The Human Sciences Encounters in Phnom Penh

HSEPP March and April 2017 Digest

Dear HSEPP Members and Friends,

Here’s our HSEPP March and April 2017 Digest. You are all welcome to share your suggestions, publications and informations with us and to come to present a research paper to the HSEPP conference. Scholars and researchers who wish to give a lecture presenting need to send us a bio data, presentation title and abstract in English and French, as well as a proposed date. For any questions, please feel free to contact us. Lectures can be given in Khmer, French, or English.

NEXT HSEPP’S CONFERENCE

“Cinematic Forces of Modernity and Tradition in អនអើយស្រីអន (An Euil Srey An) 1972”

ByPhally Chroy: Ph.D. candidate in Interdisciplinary Arts at Ohio University. His research covers Cambodia, cosmopolitanism, and critical theory.

OnMay 19th, 2017, at 6:00pm, in the meeting room of Royal University of Fine-Arts.

(Conference will be done in English language)

Abstract:

អនអើយស្រីអន (An Euil Srey An) is a 1972 popular film from the Cambodian Golden Age of Arts directed by the Golden Age director Ly Bun Lim. During the 1990’s, អនអើយស្រីអន resurfaced in various Cambodian communities in the United States and helped imagine a particular moment of Cambodia for diasporic Cambodian refugee children. In this presentation, Phally Chroy will investigate the film’s thematics that shaped a “mythos” of Cambodia for Cambodian refugees and Cambodian-Americans to examine memory and popular culture as a force of “encapsulation” and mythmaking.

This presentation contextualized critical theory and methodological approaches that analyzes memory theory, reporting how individuals construct narratives through a reading of personal history and popular culture. The presentation will be based on textual and visual analysis of “Khmerness”, instances of cultural references to Khmer notions of religion, mythology, arts, etc.., and recording their appearances in the film. The data collected was juxtaposed with current scholarship on Cambodian-American identity for analysis and critique from memory research from sociology and current publication on Cambodia-American identity.

OTHER CONFERENCES

International Seminar, 10-12 April 2017 

Organized by Labex « Urban Futures » & UMR AUSSER, ENSAPB; LATTS, Lab’Urba, UPEM;
with the Research Department LESTARI, Universitas Kebangsaan Malaysia and Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS)

Steering Committee:
Olivier Coutard (LATTS); Adèle Esposito (AUSSER); Joël Idt (Lab’Urba); Etienne Monin
(TELEMME); Andrea Palmioli (AUSSER-HKU); Margot Pellegrino (Lab’Urba), with Antoine Brès

This international seminar brings together, and confronts, studies of diffuse urbanization in Europe and Asia. Its ambition is to produce theoretically informed and theory-informing comparative empirical knowledge on how these peripheral urban areas and regions develop and transform, how they are practiced and lived, and on the use of resources (land, energy, water...) involved in these processes. Studies of the production and transformation of, and ways of life in, urban environments abound, yet these two issues are usually analyzed separately.

Above all, a vast majority of these studies disregards issues of urban form and materiality broadly conceived. Conversely architects, urbanists and geographers have described or advocated variegated land use patterns, built area layouts and building designs, but in these studies, analyses on how built environments are produced and lived generally remain either superficial, oversimplified or normative. 

The seminar is organized around 4 panels and two keynote talks:

- Panel 1: Urbanity Beyond Centrality

- Panel 2: “Ordinary” urban production and transformation

- Panel 3: Activity systems

- Panel 4: Territorial and Urban ecologies

- Keynote talk 1 : Diffusing Urbanization: Deciphering the Spatial Assemblages of 21st Century Urbanization - Terry McGee

- Keynote talk 2: Diffuse City and Horizontal Metropolis - Paola Vigano’

Detailed presentation and program:   https://diffuse.sciencesconf.org/ 

Registration (free but mandatory):    Diffuse Urbanization Perspectives from Asia and Europe - Sciencesconf.org

Lecture series ANDRÈ MALRAUX: THE LOOTER OF BANTEAY SREI WHO ROSE TO HIGH POLITICAL OFFICE.

