BOOK LAUNCH – Diasporic Cold Warriors by Chien-Wen Kung, 20 Sept, 6pm

BOOK LAUNCH – Diasporic Cold Warriors: Nationalist China, Anticommunism, and the Philippine Chinese, 1930s-1970s

Date: Tuesday, 20 September, 2022

Time: 6 pm – 8 pm

Venue: The Pod, Level 16, National Library Building, 100 Victoria Street, Singapore 188064

Registration: Eventbrite

Light refreshments will be provided.


Programme

6:00pm Registration and Refreshments
6:25pm
Welcome Remarks by FASS Assistant Dean of Research, A/P Elmie Nekmat
6:30pm Opening Remarks by Chair, Dr. Wen-Qing Ngoei
6:35pm Presentation by Author, Dr. Chien-Wen Kung
7:05pm Q & A Session, Chaired by Dr. Wen-Qing Ngoei
7:35pm Refreshments and End of Event

About the Author

Chchien wen kungien-Wen Kung is Assistant Professor in the NUS Department of History. Born and raised in Singapore, he was a History and English major at Dartmouth College and taught A-Level History in Singapore before pursuing his Ph.D in Modern Chinese and International and Global History at Columbia University. His research straddles the fields of Sinophone history, Chinese migration and diaspora, the Cold War, and modern China in the world. He was previously a Visiting Assistant Professor of East Asian History at the University of the Pacific from 2018 to 2019 and a Postdoctoral Fellow in the NUS Department of History from 2019 to 2021.


About the Chair

Wen-Qing Ngoei is Assistant Professor of History in the College of Integrative Studies at the Singapore Management University. He graduated with a Ph.D in History from Northwestern University, specializing in US foreign relations with Southeast Asia in the twentieth century. Before joining SMU, he completed postdoctoral stints at Northwestern and Yale University, and taught at Nanyang Technological University. His first book, Arc of Containment: Britain, the United States, and Anticommunism in Southeast Asia (Cornell University Press) traces how British neocolonial strategies intertwined with Southeast Asian anti-communist nationalism to usher the region from formal colonialism to US hegemony.


About the Book

In Diasporic Cold Warriors diasporic cold warriors(Cornell University Press, 2022), Chien-Wen Kung explains how the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) sowed the seeds of anticommunism among the Philippine Chinese with the active participation of the Philippine state.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, Philippine Chinese were Southeast Asia’s most exemplary Cold Warriors among overseas Chinese. During these decades, no Chinese community in the region was more vigilant in identifying and rooting out suspected communists from within its midst; none was as committed to mobilizing against the People’s Republic of China as the one in the former US colony. Ironically, for all the fears of overseas Chinese communities’ ties to the PRC at the time, the example of the Philippines shows that the “China” that intervened the most extensively in any Southeast Asian Chinese society during the Cold War was the Republic of China on Taiwan.

For the first time, Kung tells the story of the Philippine Chinese as pro-Taiwan, anticommunist partisans, tracing their evolving relationship with the KMT and successive Philippine governments over the mid-twentieth century. Throughout, he argues for a networked and transnational understanding of the ROC-KMT party-state and demonstrates that Taipei exercised a form of nonterritorial sovereignty over the Philippine Chinese with Manila’s participation and consent. Challenging depoliticized narratives of cultural integration, he also contends that, because of the KMT, Chinese identity formation and practices of belonging in the Philippines were deeply infused with Cold War ideology.

Drawing on archival research and fieldwork in Taiwan, the Philippines, the United States, and China, Diasporic Cold Warriors reimagines the histories of the ROC, the KMT, and the Philippine Chinese, connecting them to the broader canvas of the Cold War and postcolonial nation-building in East and Southeast Asia.

Diasporic Cold Warriors is available for purchase here.

SRN Virtual Event: Diaspora and Cosmopolitanism, Religion and Place, and Language and Multiculturalism in Singapore and the Region

The Singapore Research Nexus (SRN) at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Research Division, NUS invites you to a Virtual Event featuring recent research in the humanities and social sciences on Singapore.

Academics from NUS will present their studies on the themes of 1) Diaspora and Cosmopolitanism, 2) Religion and Place, and 3) Language and Multiculturalism.

