Speaker: Prof. Thongchai Winichakul (Asia Research Institute, NUS & University of Wisconsin‐Madison, USA)
Date: Wednesday, 12 October 2011
Time: 3:30pm – 5:00pm
Venue: AS3, Level 6, SEAS Seminar Room (06-20)
Synopsis
Thirty years after the massacre in Bangkok on 6 October 1976, the perpetrators who were jubilant after the carnage have now gone silent. The talk explains the reasons for their silence, plus intriguing stories from encounters with former enemies: a possible murderer who forgot his past, the betrayed and disillusioned militia, and a royalist demagogue who stood by what he did.
About the speaker
Thongchai Winichakul is currently a Professor in the Department of History, University of Wisconsin‐Madison, USA, teaching both undergraduate and graduate courses. He obtained his PhD in History from the University of Sydney and was a lecturer at Thammasat University, Bangkok from 1988 to 1991. His research interests are in cultural and intellectual history of early modern and modern Thailand and
Southeast Asia (the nineteenth century to early twentieth century), especially the encounters between Southeast Asian societies and the West. Prof Winichakul’s other subject interests include nationalism, historical geography and cartography, and how societies deal with their troubling past and the transnational flows of knowledge.