In the annals of archaeology, Heinrich Schliemann, Katherine Routledge, Madeleine Colani and Howard Carter, to name a few, will be forever associated with pioneering work respectively in Troy, the Easter Island, the Plain of Jars and Egypt. Other would-be archaeologists have become household names for the wrong reasons. One of the best-known cases concerns Andrè Malraux, a young French intellectual arrested in Phnom Penh on 24 December 1923 as he attempted to smuggle out of Cambodia several tons of bas-reliefs looted from Khmer temples and destined to collectors in Europe and America. Archival data recorded by George Groslier, the director of the National Museum responsible for the arrest, reveal that the looting involved not just Banteay Srei but also another temple never mentioned in relation to this case. Malraux was tried in Indochina but did not serve a single day of his three-year sentence and was free to return to France at the end of 1924. But why was Malraux arrested in 1923, the same year that the French colonial authorities authorised the sale of Khmer artefacts, under certain conditions? What lines of defence did Malraux use against the colonial powers he accused of neglecting Cambodia’s heritage? How did Malraux morph from youthful looter to Minister for Cultural Affairs under the presidency of Charles de Gaulle in France? In my talk I will discuss the facts of the case in light of previously unknown archival data and photographic evidence.

Lia Genovese holds a PhD from SOAS-University of London for a Dissertation titled ‘The Plain of Jars of North Laos - Beyond Madeleine Colani’. She lectures at Thammasat and Silpakorn Universities (Bangkok) and is a Member of the Lecture Committee at the Siam Society. Her current research interests include: the Plain of Jars of Laos; colonial archaeology; the megaliths of South and Southeast Asia; Iron Age mortuary practices; the life and work of French archaeologist Madeleine Colani; cultural heritage. Her journal articles and book reviews can be accessed at academia.edu

Date: Thursday, 25 May 2017

Time:   7.30 p.m.

Place:   The Siam Society, 131 Asoke Montri Rd, Sukhumvit 21

Non-members donation: B200. Siam Society members, members’ spouses and children, and all students showing valid student ID cards are admitted free of charge. For more information, please contact Khun Arunsri or Email : info@siam-society.org

Approaches to the Study of Khmer and Cham Art: a Research Workshop with Tran Ky Phuong and Soumya James, 16/05/2017, CSEAS, SOAS.

Scholarship on ancient Khmer and Cham art evolved concomitantly with the French colonial project, and has long been grounded in archaeological and epigraphic study. This workshop presents new currents of research expanding the field. Tran Ky Phuong is the leading scholar of Cham art. After a first curatorial career at the Danang Museum of Cham Sculpture, he joined the Vietnam Association of Ethnic Minorities’ Culture and Arts, where he has launched research combining ethnographic and art historical methods. Soumya James represents a new generation of Southeast Asia art historians. Her work examines the representation of the divine feminine in cultural and eco-political landscape of Angkor.

Tran Ky Phuong is a former curator of the Museum of Cham Sculpture in Da Nang (1978-98); currently he is a senior research fellow with the Vietnam Association of Ethnic Minorities’ Culture and Arts; and is a researcher of the Center for Cultural Relationship Studies in Mainland Southeast Asia (CRMA Center) of Chulachomklao Royal Military Academic, Thailand and at APSARA Authority, Siem Reap, Cambodia; from 2012 until the present he has been a consultant of UNESCO World Cultural Heritages at My Son Sanctuary. He has awarded several research fellowships to study at International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), Leiden; Asia Research Institute (ARI) of National University of Singapore; Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts (CASVA), National Gallery of Arts, Washington DC.

