or never—exhibited the required perfection. Daniel Rowland argues that this contradictory set of ideas was far less autocratic in both theory and practice than modern stereotypes would have us believe. In comparing and contrasting Russian history with that of Western European states, Rowland is also questioning the notion that Russia has always been, and always viewed itself as, an authoritarian country. God, Tsar, and People explores how the Russian state in this period kept its vast lands and diverse subjects united in a common view of a Christian polity, defending its long frontier against powerful enemies from the East and from the West.
Semi-Civilized offers a concise, revealing, and analytically penetrating view of a critical period in Philippine history. Michael C. Hawkins examines Moro (Filipino Muslim) contributions to the Philippine exhibit at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, providing insight into this fascinating and previously overlooked historical episode.
By reviving and contextualizing Moro participation in the exposition, Hawkins challenges the typical manifestations of empire drawn from the fair and delivers a nuanced and textured vision of the nature of American imperial discourse. In Semi-Civilized Hawkins argues that the Moro display provided a distinctive liminal space in the dialectical relationship between civilization and savagery at the fair. The Moros offered a transcultural bridge. Through their official yet nondescript designation as "semi-civilized," they undermined and mediated the various binaries structuring the exposition. As Hawkins demonstrates, this mediation represented an unexpectedly welcomed challenge to the binary logic and discomfort of the display.
As Semi-Civilized shows, the Moro display was collaborative, and the Moros exercised unexpected agency by negotiating how the display was both structured and interpreted by the public. Fairgoers were actively seeking an extraordinary experience. Exhibit organizers framed it, but ultimately the Moros provided it. And therein lay a tremendous amount of power.
Adela Frost wants to do something with her life. When a chance encounter and a haunting dream steer her toward distant Burma, she decides to spend the summer after high school volunteering in a Buddhist monastery. Adela finds fresh confidence as she immerses herself in her new environment, teaching English to the monks and studying meditation with the wise abbot. Then there's her secret romance with Thiha, an ex-political prisoner with a shadowy past. But when some of the monks express support for the persecution of the country's Rohingya Muslim minority, Adela glimpses the turmoil that lies beneath Burma's tranquil surface. While investigating the country's complex history, she becomes determined to help stop communal violence. With Thiha's assistance, she concocts a scheme that quickly spirals out of control. Adela must decide whether to back down or double down, while protecting those she cares about from the backlash of Buddhist and Muslim extremists. Set against the backdrop of Burma's fractured transition to democracy, this coming-of-age story weaves critiques of "voluntourism" and humanitarian intervention into a young woman's quest for connection across cultural boundaries. This work of literary fiction will fascinate Southeast Asia buffs and anyone interested in places where the truth is bitterly contested territory.
