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Southeast Asia Luce Foundation Archives Projects: Contaminating Archives: Documenting Power and Resistance in Southeast Asia

Description of research themes and collections being considered under the Henry Luce Foundation grant: Tracing Authoritarianism: Linking Southeast Asia and Southeast Asian-America Through Archives, Language, and Pedagogy.

Conference Description

Contaminating Archives: Documenting Power and Resistance in Southeast Asia and Southeast Asian America, a conference to be held at the University of Washington Libraries, Feb 8-10, 2024, is supported by the Henry Luce Foundation LuceSea grant to the Center for Southeast Asia and its Diasporas at the University of Washington. We invite participants to reconsider the role of historical collections in relation to concepts of care and restitution and as forms of empowerment against state-sponsored violence and community erasure. We take our title from the notion of the archive as a living and dynamic force, considering how the archive and the act of archiving can empower, but also contaminate and be contaminated.  We look at different kinds of archives and their dangers of contamination: colonial documents and photographs, records of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, forensic evidence of the atrocities of the Marcos regime and the “drug wars” in the Philippines, and contemporary state violence in Burma. The conference seeks to bring together Critical Archival Studies scholars with archives practitioners, artists, and communities of interest who are touched by these archives: communities whose histories are constrained by the archives’ narrations; journalists who are contaminated by reporting and archiving authoritarian violence; artists and filmmakers engaged in mediating this violence in public cultural projects of reconciliation and restitution.    

We are looking for papers that address the following themes:

  • The role of archives in public projects promoting reconciliation and restitution in communities of harm resulting from authoritarian violence
  •  The role of archives in public pedagogy and meaning-making
  • Community archives as alternative sources of archival authority in knowledge production
  •  Theorizing the limits of archives’ authority: authority in truth-seeking versus oppressive proscription
  • Exploring the violence of acts of archiving, including for journalists, archivists and government officials who experience that violence
  •  Critiques of colonial archives and their presumptions.  Acts of redescription and responsibilities of archivists in collaboration with communities of harm
  • The role of archives in judicial accountability
  • How do art and curatorial practices drawing on archival materials care for, resist, or resignify histories?
  • Open topics related to “Contaminating Archives”

Provisional Program

Provisional Program

Petersen Room, Allen Library

9:00 -10:00  Keynote Discussion: Ricky Punzalan/Dierdre de la Cruz (University of Michigan, ReCollect/ReConnect Project) and Thuy Vo Dang (University of California, Los Angeles. Department of Information Studies) in Conversation

10-10:30 - coffee break

10:30 – 12:00  Panel 1: Archiving the Aftermath of Authoritarian Violence

  1. Joel Ariate: DahasPH: The Challenges in Counting Reported Drug-Related Deaths in the Philippines  (Third World Studies Center, UP Diliman)
  2. Mark Sanchez: Documenting Martial Law: Human Rights Archives under the Marcos Dictatorship (Vanderbilt University)
  3. Lila Shahani: Grieving the Ungrievable: trauma and memory during Martial Law. (Formerly Office of the President and UNESCO, Department of Foreign Affairs, and member of the Martial Law Museum and Library website.)
  4. Song Pheaktra: Re-conceptualizing the documentation of S-21: How Archives tell us about the endless murder. (Toul Sleng Museum Archives, Director of Research)

Moderator: Judith Henchy, University of Washington Libraries, Southeast Asia Section, and Jackson School of International Studies

12.00 – 1.30 pm: Lunch break

1.30 – 3:00 Panel 2: Reconciliation through Truth-telling in the Archive

  1. Jorge Bayona: Tracing Tarhata: Seeking the archival footprint of a Muslim princess turned flapper turned rebel. (Colegio de Mexico)
  2. Florianne Jimenes: Obedient Ghosts: Filipino Students in the Archives (U New Hampshire)
  3. Lina Chhun: “On The Tragedy of Cambodian Historiography”  (UT Austin)
  4. Conor Casey: TBA  (Labor Archives of Washington, UW Libraries)

Moderator: Vince Rafael, University of Washington, History Department

3:00 - 3:30 coffee break

3.30 - 5.30 Panel 3: Post Colonial Reflections in the Refractive Archive

  1. Bulkhia Panalondong: #MILKTEAALLIANCE in Southeast Asia as digital revolution and repression in Myanmar and Thailand: Archiving power and resistance in Southeast Asia (Mindanao Central University) (Canceled)
  2. Citra Aryandari. The Singing Scrolls: Javanese Methods of Archiving (Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta)
  3. Phi Nguyen: Deconstructing the ‘Sacred and the Spectacle’: Navigating Religious Rituals in Hue Through Official and Living Archives (EPFL - École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne)
  4. Thun Theara: Only the Victor Can Write History: Archiving Memorials of Post-War Cambodia (Center for Khmer Studies, LuceSEA Fellow; University of Hong Kong)

Moderator: Jenna Grant, University of Washington, Anthropology Department

Friday Feb 9th

Petersen Room, Allen Library

9:00 - 10:00  Keynote Discussion: Chuck Crisanto (Human Rights Violations Victims' Memorial Commission) and Michelle Caswell (University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Information Studies ) in Conversation

10:00 - 10:30 coffee break

10:30 - 12:00 Panel 4: Archives in the Community, community archives

  1. Jolene Beiser with Julia Huynh: Reparative visions for the Southeast Asian Archive: sustaining community-centered archives practice (University of California, Irvine, Southeast Asian Archive)
  2. Adrian De Leon: The Lost Cassettes of the Cecelia Navarro Murder: Archival Absence and Feminist Testimony from Seattle’s National Pinoy Archives (University of Southern California)
  3. Sarah Nguyen: Authenticity of Intergenerational Vietnamese Diasporic Archives: Information (dis)order through generative and vital nostalgia (University of Washington, Information School)
  4. Akarath Soukhaphon: The Lao American Archive Project: Opening up Lao American History (University of Wisconsin, Madison)

Moderator: Cari Coe, University of Washington Libraries, Southeast Asian Studies Section

12:00 - 1:30 Lunch break

1:30 - 3:00 Panel 5: Archival Images, interwoven truths

  1. Sokunthary Svay: “The Elusive Archive: In Search of Cambodia(ns)” (City University of New York)
  2. Kathleen Escarcha: Playing with the Archives in Gina Apostol’s Insurrecto  (University of Washington, English Department)
  3. Sunshine Blanco: Weaving the archive (University of California, Riverside)
  4. Benedict Olgado: Emancipatory Erasures (University of the Philippines/University of California, Irvine)

Moderator: Nazry Bahrawy, University of Washington, Department of Asian Languages and Literature

3:15 - 5:00 Film Event Discussion 

Saturday

12:00 - 2:00 Explore the art of Cambodian American artist Anida Yoeu Ali at the Seattle Asian Art Museum and hear her in conversation with artist Sokunthary Svay.

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