Please register early through the link below. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing instructions about joining the webinar. You are free to join and leave the webinar at a time of your convenience.

Please note that the webinar may be recorded by the Singapore Research Nexus. For enquiries, please contact us at nexus@nus.edu.sg.

Date: Friday, 7 January 2022

Time: 10 AM to 4 PM (SGT)

Registration at Zoom here.

Programme available here.

new poster

ICT4Good/Asia Workshop with NUS CNM and NUS CivicTech Lab

Happening on Wednesday, 17 November: ICT4Good/Asia Workshop in collaboration with NUS Communications and New Media and NUS CivicTech Lab!

This workshop brings together researchers and practitioners pursuing ICT4Good in Asia to discuss the interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral development of the field. The morning panels feature academic topics such as educating computer science students about the civic, educating Singaporean youth about the technological, studying civic tech in human-computer interaction, and developing civic tech in Japan and Taiwan. The afternoon panels gather ICT4Good practitioners in one virtual room, discussing the various potentials of ICT4Good as a social movement, an industry, and a governance paradigm.

Enquiries at nexus@nus.edu.sg – send your full name and designation if interested to RSVP.

Download the latest program at https://fass.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Programme_ICT4Good_081121-ZW.pdf

 

ict4good poster

FASS Global Research Forum Aug 23-25 2021 – The Fruition and Challenges of Computational Social Science

NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences presents ‘Global Research Forum 2021: The Fruition and Challenges of Computational Social Science’

Dates and Times: 23 August 9am – 5.30pm, 24 August 9.30am – 8.30pm, and 25 August 9.30am – 9pm (Singapore Standard Time).

Register via Zoom: https://bit.ly/3xE0Abb

After registration, you will receive through email a Zoom link that will allow access to all three sessions. Feel free to attend the sessions that are of your interest. If you do not receive the confirmation email within two working days, please email fassresearchevents@nus.edu.sg.

Programme available here.

For more information, please refer to the website. We look forward to your registration.

fass global research forum

SRN Virtual Event on 26 Nov: Humanities and Social Sciences Research on Singapore

The Singapore Research Nexus (SRN) at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Research Division, NUS invites you to a Virtual Event featuring recent research in the humanities and social sciences on Singapore.

Academics from NUS will present their studies on the themes of 1) Cultural Policy and Heritage, 2) Citizenship, Community, and the Public Sphere, and 3) Pedagogy, Education, and Development.

Please register early through the link below. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing instructions about joining the webinar. You are free to join and leave the webinar at a time of your convenience.

Please note that the webinar may be recorded by the Singapore Research Nexus. For enquiries, please contact us at nexus@nus.edu.sg.

Date: Thursday, 26 November 2020

Time: 10 AM to 4:50 PM (SGT)

Registration at Zoom: https://nus-sg.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_IlxCcG5eR4CbHbMkDST7fw

Full Programme available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/187NzhwQJyImvHVxJwgRVADETJVVcFtvu/view?usp=sharing

Schedule

26 NOVEMBER 2020 (Thursday)
10:00 – 10:10 REGISTRATION
10:10 – 10:15 WELCOME REMARKS
Lionel Wee | Professor and Vice Dean of Research, NUS FASS
10:15 – 12:20 PANEL 1 – CULTURAL POLICY AND HERITAGE
10:15 – 10:20 Introduction of Researchers

Priya Jaradi | Lecturer, NUS History

10:20 – 10:40 White Walls Don’t Say Much: Creative Placemaking in Singapore

T.C. Chang | Associate Professor, NUS Geography

10:40 – 11:00 Singapore Chronicles: Theatre

Robin Loon | Associate Professor, NUS English Language and Literature

11:00 – 11:20 Heritagescaping the Southern Islands of Singapore “from below”

Hamzah Bin Muzaini | Assistant Professor, NUS Southeast Asian Studies

11:20 – 11:40 Community Arts and Culture Initiatives in Singapore: Spatial Opportunities and Impacts

Zdravko Trivic | Assistant Professor, NUS Architecture

11:40 – 12:20 Q & A
12:20 – 13:20 LUNCH BREAK
13:20 – 14:55 PANEL 2 – PEDAGOGY, EDUCATION, AND DEVELOPMENT
13:20 – 13:25 Introduction of Researchers

