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.
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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.