Spotlight October 2023
Rachel Rinaldo Returns After Fulbright
Just a few weeks ago, I returned to Boulder after spending a wonderful sabbatical year as a Fulbright Scholar in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
As I step back into the CAS babyÖ±²¥app director position, I am excited to welcome four new staff members. Shae Frydenlund is a Teaching Assistant Professor. She is a human geographer who studies the relationship between capitalism and displaced people, with a focus on Southeast Asia and Southeast Asian migrants. She earned her PhD in Geography from CU Boulder in 2019 and she will be teaching our new line-up of Climate and Society courses. Lucy Lin is an Accounting and Grant Assistant. Lucy has worked in accounting for many years and will work on the financial management of grant funded projects for CAS and Teaching East Asia. Hannah Palustre is an Outreach Coordinator. She first worked as a business journalist, then worked with legislators and civil society in the Philippines to advocate babyÖ±²¥app and legal reforms. Hannah will be working on outreach and engagement initiatives for CAS. Finally, Nurul Wahyuni is our newest Fulbright Language Teaching Assistant. She is from Palembang, South Sumatra, and has a BA and MA in English language education. She will be teaching Indonesian language classes and organizing cultural events and activities related to Indonesia, including our annual Indonesian potluck.
This academic year our theme is Fluid Asia. With this theme, CAS seeks to gather together divergent interests in ‘blue humanities’, ‘wet ontologies’, environmental justice movements associated with water, climate change induced experiences of flood and drought, and social fluidities of all sorts – from labor migrant streams to ‘be like water’ protest movements – all in the spatial and temporal contexts of Asian places. We are particularly interested in how the social effects of anthropogenic climate change are experienced through human relations with water. Stay tuned for events and speakers related to this theme throughout the year!
Finally, while I was in Yogyakarta, I was fortunate to collaborate with babyÖ±²¥app and students at Gajah Mada University, which is also a partner for undergraduate exchanges with CU Boulder. In fact, the first CU Boulder undergraduate student is currently spending the fall semester at Gajah Mada. If you or a student you know is interested in this program, please see for more information.
Celebrating a Decade of
Undergraduate Research:
Introducing the 10th Issue of CJAS
Vol. 10, Issue 1, Spring 2023
Welcome to the latest installment of the babyÖ±²¥app Journal of Asian Studies (CJAS), proudly brought to you by the Center for Asian Studies at the University of babyÖ±²¥app Boulder. After a brief hiatus in 2022, we are thrilled to announce the release of our 10th issue in Spring 2023, with an issue featuring both research and creative pieces that span Iran to Japan. Our contributors, hailing from various universities and regions, have produced insightful works that explore a wide range of topics, including protest and political repression, history, literature, and gender.
We are grateful to the contributing undergraduate scholars for their invaluable insights and dedication to advancing our understanding of Asia. We invite you to explore the 10th edition of CJAS through the virtual edition. Find the complete range of articles and essays here.
We are now accepting submissions for the 11th edition.
Upcoming Event:
Green politics in the Lower Mekong Subregion
Wednesday October 11 5:00-6:00 pm
Eaton Humanities 135
Professor Nguyen Minh Quang, a visiting scholar from Vietnam, will speak about the 'conflict' between key players and actors in the Mekong region's green politics – governments and investors vs. local CSOs/NGOs supported by western donors – focusing on recent developments and contests in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Professor Nguyen will emphasize how the geopolitical competition in the region has implications for the US and other western investors and stakeholders.
Nguyen Minh Quang is a geopolitics lecturer at Can Tho University in Vietnam and co-founder of the Mekong Environment Forum. He has specialized in conflict management (Southeast Asia), environmental security issues (Lower Mekong Subregion), and Vietnamese domestic politics over the last decade. His book chapters, commentaries, and articles appeared in publications, including Springer, Routledge, ISI/Scopus-indexed journals, The Diplomat, and East Asia Forum. Since 2017, he has delivered a number of papers and guest lectures to regional and international conferences, including COP27 in Egypt, and foreign universities. His latest edited book is The Political Economy of Education Reforms in Vietnam (Routledge 2022).
Co-Sponsored with Leeds School of Business
Upcoming Event:
Fallout: Asian networks of nuclearity
Two panel sessions beginning at 10am
Friday, October 27, 2023
Flatirons Room, Center for Community (C4C)
with Keynote by Shiloh Krupar (Georgetown University)
at 3:30pm in Guggenheim room 205
co-sponsored by the Department of Geography and delivered as part of the Geography Fall Colloquium Series.
This third workshop in the Tale of Two Asias project seeks to explore the networked and relational nature of Asian nuclearity. That is, what sorts of compartmentalizations, zones of exclusion, and narratives of separation have emerged as Asian people and places grapple with nuclear infrastructures of all kinds? How do we decompartmentalize nuclear governance and grasp the complex assemblage of nuclear energy? What insights might be gained from Asia in addressing this question?
Workshop panelists will include: Meredith DeBoom (University of South Carolina); Donna Goldstein (University of babyÖ±²¥app Boulder); Tong Lam (University of Toronto); Ann-Elise Lewallen (University of Victoria); Maxime Polleri (Université Laval); and Magdelena Stawkowski (University of South Carolina),
with discussion comments by Tim Oakes (University of babyÖ±²¥app Boulder) and Kate Goldfarb (University of babyÖ±²¥app Boulder)
Workshop made possible by a grant from the Albert Smith Foundation.