Lee Li Neng | Lecturer, NUS Psychology

13:25 – 13:45 Getting Ahead in Singapore: How Neighborhoods, Gender, and Ethnicity Affect Enrollment into Elite Schools

Vincent Chua | Associate Professor, NUS Sociology

13:45 – 14:05 The Promise and Pitfalls of Gradeless Learning: Responses to an Alternative Approach to Grading

Chris McMorran | Associate Professor, NUS Japanese Studies

14:05 – 14:25 Research from the Generative Space of the Classroom: Balancing Time and Impact

Kamalini Ramdas | Senior Lecturer, NUS Geography

14:25 – 14:55 Q & A
14:55 – 15:10 TEA BREAK
15:10 – 16:45 Panel 3 – CITIZENSHIP, COMMUNITY, AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE
15:10 – 15:15 Introduction of Researchers

Elvin Ong | Senior Tutor, NUS Political Science

15:15 – 15:35 Perceived Electoral Fairness and Media Use: Evidences from two General Elections

Weiyu Zhang | Associate Professor, NUS Communications and New Media

15:35 – 15:55 The Burdens of Ethnicity: Chinese Communities in Singapore and Their Relations with the PRC

Chong Ja Ian | Associate Professor, NUS Political Science

15:55 – 16:15 Citizenship and multilingual (homo)nationalism in Singapore’s Pink Dot discourse

Michelle M. Lazar | Associate Professor, NUS English Language and Literature

16:15 – 16:45 Q & A
16:45 – 16:50 CLOSING REMARKS
Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho | Associate Professor and Assistant Dean of Research, NUS FASS

 

About the Participants

Associate Professor T. C. Chang is a tourism geographer by training, and has research interests in urban, social-cultural and tourism geographies. His research interests include Southeast Asian tourism, vernacular architecture and heritage, arts, culture, and creativity in Asian cities. A/P Chang was Assistant Dean (Alumni and External Relations, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, NUS) in 2008-2010 and Vice Dean (External Relations and Student Life, June 2010-December 2015). He was awarded the NUS Outstanding Educator Award 2006 and the Annual Teaching Excellence Award 2008.
robin loon Robin Loon is Associate Professor at the NUS Department of English Language and Literature. His current research/teaching interests include popular culture and performance, Singapore Theatre (with special focus on Singapore English Language Theatre), media, and performance.  An active participant in the Singapore English Language Theatre scene since 1991, he has also written for the local stage. His work in theatre now mainly involves dramaturgy and play-writing.

A/P Loon conceptualized and ran Singapore’s first Dramaturg Apprentice Programme at Centre 42 in 2015 and co-organized the inaugural Asian Dramaturgs’ Network Symposium in 2016, founded by Dr Lim How Ngean. In 2014, together with Casey Lim, Chiu Chien Seen, and Michele Lim, A/P Loon set up Centre 42, a up-stream content-creation centre for Singapore theatre in partnership with the National Arts Council.