He has published several books and articles in Vietnamese, English and Japanese, including: My Son in the History of Cham Art (1988); Vestiges of Champa Civilization (2008); Champa Iseki/Champa Ruins (co-author with Shige-eda Yutaku, 1997); The Cham of Vietnam: History, Society and Art (co-editor with Bruce Lockhart), NUS Press (2011); “The Architecture of Temple-Towers of Ancient Champa (Central Vietnam)” in Champa and the Archaeology of My Son, Vietnam (2009); “The Preservation and Management of the Monuments of Champa in Central Vietnam: The Example of My Son Sanctuary, a World Cultural Heritage Site”, in Rethinking Cultural Resource Management in Southeast Asia: Preservation, Development and Neglect (2011);“The new archaeological finds in Northeast Cambodia, Southern Laos and Central Highland of Vietnam: Considering on the significance of overland trading route and cultural interactions of the ancient kingdoms of Champa and Cambodia”, in Advancing Southeast Asian Archaeology 2013, SEAMEO SPAFA Regional Center for Archaeology and Fine Arts, Bangkok, Thailand (2015).

Soumya James is an independent Art Historian who studies premodern South and Southeast Asian art. She received her PhD in Art History from Cornell University. Her dissertation focused on the cultural and eco-political significance of the divine feminine at three Angkor period sites. Her research investigates the relationship between landscape and built form, gender and sexuality, and the art historical links between premodern South and Southeast Asia. Following her graduation, she continued her research while working as the coordinator for the Science and Society Programme at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India. She was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Franke Program in Science and the Humanities and a Fellow at the Whitney Humanities Center, both at Yale University. She is currently working on a book manuscript and planning her next fieldtrip to Cambodia.Voir : https://www.soas.ac.uk/cseas/events/16may2017-approaches-to-the-study-of-khmer-and-cham-art-a-research-workshop-with-tran-ky-phuong-and-.html

CALL FOR PAPERS

Call for applications for the Martine Aublet Foundation scholarships, academic year 2017-2018

The Martine Aublet Foundation, under the guidance of the Fondation de France, is offering a dozen doctoral research grants for the 2015-2015 academic year to students registered in doctoral studies in a French institution of higher education or in co-sponsorship with a foreign university.

The disciplines concerned are Anthropology, Ethnomusicology, Ethnolinguistics, Art History, History, Archaeology and Sociology. These grants are designed to finance exclusively field research in Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Middle East, the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean, Latin and Amerindian Americas.

If no thematic area of research has been chosen, it is essential that the research methodology be qualitative and involve ethnographic participant observer techniques, archival processing and historiographical documentation (including collections), participation in archaeological dig sites or conducting thematic, directive interviews. These grants thus cover the initial phase of research for a thesis (first and second year of doctoral studies) and not the final writing phase (beginning in the third year).

These non-renewable grants are made for a period of 12 months, from November 1 to October 31. Each is a total amount of 15,000 €, paid in two installments. They are awarded after the evaluation and selection of applications by the Committee of Rapporteurs and the Scientific Council of the Martine Aublet Foundation and validation by the Board of Directors of the Foundation. There are no conditions regarding nationality.

For more information: http://www.quaibranly.fr/fr/recherche-scientifique/activites/bourses-et-prix-de-these/bourses-et-prix-de-la-fondation-martine-aublet/bourses-de-la-fondation-martine-aublet

Call for applications for the University of Tokyo 2017 Summer Program in Japanese Archaeology and Heritage

