News Details

Dr. Rudrani Gangopadhyay successfully defended her PhD dissertation, titled, "The Spectral Urban: Visualizing the Indian Metropolis," and won the SGS Outstanding Doctoral Student Merit and Achievement Award, in April 2024.

Dr. Gangopadhyay is now joining the Office of Career Exploration and Success at Rutgers as the inaugural Sr. Assistant Director of Graduate Student Career Pathways. In her new role, Dr. Gangopadhyay will partner with others to develop programs that help graduate students clarify career goals, explore industry pathways, and connect with professionals. 

The Global Asias community celebrates the spectacular achievements of Rudrani, and wishes her best for the exciting journey ahead.

Dr. Viola Lasmana is an Emerging Voices Fellow at the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and a South and Southeast Asian American Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of American Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, where she is also affiliated with Global Asias and Asian Languages and Cultures.

On November 30, 2023, Dr. Lasmana gave a Gatty Lecture at Cornell University on “The Shadow Image: Transnational Southeast Asian Feminist Practices and Pedagogies.” The talk explored the possibilities of Southeast Asian feminist practices and pedagogies through a discussion of transnational Indonesian and Vietnamese experimental documentaries, Children of Srikandi (Children of Srikandi Collective, 2012) and Surname Viet Given Name Nam (Trinh T. Minh-ha, 1989). Exploding the documentary form and subverting representation, these works activate a poetics of collaboration and generate what Lasmana calls a shadow imagination, enabling new ways of articulating marginalized women’s lives beyond the specter of the nation.

Dr. Lasmana was also interviewed on the Getty Lecture Rewind Podcast from the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University. She discussed Southeast Asian feminist practices by examining two experimental documentaries: Children of Srikandi (2012) and Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989). She explains how these films activate a poetics of collaboration and generate a “shadow imagination,” which enables new ways of articulating marginalized women’s lives beyond the specter of the nation. Finally, Dr. Lasmana offers her insight about pursuing a career in Southeast Asian Studies. To hear the podcast, visit the Getty Lecture Rewind Podcast website.

* From the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University, the Gatty Lecture Rewind Podcast features interviews and conversations with scholars and researchers working in and around Southeast Asia, all of whom have been invited to give a Gatty Lecture at Cornell University. Conversations cover the history, politics, economics, literature, art, and cultures of the region. Podcast topics cover the many nations and peoples of Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma, Laos, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, and Timor-Leste.

Viola Lasmana is an Emerging Voices Fellow at the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and a South and Southeast Asian American Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of American Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, where she is also affiliated with Global Asias and Asian Languages and Cultures. She received her PhD in English from the University of Southern California with a certificate in Digital Media and Culture from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and has taught at Columbia University, USC, and Occidental College. Her work has appeared in Film Quarterly, make/shift: feminisms in motion, The Cine-Files, Visual Anthropology, Alternative Historiographies of the Digital Humanities, and more. She is currently completing a book, Shadow Imaginations: Transpacific Approaches to Post-1965 Indonesian Archives, on the reconstitution of Indonesia’s decimated cultural archive.

Global Asias: The Afterlives of War and Resistance (2024/2025)

Spring 2024 Events

February

8: Asia-Pacific Lecture Series
Prof. Yeong-ae Yamashita, “The Japanese Military ‘Comfort Women:’ My Experiences and Struggles in the Reparation Movement as a Zainichi Korean-Japanese” with Prof. Suzy Kim (ALC)
2:00pm-3:30pm | AB 6051

15: Book Talk
Prof. Young-mee Cho (ALC), “Korean Letters from the Griffis Collection” with Prof. James Jinhong Kim (NB Theological Seminary) and Sungmin Park (RU Libraries)
12 noon-1:30pm | AB 6051

16: Conference
“Philosophies of Nonviolence,” Sponsored by the Rutgers-NB Department of Religion and the CCA
9:45am-5:15pm | AB 6051

29: Poet Visit
Ocean Vuong (with ISGRJ and Chancellor’s Office)
6:00pm-7:00pm | 4th Flr Conference Room, Alexander Library
Rutgers-Ritsumeikan Asia-Pacific Program:
ALC and GLAS will be hosting 16 university students from Ritsumeikan, Kyoto, to join our classes at RU-New Brunswick for 4 weeks in February 2024.

March

21: Talk
Prof. Krishnendu Ray (NYU), “Body Techniques and Everyday Tools: Infrastructures and Cultures of Food across the Indian Ocean” with Prof. Martin Manalansan (WGSS) (South Asian Studies Program)
12noon-1:30pm | AB 4040

27: Book Talk
Prof. Mukti Mangharam (English) on Freedom, Inc with the Global Anti-State Thought Working Group and Prof. Johan Mathew (History/SASP)
5:00pm-6:30pm | AB 6051

29: Book Talk
Prof. Chris Suh (History, Emory University) on The Allure of Empire (Oxford UP) with the Cold War Asias Working Group
2:30pm-4:00pm | AB 6051

April

4: IRW Distinguished Lecture Series
Prof. Jyoti Puri (Simmons U), Prof. Elyse Semerdjian (Clark U), and Prof. Asli Zengin (WGSS, Rutgers-NB) on “Death, Mourning, and Gendered Afterlives”
4:30pm | Ruth Dill Johnson Crockett Building

11: Performance
Kareem Khubchandani, zavé martohardjono, and Sokunthy Svay, “Arts and Performance after Wars” with Dr. Viola Lasmana (American Studies/GLAS), Prof. Martin Manalansan (WGSS), and the Southeast Asians of Rutgers University
6pm-7:30pm | Mabel Smith Douglass Library

25: Talk
Prof. Jin Sato (U of Tokyo), “Sustainability Inverted: How environmental policies turn into the control of people in Southeast Asia” with Prof. Hieu Phung (ALC) and Prof. Pam McElwee (SEBS)
12noon-1:30pm | AB 6051

26: Graduate Student Colloquium
(Un)archived: Photography Against/Along the Grain of Absence in Global Asia with the Developing Room Working Group and positions: asia critique
All-Day | New York University

Location Information

AB: Academic Building-West, 15 Seminary Pl, New Brunswick, NJ 08901

Abstract

Ecological States critically examines ecological policies in the People’s Republic of China to show how campaigns of scientifically based environmental protection transform nature and society. While many point to China’s ecological civilization programs as a new paradigm for global environmental governance, Jesse Rodenbiker argues that ecological redlining extends the reach of the authoritarian state. Although Chinese urban sustainability initiatives have driven millions of citizens from their land and housing, Rodenbiker shows that these migrants are not passive subjects of state policy. Instead, they creatively navigate resettlement processes in pursuit of their own benefit. However, their resistance is limited by varied forms of state-backed infrastructural violence. Through extensive fieldwork with scientists, urban planners, and everyday citizens in southwestern China, Ecological States exposes the ways in which the scientific logics and practices fundamental to China’s green urbanization have solidified state power and contributed to dispossession and social inequality.

Bios

Author: Jesse Rodenbiker is assistant teaching professor of geography at Rutgers University and associate research scholar at the Center on Contemporary China at Princeton University.
Discussant: I-Chun Catherine Chang is associate professor of geography at Macalester College.
Discussant: Jia-Ching Chen is assistant professor of global studies at UC Santa Barbara.
Moderator: Louisa Schein is associate professor of anthropology and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Rutgers University.

This forum is co-sponsored by the Geography Department, Global Asias Initiative, and Rutgers Global.

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