Assistant Professor Hamzah bin Muzaini is a cultural geographer at the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, NUS. His primary work explores the politics of remembering and forgetting, particularly as this intersects with issues of war, heritage, landscape, and postcoloniality. While his primary work has been centred on how the heritage of the Second World War has commemorated in Singapore and Malaysia, he is also broadening this into understanding the phenomenon of cultural theme parks in East Malaysia, migrant heritage making ‘from below’ among the Moluccans in the Netherlands, and the practices and politics of heritagizing the Southern Islands in Singapore (with emphasis on St John’s, Lazarus, and Seringat Islands). He has published in internationally refereed journals and is co-author/editor of Contested Memoryscapes: the Politics of Second World War Commemoration in Singapore (2016, Routledge, with Brenda Yeoh) and After Heritage: Critical Issues of Heritage from Below (2018, Edward Elgar, with Claudio Minca).
Zdravko Trivic is Assistant Professor at the NUS Department of Architecture, School of Design and Environment (SDE). He works closely with CSAC (Centre for Sustainable Asian Cities), CARE (Centre for Ageing Research in the Environment) and CFA (Centre For the Arts), NUS. His research interests include: multi-sensorial urbanism, health-supportive and ageing-friendly design, urban space in high-density contexts, creative placemaking and community participation. Dr Trivic is the author of Community Arts and Culture Initiatives in Singapore: Understanding the Nodal Approach (NY, London; New York: Routledge, 2020) and the co-author of Re-framing Urban Space: Urban Design for Emerging Hybrid and High-density Conditions (with Cho and Heng; New York: Routledge, 2016), among other publications. He is the recipient of two outstanding paper awards at the UIA 2017 Seoul World Architects Congress.
jaradi, priya Priya Jaradi is senior lecturer at the Department of History. She is Convenor for Art History, a collaboration between National University of Singapore (NUS) and the National Gallery Singapore. Former Curator at the Asian Civilisations Museum, she combines her curatorial and scholarly interests in teaching and research. Her past publications with Oxford University Press and Marg reveal her interests in art collecting and princely modernities in South Asia. Her current research for the NUS Museum examines India-Singapore museum exchange within the context of Cold War diplomacy, the Non-Aligned Movement, and decolonization. She is a recipient of the Getty Foundation Grant for 2020 and 2021. In keeping with the multi-disciplinary ethos of her past projects, Dr Jaradi hopes to grow the Faculty’s Art History Minor and inspire students to emerge as practitioners, curators, and scholars.
chua vincent Vincent Chua is Associate Professor at the NUS Department of Sociology.  He received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Toronto in November 2010. His main research area is social networks with an emphasis on social capital – primarily how institutional factors such as labour markets and education affect the job search and networking practices of people. His other research area is the sociology of education.
Chris McMorran is Associate Professor at the NUS Department of Japanese Studies. A cultural geographer of contemporary Japan, his research analyzes how identity and meaning are built, practiced, experienced, and read in cultural landscapes. He has studied these processes through the lenses of tourism and labor, which has led to publications in Mobilities, Landscape Journal, Area, Tourism Geographies, and in a 2018 volume titled Rethinking Japanese Feminisms. This work will appear in the forthcoming book, Last Resort: Labor, Tourism, and Identity in Japan (University of Hawai’i Press).

A/P McMorran is also interested in the geographies of teaching and learning. Along these lines, in 2018 he was awarded a LIFT Grant ($70K) to research podcasting as a teaching and learning tool and to produce the “Home on the Dot” podcast, which takes inspiration from student research projects to analyze the multifaceted meanings of home in Singapore. In 2020, Season 3, which is devoted to stories of how Covid-19 has impacted home, began airing.

