Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Tom Pepinsky, (Walter F. LaFeber Professor of Government and Public Policy and Director, Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University), who will discuss the decolonial turn in Southeast Asian studies.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at the Rockefeller Hall 374. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

About the Talk

The decolonial turn in Southeast Asian studies raises fundamental questions about the production of knowledge about the region, and the role of Western institutions, foreign scholars, and externally-oriented conceptual models in construction Southeast Asia as a field of study. In this presentation, Tom Pepinsky will speak frankly about how scholars who share a normative commitment to decolonization should wrestle with these questions. Decolonization can be understood through at least four partially-overlapping perspectives: individual, institutional, ideational, and rhetorical. Thinking comparatively across world regions and academic disciplines, and reflecting on the position of the Cornell Southeast Asia Program as a central node in a global network of knowledge production, he will argue for a pragmatic and explicitly political approach to Southeast Asian studies—at Cornell and beyond. He will conclude by speculating about the possibility of a Southeast Asian studies that transcends a Western preoccupation with itself, reflecting on old debates about the possibility of an autonomous history of Southeast Asia, but in a new era with a new purpose. The goal of this lecture is to welcome scholars into an open and collective discussion about the past, present, and future of the field.

About the Speaker

Thomas Pepinsky is the Walter F. LaFeber Professor in the Department of Government and Brooks School of Public Policy at Cornell University, and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He specializes in comparative politics and international political economy, with a special interest in Southeast Asia. He is the author, most recently, of Piety and Public Opinion: Understanding Indonesian Islam (Oxford University Press, 2018, with R. William Liddle and Saiful Mujani), and Pandemic Politics (Princeton University Press, 2022, with Shana Kushner Gadarian and Sara Wallace Goodman). His current research addresses identity, politics, and political economy in comparative and international politics.