 The Faculty of Letters of the University of Tokyo, in conjunction with the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, invites applications from undergraduate students who are not of Japanese nationality and interested in Japanese archaeology and heritage to take part in a two-week Summer School program in Japan from 9th to 23rd September 2017.   Participants will spend the whole period with undergraduate students from the University of Tokyo and learn together about Japanese culture and history. This is the fourth year that this program will run. The first week of the program will be based at the Hongo Campus of the University of Tokyo in the central part of Tokyo, involving lectures, group work and visits to historical sites and museums.  This will be followed by a week in Hokkaido.  The Hokkaido part of the program will include lectures, visits to museums and heritage sites, and archaeological excavation at the Tokoro settlement dating to the Satsumon period (Cir. 11th centuries CE) which has been the focus of a long-term research project at the Department of Archaeology of the University of Tokyo.  The program will be led by lecturers at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Tokyo. The costs of the stay in Japan including accommodation, meals and internal travel will be covered by the Faculty of Letters of the University of Tokyo.  Successful applicants will be responsible to pay for their own international travel costs to and from Tokyo as well as international travel insurance (to be arranged by themselves).  The entire program will be taught in English.   No Japanese language or previous experience of Japan is required, although having some basic command of Japanese would make the application stronger.  Participants will be asked to submit an essay on their experience upon conclusion of the program; this essay will be published online subsequently. Five students will be selected to join this program with five undergraduate students from the University of Tokyo.  Those who have been selected are expected to participate in the whole program. Full details of the program including instructions for application can be found at: http://sainsbury-institute.org/news-events/tokyo-summer- school-2017/

The deadline for applications is 5th May.

Contact: Dr Sam Nixon | Senior Research Associate

Centre for Archaeology and Heritage Sainsbury Institute 64 The Close | Norwich | NR1 4DH | UK

T +44 (0)1603 597502

  http://sainsbury-institute.org/about-us/staff-2/senior-research-associate/

Call for application of Ph.D scholarship at Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures

The Graduate School of the “Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures” (CSMC, IntegriertesGraduiertenkolleg im Sonderforschungsbereich 950 “Manuskriptkulturen in Asien, Afrika und Europa”) at the University of Hamburg invites applications for Ph.D. scholarships 2+1 year scholarships of € 1.200 per month (tax free) starting October 1st 2017.

The CSMC is a unique research centre for the historical and comparative study of manuscript cultures in Asia, Africa, and Europe building on decades of manuscript studies at the University of Hamburg. It was established with a generous grant from the German Research Association (DFG) in order to develop a comprehensive approach to manuscript cultures including disciplines such as philology, palaeography, codicology, art history, and material analysis. Communication in the international research community of the Centre is conducted in English, Ph.D. (Dr. phil.) dissertations should be written in English or German.

First information can be found on the Centre’s webpage which will be continually updated:

http://www.manuscript-cultures.uni-hamburg.de/

We are looking for highly qualified and highly motivated Ph.D. students with an M.A. or equivalent

degree in all disciplines studying manuscript cultures regardless of region.

Applications with a research proposal compatible with the programme of the Centre’s objectives, CVand copies of B.A., M.A. or other relevant certificates must be sent as ONE pdf document to the Director of the Graduate School before May 31st, 2017:

Prof. Dr. Oliver Huck

 Fakultät für Geisteswissenschaften

CSMC

stipendium.geisteswiss@uni-hamburg.de

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PUBLICATIONS

Sorry Trump, Cambodia owes the U.S. nothing. By Philip J. Cunningham. Special To The Japan Times. March 23, 2017

Cambodia Appeals to Trump to Forgive War-Era Debt. By Julia Wallace. New York Times, April 2, 2017.

View article

 NOEL HIDALGO TAN, Rock Art: The Unseen Art of Southeast Asia.

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TIM FREWER, (2017) The gender agenda: NGOs and capitalist relations inhighland Cambodia, Critical Asian Studies, 49:2, 163-18.

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 ANGELA S.CHIU, The Buddha in Lanna: Art, Lineage, Power, and Place in Northern Thailand, University of Hawaii Press, 2017

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Julian Kirchherr, Nathanial Matthews, Katrina J. Charles, Matthew J. Walton, "“Learning it the Hard Way”: Social safeguards norms in Chinese-led dam projects in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia", Energy Policy, vol. 102, March 2017

View abstract

MARK BBRAY, « La confiance en jeu et la croissance de l’éducation de l’ombre », Revue internationale d’éducation de Sèvres, 68 | 2015, 81-92.

View abstract