Kamalini Ramdas is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Geography. She teaches modules in social and cultural geography. Dr Ramdas is particularly interested in the spatialities of gender, sexuality, and ‘race’ and the application of social theory in geography. Her specific areas of interest include feminist care ethics, critical geographies of familyhood, and community and queer politics.
Dr Lee Li Neng is a Lecturer at the NUS Department of Psychology. He is interested in looking at how education shapes perceptions on learning and developing the youth holistically, especially in the areas of critical thinking, curiosity, and creativity. Concurrently, he is also interested in innovations and advances in education, and how technology can be utilised to provide a more personalised form of education for individuals and support the development of good teaching.
zhang weiyu Weiyu Zhang is Associate Professor at the Department of Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication from Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on civic engagement and ICTs, with an emphasis on Asia. She is the author of the book The Internet and New Social Formation in China: Fandom Publics in the Making (Routledge, 2016). Her published articles have appeared in Journal of Communication, Communication Theory, Communication Research, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Information, Communication, & Society, New Media & Society, Computers & Education, Public Understanding of Science, the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, and many other journals. She recently completed a project that develops and examines an online platform for citizen deliberation. #CivicTech #OnlineDeliberation #FanActivism
ja ian chong Chong Ja Ian is Associate Professor at the NUS Department of Political Science. The focus of his teaching and research is on international relations, especially IR theory, security, Chinese foreign policy, and international relations in the Asia-Pacific. Of particular interest to him are issues that stand at the nexus of international and domestic politics, such as influences on nationalism and the consequences of major power competition on the domestic politics of third countries. A/P Chong is author of External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation — China, Indonesia, Thailand, 1893-1952 (Cambridge, 2012), which received the 2013 Best Book Award from the International Security Studies Section of the International Studies Association. He was a Harvard-Yenching Visiting Scholar in 2019-2020.
https://profile.nus.edu.sg/fass/ellmml/IMG_1416.JPGedited.jpg Michelle M. Lazar is Associate Professor and Head of the NUS Department of English Language and Literature. A linguist, she specialises in critical discourse studies, gender and sexuality, media and politics, and multimodal discourse analysis. Michelle is founding editor of the Routledge Critical Studies in Discourse monograph series, is an advisory board member of the Oxford Language, Gender, and Sexuality book series, and is on the editorial boards of Critical Discourse Studies, Discourse & Society, Social Semiotics, and Gender & Language.
Dr Elvin Ong is Senior Tutor in the Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore. He was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute of Asian Research (IAR) at the University of British Columbia. His primary research interests are in the politics and policies of authoritarian regimes, with specific focus on the formation of opposition coalitions contesting against a dominant incumbent. His book manuscript, Opposing Power: Building Opposition Alliances in Electoral Autocracies, is under contract with the University of Michigan Press, Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies Series.
Lionel Wee is Professor at the Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore and Vice Dean of Research at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. A linguist, he is interested in language policy (especially in Southeast Asia), the grammar of Singapore English, metaphorical discourse, and general issues in sociolinguistics and pragmatics. He has published in the Journal of Pragmatics, Discourse Studies, Language in Society, Journal of Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, and Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, among others.
ho elaine lynn-ee Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho is Associate Professor at the Department of Geography and Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore. She is also Assistant Dean (Research Division) at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Her research addresses how citizenship is changing as a result of multi-directional migration flows in the Asia-Pacific. She is author of Citizens in Motion: Emigration, Immigration and Re-migration Across China’s Borders (2019, Stanford University Press). Her current research focuses on two domains: first, transnational ageing and care in the Asia-Pacific; and second, im/mobilities and diaspora aid at the China-Myanmar border. She is Editor of Social and Cultural Geography, and serves on several journal editorial boards.

 

HKUST-NUS: Navigating a World of Disruption

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC HAS IRREVOCABLY changed the world, empowering us to take new approaches and employ new methods to do just about everything—from administering public policy and trade relations to managing economic and social activities.

The National University of Singapore’s Associate Professor Itty Abraham (Department of Southeast Asian Studies), Sooyeon Kim(Department of Political Science) and Prof David Taylor (Department of Geography) will be discussing this topic along with counterparts at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in the concluding episode of the HKUST Global Webinar Series.

During this session, “Navigating a World of Disruption”, the panel will be sharing their research and perspectives on the deep and varied effects of COVID-19 on food security, climate change, air quality, global trade, trends in international migration, remittances and scholarship.

Do not miss this! Register here https://bit.ly/HKUST_NUS_Webinar_Reg.

Launch of Imperial Creatures: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819–1942 by Tim Barnard

Imperial Creatures: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819–1942


Date & Time:
Wednesday, 12 February 2020, from 6:00 to 8:30 pm
Venue: The Pod, NLB
Organizers: Singapore Research Nexus
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.sg/e/imperial-creatures-humans-and-other-animals-in-colonial-singapore-181919-registration-77088051437


Programme

6:00 pm Registration/Refreshments/Book Sale
6:30 pm Welcome Remarks by Chair, Associate Professor Maitrii Aung-Thwin (NUS History/Asia Research Institute)
6:35 pm Presentation by Associate Professor Timothy P. Barnard (NUS History)
6:55 pm Presentation by Assistant Professor Anthony Medrano (Yale-NUS)
7:15 pm Presentation by Assistant Professor Darinee Algirisamy (NUS South Asian Studies)
7:35 pm Q and A/Discussion, Moderated by Chair
8:05 pm Book Sale with Autograph Signing


About the Book

Imperial Creatures: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819-1942
Timothy P. Barnard
NUS Press

The environmental turn in the humanities and social sciences has meant a new focus on the imperial creatureshistory of animals. This is one of the first books to look across species at animals in a colonial, urban society. If imperialism is a series of power relationships, it involves not only the subjugation of human communities but also animals. What was the relationship between these two processes in colonial Singapore? How did various interactions with animals enable changes in interactions between people, and the expression of power in human terms?
The imposition of imperial power relationships was a process that was often complex and messy, and it led to the creation of new communities throughout the world, including the colonial port city of Singapore. Through a multidisciplinary consideration of fauna, this book weaves together a series of tales to document how animals were cherished, slaughtered, monitored and employed in a colonial society, to provide insight into how imperial rule was imposed on an island in Southeast Asia. Fauna and their histories of interacting with humans, thus, become useful tools for understanding our past, revealing the effects of establishing a colony on the biodiversity of a region, and the institutions that quickly transformed it. All animals, including humans, have been creatures of imperialism in Singapore. Their stories teach us lessons about the structures that upheld such a society and how it developed over time.

