Join us for a virtual discussion with Adam Bobbette, author of The Pulse of the Earth: Political Geology in Java and winner of the 2025 Benda Prize. This virtual conversation is open to the broader public, and is hosted by GETSEA.

All participants should read the Preface and Chapter 1. Those interested in reading more should also consider Chapter 3.

The Pulse of the Earth is a highly innovative and compelling account of the intersections between geology, colonial history, and spiritual cosmologies. Adam Bobbette reframes Java as a pivotal site for the development of geological knowledge, challenging the conventional Western-centric narratives of scientific history. By delving into Javanese spiritual practices and their influence on geological thought, he unveils how volcanology not only transformed but was also shaped by local cosmologies. Through riveting accounts of political struggles, colonial ambitions, and indigenous epistemologies, the book illuminates the deep geosocial tectonics that continue to influence how humans and landscapes interact. Particularly striking are Bobbette’s insights into the coexistence and tensions between scientific and spiritual epistemologies, revealing how each seeks to understand the rhythms of the earth.

The Pulse of the Earth offers fresh perspectives on human and more-than-human entanglements that help rethink the Anthropocene. The book is a monumental contribution to environmental humanities and political geology, an emerging field that blurs the boundary between science and social history. It eloquently appeals to scholars across disciplines, and is a timely read, not least in offering a refreshing perspective on how climate crises have been addressed in the past and the present.

With an introduction by Ambassador Derek Mitchell

Myanmar stands at a critical crossroads. Nearly five years after the coup, the country faces humanitarian catastrophe, economic collapse, and ongoing violence. During this Forum on Burmese Democracy, leading voices will share their perspectives on the crisis: Sean Turnell, economic advisor and former political prisoner, Miemie Wynn Byrd, security and civil-military relations expert, and Tom Andrews, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar. The panel will examine Myanmar’s current trajectory, the challenges to democratic recovery, and the role of international engagement and diaspora communities. Kim Aris, Son of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, will join the presenters via video to provide an update on humanitarian relief efforts.

About the Speakers

Sean Turnell - Economic Advisor and Former Political Prisoner

Miemie Winn Byrd - Security and Civil-Military Relations Expert

Tom Andrews - UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar

This is a hybrid event. To join the livestream, please register here: https://cornell.zoom.us/meeting/register/4VrtIZVtSJ-wVDzsD_9QlA

Join us for a talk by Ashley Thompson, Hiram W Woodward Chair of Southeast Asian Art at SOAS University of London.

This lecture will take place at The Physical Sciences Building 120 with light reception to follow in Baker Portico. For questions, contact seap@cornell.edu. To attend via Zoom, please register here.

Established in 1992–93 to honor economist and Southeast Asia scholar Frank H. Golay, the Memorial Lecture reflects his enduring legacy of interdisciplinary research and commitment to the vitality of Cornell’s Southeast Asia Program.

Abstract

There is a revealing episode in the Buddha’s life story, one that, like many others is about the revelation that the vision of the Buddha entails, but which is also about the dubious virtuosity of replication, the revelatory power of return and techniques for expanding territorial dominion – and, that these are all of a piece. Following the successful show of the Twin Miracle at Savatthi, where the Buddha has beaten off rivals by proving his special powers to shoot water and fire from his body aloft in the sky, illuminating the cosmos for the gathered crowds, and twinning this brilliant self to provide at once questions and answers…, he travels to the heavens to teach his mother. The Buddha is missed dearly on earth. Some traditions have it that during his time away a replica was made of him – the first Buddha statue – to soothe a king grieving his absence. Entreated to return, the Buddha is supplied a red ruby ladder flanked by a gold and a silver one for his entourages. As beings watch, expectantly, the progress of the brilliant body down the rungs reveals the cosmos again: all of space and time is there for all to see. This vision is only fleeting, and the Buddha’s return bolsters a certain socio-political order organised around the dissemination of his image.

This talk will contemplate restitution in Southeast Asia today in the shadow of this story and with an anxious eye on our times. What affects does absence evoke, and how? What expectations arise in the progress of return, on whose part and why? What transformations take place in the comings and goings? How, when and where? Why and how do these processes constitute identifications at shifting scales, from the individual to the communal to the national to the regional to the international to the global to the cosmic, at once closing down histories and borders and carrying the potential for visionary unification? Do they reproduce Hindu-Buddhist hegemonies made as much in the ‘Sanskrit-Pali cosmopolis’ as in colonial knowledge production? Are we witnessing the reconsolidation of the commercial wing of an ever-expanding global conglomerate surveying borders between subject and object? Or are we catching glimpses of another time and space, where ‘animism’ might win the day?

About the Speaker

Ashley Thompson is Hiram W Woodward Chair of Southeast Asian Art at SOAS University of London. She maintains a sustained research focus on premodern Cambodian arts and literatures, and complements this with more punctual work on the contemporary period and the arts of the larger Southeast Asian region. Her research revolves around questions of memory, political and cultural transition, embodiment, sexual difference and subjectivity. She leads Circumambulating Objects: Paradigms of Restitution of Southeast Asian Art, and is the editor of a special issue of Art History on decoloniality in Southeast Asian arts fields, forthcoming 2025.

The State as Surrogate Tourist: Tourism Competitions and State Recognition in Indonesia

ABSTRACT: In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Indonesia’s Ministry of Tourism launched the Tourism Village Award (ADWI), which expanded from 1,200 villages in 2021 to over 6,000 in 2024. Drawing on fieldwork in Lombok villages competing in the 2023 round, this talk examines how state recognition circulates as a resource in the absence of tourists. I trace the work of “local champions,” unpaid volunteers who craft narratives of village potential through filmmaking, coordination, and relationship-building. I then turn to a Lombok village that received a visit from Minister Sandiaga Uno, who briefly embodies the absent tourist’s gaze. Although the state promotes inclusive tourism aesthetics, local leaders must tirelessly demonstrate readiness for investment as they navigate opaque bureaucratic channels with uncertain results. If headlines warn of overtourism, this talk instead highlights tourism development in Indonesia as aspirational and precarious, where the state itself stands in for the absent tourist.

Connor is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Cornell University whose research examines how value circulates in Indonesian state tourism initiatives. His dissertation, Tourism without Tourists: State Performance and Regional Development in Indonesia, draws on extended ethnographic fieldwork in Jakarta and on Lombok, a Muslim-majority island located between Bali and Sumbawa.