Southeast Asia Program
AASP Wednesday Lunch Series with Cynthia Marasigan

April 16, 2025
12:00 pm
Rockefeller Hall, 429
Join us for our Wednesday Lunch Series, featuring guest speakers from Cornell's faculty and staff as well as the surrounding community. Enjoy an informal discussion where you can learn more about the speaker’s work or research, how they ended up doing what they are doing, current issues in higher education and the local community. A free lunch will be served.
Cynthia Marasigan is a historian whose research and teaching interests include United States history from the mid-19th century to the present, with particular engagement in U.S. Empire studies, comparative and relational studies of race, U.S.-Philippine and Filipino American history, and Afro-Asian histories.
Her current book manuscript, Empire’s Color Lines: How African American Soldiers and Filipino Revolutionaries Transformed Amigo Warfare (forthcoming, Duke University Press), explores intersections of U.S. imperialism, Jim Crow, and colonial resistance by analyzing a range of interactions between Black soldiers and Filipinos during the Philippine-American War and its aftermath.
Additional Information
Program
Southeast Asia Program
Nianpo Su

Graduate Student
Degree Pursued: PhD
Anticipated Degree Year: 2026
Committee Chair/Advisor: Miloje Despic, Helena Aparicio
Discipline: Linguistics
Primary Languages: Nuosu Yi, Mandarin, Japanese, Seram Timur, Indonesian, Burmese, Spanish, Vietnamese
Research Countries: China, Japan, Indonesia
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Zhipeng Zhou

Graduate Student
Degree Pursued: PhD
Anticipated Degree Year: TBD
Primary Language: Chinese, English
Research Countries: Singapore
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Anthropology Colloquium: Joseph R. Klein

April 11, 2025
3:00 pm
120 Mary Ann Wood Drive, B21
Who Owns the Sea? Coral Divers and the Play of Property in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia
To whom does the sea belong? In a world where European legal codes and juridical forms remain hegemonic, property is said to end at the coast--the geographical terminus of the legal concept of private ownership itself. Yet in reality the coast and sea are alive with the play of property. Along the shores and coastal waters of Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, forms of access, belonging, rights, ownership, territory, and even legal property at sea are constantly negotiated and re-negotiated. This talk offers three cases exploring the play of property at sea in Eastern Indonesia, drawn from my book project--an ethnography of the Indonesian live coral trade and the commercial divers who supply rare and beautiful corals and fish for the global aquarium industry. Aboard a small diving boat, I watched as the divers navigated and negotiated these diverse claims of ownership and belonging to the region’s coral reefs. First, I explore indigenous and customary institutions of ownership and belonging at sea. Second, I show how divers navigate the acquisition of permits and permission to gather corals from both states and spirits. Third, I examine how divers turn their coral money into private property through coastal land reclamation projects. At the fraying edge of the legal order, I show how property relations and forms of belonging are made and remade through these everyday encounters.
Joseph Klein is a Research Associate with the Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions (SEACoast) and the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His work explores fisheries labor, marine product supply chains, and coral reef futures in Indonesia. He is currently working on a book project about Indonesian commercial divers and the global aquarium industry, as well as a co-authored book on the colonial legacies of coastal hardening in Southeast Asia.
This event is co-sponsored by the Southeast Asia Program. Thank you!
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Program
Southeast Asia Program
Julia Sebastien

Graduate Student, IES Graduate Fellow 2025-26
Degree Pursued: PhD
Anticipated Degree Year: 2028
Committee Chair/Advisor: Andrea Won, Natalie Bazarova
Discipline: Communication
Primary Language: English, French, Hebrew
Research Countries: Myanmar, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia
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Chunhao Luo

Graduate Student
Degree Pursued: PhD
Anticipated Degree Year: 2031
Committee Chair/Advisor: TJ Hinrichs
Primary Language: Vietnamese, French
Research Countries: Vietnam
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Mochammad Rizal

Graduate Student
Degree Pursued: PhD
Anticipated Degree Year: 2029
Committee Chair/Advisor: Saurabh Mehta
Discipline: International Nutrition
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John Carlo Undaloc

Graduate Student
Degree Pursued: PhD
Anticipated Degree Year: 2029
Committee Chair/Advisor: Natalie Melas
Discipline: English Literature
Primary Language: Tagalog
Research Countries: Philippines
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Larasati Eka Wardhani

Graduate Student
Degree Pursued: MPA
Anticipated Degree Year: 2025
Primary Language: Indonesian, Chinese
Research Countries: Indonesia
Discipline: Public Administration
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How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies

March 29, 2025
8:30 pm
Cornell Cinema
A film screening by Cornell Cinema.
M, a university dropout low on money and luck, volunteers to take care of his terminally ill grandmother, in the hope of pocketing an inheritance. However, winning Grandma's favor is no easy feat. She proves to be a tough nut to crack—demanding, exacting, and exceedingly difficult to please. To add to the drama, he's not the only one gunning for the inheritance. M soon finds himself embroiled in a gripping competition, where he must go to great lengths to become the apple of Grandma's eye before time runs out, all in pursuit of a life-changing, multimillion-dollar inheritance.
Directed by Thai filmmaker Pat Boonnitipat, How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies offers a candid and comedic take on life, love, and family affairs.
Cosponsored by the Southeast Asia Program at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Special thanks to Fulbright visiting researcher Vince Ha.
Part of Cornell Cinema's "Worth a Watch" series. Courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment. In Thai with English subtitles.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Southeast Asia Program