Author Bio
Timothy P. Barnard
is an associate professor in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore, where he specializes in the environmental and cultural history of island Southeast Asia.

Speaker Bios
Anthony Medrano is a historian of the Asian marine environment who studies the interplay between people and fish, science and society, and technology and nature.

Darinee Algirisamy’s work engages with the history of poverty and social reform in colonial India, with a focus on South India, between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. The transnational circulation of Indian reform movements in Southeast Asia and the history of the Tamil diaspora are related areas of interest.

Chair Bio
Maitrii Aung-Thwin received his PhD from the University of Michigan (2001) where he studied Burmese and Southeast Asian history. He has lived and conducted research in Southeast Asia for nearly two decades.

 

FASS90 GALA DINNER | Looking Back, Pressing Forward

NUS FASS marked its 90th anniversary, the Dean delivered a strong performance on stage, and Guest of Honour Mrs Josephine Teo, Minister for Manpower, called for further government-academia collaboration on public policy.

From its beginnings in 1929 as part of Raffles College offering three-year diplomas in English, Economics, History and Geography, to its position today as a global top 20 provider of higher education in the Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences & Management, the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) has come a long way.

Mrs Josephine Teo, Minister of Manpower and Second Minister for Home Affairs, talked about the ways academia can help drive public policy and called for their greater collaboration with the government.Photo Credit: Ministry of Manpower

The Dean of FASS, Professor Robbie Goh, referenced this journey during his opening address at FASS 90th Anniversary Gala Dinner on Friday (15 November 2019) evening. “FASS began life…with the four founding majors of English, History and Geography. Its inaugural intake was 43 students,” said Professor Goh. “Fast forward 90 years…FASS takes in about 1,600 undergraduate students each, has 16 departments offering 20 majors, [and so far can count] among its alumni – a President, a Prime Minister, several Ministers and ambassadors, and other top civil servants of Singapore, along with notable CEOs, entrepreneurs, well-known actors, musicians and others who have contributed much to the world.”

Professor Goh performed for all supporters of FASS’s fundraising efforts.

Professor Goh proceeded to share details of initiatives and programmes already underway at NUS FASS with close to 300 alumni, staff, students and other supporters who packed the Empress Ballroom at Carlton Hotel in downtown Singapore to celebrate the Faculty’s 90th anniversary. These included the launch of: a new major under the Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) programme; joint and double degree programmes with overseas partners (the latest being the University of California, Berkeley); the FASS Social Incubator Programme, which sees to the provision of seed money to students working on innovative solutions to social work issues; and the “Industry Tracks” programme, which seeks to enhance the employability of FASS graduates by giving them the training, guidance and experience they need to succeed in the key industry segments most likely to hire them.

Assembled to cut FASS’s 90th Birthday cake (from left): Professor Goh; Professor Ho; Emeritus Professor Edwin Thumboo; Mr Archie Ong; Mrs Tan Suan Imm; Mr Soh Yi Da; Ms Zoey Lim, President, NUS Students’ Arts and Social Sciences Club.

Guest of Honour Mrs Josephine Teo, Minister of Manpower and Second Minister for Home Affairs, a FASS alumnus herself, shared the Government’s current approaches to helping ensure Singapore’s ageing population have sufficient funds to retire comfortably. She cited some of the major contributions the academic community has made to Central Provident Fund (CPF) policy to date, and called for further Government-academia collaboration in specific areas of research and public communications. Among her suggestions are programmes that seek to answer questions such as: How can it be ensured that the Basic Retirement Sum (BRS) of each CPF member is sufficient to cover basic expenses in the future?; How can the Government increase understanding of and promote take-up of schemes meant to enable retirees to supplement their incomes by making use of their HDB apartments?; How can older workers be incentivised to start their payouts later, so they will have higher payouts when they eventually retire?

Professor Ho Teck Hua, Senior Deputy President and Provost, NUS, sealed the FASS Leapfrog Time Capsule.

“We can make our system better through constantly looking over the horizon and planning ahead. In that sense, the CPF must remain a ‘live system’, always evolving and ever-responsive to emerging needs,” Mrs Teo said. “We hope that the academic and social science research community can join us to make it better.”Immediately following a dazzling Malay dance performance by dance group NUS Ilsa Tari, came students Wesley Wang (Year 2 Linguistics Major) and Nediva Singam (Year 4 Geography Major) sharing their experiences and lessons learnt during their respective turns in overseas exchange study programmes. They spoke in support of the launch of the new FASS Student Advancement Fund that extends further financial support for needy students.

NUS Ilsa Tari in perfect form

The proceeds of the Gala Dinner went directly to this fund, and the generosity of all donors so moved Professor Goh that he dedicated his rendition of James Taylor’s classic You’ve Got a Friend and the timeless hymn by John Newton, Amazing Grace to them. The audience returned his gesture not just with heartfelt applause.

Professor Goh, Professor Ho Teck Hua, Senior Deputy President and Provost, NUS, Singapore’s legendary poet Emeritus Professor Edwin Thumboo, illustrious Singapore educator and alumnus Mrs Tan Suan Imm, and, distinguished alumni Archie Ong and Soh Yi Da, who played key roles on the FASS 90 Gala Dinner Committee, came together to cut FASS’s 90th birthday cake.

Vernon Cornelius (of the Quests from 1960s Singapore) and his band in action

The climax of the event was the sealing of the FASS Leapfrog Time Capsule in commemoration of FASS’s 90th Anniversary. Professors Goh and Ho placed items representing the Deanery, every department, alumni, student body, along with the day’s edition of The Straits Times into the time capsule, which they set to reopen in 2079 on the occasion of FASS’s 150th anniversary. Professor Ho then sealed it by pressing a virtual button on an iPad, setting off confetti and cheers from everyone.

NUS Theatre Studies Joint Book Launch

Title: NUS Theatre Studies Joint Book Launch featuring Bodies and Transformance in Taiwanese Contemporary Theater by Dr Peilin Liang, Theatre-Fiction in Britain from Henry James to Doris Lessing: Writing in the Wings by Dr Graham Wolfe, and Enacting Lecoq: Movement in Theatre, Cognition, and Life by Dr Maiya Murphy

Date: Wednesday, 9 October 2019

Time: 6:30-9:05pm

Venue: The Pod, NLB

Organizers: FASS Research Division

RSVP at Eventbrite.

Description

Three authors will share their new books dealing with the study of theatre:

  1. Bodies and Transformance in Taiwanese Contemporary Theater (Routledge, 2019) by Dr Peilin Liang, Assistant Professor, NUS English Language & Literature

In Bodies and Transformance in Taiwanese Contemporary Theater, Peilin Liang develops a theory of bodily transformation. Proposing the concept of transformance, a conscious and rigorous process of self-cultivation toward a reconceptualized body, Liang shows how theater practitioners of minoritized cultures adopt transformance as a strategy to counteract the embodied practices of ideological and economic hegemony. This book observes key Taiwanese contemporary theater practitioners at work in forging five reconceptualized bodies: the energized, the rhythmic, the ritualized, the joyous, and the (re)productive. By focusing on the development of transformance between the years of 2000–2008, a tumultuous political watershed in Taiwan’s history, the author succeeds in bridging postcolonialism and interculturalism in her conceptual framework. Ideal for scholars of Asian and Postcolonial Theater, Bodies and Transformance in Taiwanese Contemporary Theater shows how transformance, rather than performance, calibrates with far greater precision and acuity the state of the body and the culture that it seeks to create.

2. Theatre-Fiction in Britain from Henry James to Doris Lessing: Writing in the Wings (Routledge, 2019) by Dr Graham Wolfe, Associate Professor, NUS English Language & Literature

Theatre-Fiction in Britain from Henry James to Doris LessingThis volume posits and explores an intermedial genre called theatre-fiction, understood in its broadest sense as referring to novels and stories that engage in concrete and sustained ways with theatre. Though theatre has made star appearances in dozens of literary fictions, including many by modern history’s most influential authors, no full-length study has dedicated itself specifically to theatre-fiction―in fact there has not even been a recognized name for the phenomenon. Focusing on Britain, where most of the world’s theatre-novels have been produced, and commencing in the late-nineteenth century, when theatre increasingly took on major roles in novels, Theatre-Fiction in Britain argues for the benefits of considering these works in relation to each other, to a history of development, and to the theatre of their time. New modes of intermedial analysis are modelled through close studies of Henry James, Somerset Maugham, Virginia Woolf, J. B. Priestley, Ngaio Marsh, Angela Carter, and Doris Lessing, all of whom were deeply involved in the theatre-world as playwrights, directors, reviewers, and theorists. Drawing as much on theatre scholarship as on literary theory, Theatre-Fiction in Britain presents theatre-fiction as one of the past century’s most vital means of exploring, reconsidering, and bringing forth theatre’s potentials.

3. Enacting Lecoq: Movement in Theatre, Cognition, and Life (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) by Dr Maiya Murphy, Assistant Professor, NUS English Language & Literature

This book examines the theatrical movement-based pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq (1921-1999)enacting lecoq through the lens of the cognitive scientific paradigm of enaction. The conversation between these two both uncovers more of the possible cognitive processes at work in Lecoq pedagogy and proposes how Lecoq’s own practical and philosophical approach could have something to offer the development of the enactive paradigm. Understanding Lecoq pedagogy through enaction can shed new light on the ways that movement, key to Lecoq’s own articulation of his pedagogy, might cognitively constitute the development of Lecoq’s ultimate creative figure – the actor-creator. Through an enactive lens, the actor-creator can be understood as not only a creative figure, but also the manifestation of a fundamentally new mode of cognitive selfhood. This book engages with Lecoq pedagogy’s significant practices and principles including the relationship between the instructor and student, identifications, mime, play, mask work, language, improvisation, and movement analysis.

 

Programme

6:30-7:00pm – Registration/Refreshments/Books available for purchase

7:00-7:05pm – Welcome Remarks by Chair, Dr Walter Lim, Associate Professor, NUS English Language & Literature

7:05-7:25pm – Peilin Liang Presentation on Bodies and Transformance in Taiwanese Contemporary Theater

7:25-7:45pm – Graham Wolfe Presentation on Theatre-Fiction in Britain from Henry James to Doris Lessing: Writing in the Wings

7:45-8:05pm – Maiya Murphy Presentation on Enacting Lecoq: Movement in Theatre, Cognition, and Life

8:05-8:35pm – Q and A/Discussion, Moderated by Chair

8:35-9:05pm – Book Sale with Autograph Signing

 

Author Bios

As a researcher, educator, facilitator and translator of theatre and performance, Peilin peilin liangLiang is immensely interested in storytelling through shapeshifting. She received her MA in English from the University of Auckland and her PhD from the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Prior to her appointment at the National University of Singapore, she was a postdoctoral fellow with the Asian Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include (post)colonialism, minor transnationalism, cultural diversity and dynamics of cross-cultural exchange in relation to body training, performance pedagogy, and theatre.

 

graham wolfeGraham Wolfe is an Associate Professor in the Theatre Studies division of the English Language & Literature Department at NUS. He came to Singapore in 2012, having lived for most of his life in Canada. He has also taught at the University of Toronto, where he completed his Masters and PhD in Drama. He also holds a BA (Honours) and B.Ed from Queen’s University, Canada. At NUS, he teaches “Major Playwrights of the 20th Century”, “Theatre and Postmodernism”, and “The Theatre Experience”.

 

maiya murphy Maiya Murphy is a researcher, teacher, deviser, and performer. She began her career as an actor and dancer focused on movement-based training, creation, and performance. Her practical background informs her research on relationships between practice, theory, movement, and the cognitive sciences. She received her BA in Theater Studies from Yale University, trained in Lecoq-based pedagogy at the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA), and received her Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama from the University of California, San Diego. She also makes theatre with her collective, Autopoetics.