From Thúy Tranviet, Vietnamese language instructor

Teaching online had its challenges as well as its opportunities. Lesson plans had to be organized differently to allow students to practice in the breakout rooms instead of doing pair work in class. Homework collecting and grading was also a new learning curve. I would collect homework once a week instead of every day. While I wasn't able to offer feedback right away, this also gave the students the opportunity to have more time to do the homework. Grading or correcting a foreign language on Canvas is not as efficient as doing it the old-fashioned way with a red pen.  

However, online teaching also had its pluses. Most students tended to be on time because they didn't have to commute, and they didn't have clubs to attend to. While online, they seemed to be more attentive and even more engaged. Once they got the hang of doing presentations, they seemed to do them better, perhaps because they were presenting from a familiar environment such as their bedroom. In reflecting on this past year of teaching virtually, I believe a foreign language is best learned and taught in person. There is no technology that can replace human interactions when it comes to learning a foreign language.  

From Yu Yu Khaing, Burmese language instructor

This year (Spring 2021) I added new materials for all Burmese levels related to the February coup and the current political situation in Myanmar. New materials included slogans and cartoons for the beginner students as well as government letters, newspaper articles, and interviews for intermediate and advanced students. All students were very interested in this topic, and it became an intense experience, both for them and for me, as they were highly motivated to acquire the necessary vocabulary and understand new ways of using the language in order to follow the dramatic and shifting situation.

It can be challenging for students to stay engaged when all classes are on Zoom, but the wealth of new online materials presented an opportunity to make the instruction highly relevant and up-to-date. The most challenging part was looking for materials related to the coup in order to find appropriate texts for each level. It was also important to use factual stories and avoid misinformation. To achieve this, I found tips through trusted sources on Facebook and had help from friends who are working for the VOA and BBC news agencies.

From Maria Theresa C. Savella, Tagalog language instructor

Many articles have been written about foreign language teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, which was a very difficult year. Pedagogically, these include numerous challenges faced by language instructors with the switch to online platforms such as the need to adapt teaching materials within a very short turnaround time. This online adaptation involved two major components for me personally: first, the conversion of Filipino teaching materials for five classes each semester to PowerPoint/multi-media/fillable pdf files, ever mindful of preserving their interactive nature, as needed; and second, developing an effective web-based grading/assessment of students’ work on a daily basis.

Negotiating these challenges and making sure the students were always engaged in the synchronous Zoom classes day in and day out required so much more work and much longer preparation time. There have also been unsettling challenges raised by language faculty like possible violations of academic integrity with digital assessments. These still need to be addressed at some point in the near future. However, gaging from the feedback and performance of my Tagalog students, it looked like, overall, they were satisfied with the learning that they acquired in the past academic year. 

But now that I can afford to have some quiet moments, I would like to reflect a little bit more on this pandemic experience. I found the blurring of personal and professional space and time both strange and interesting. For more than a year, I only needed to step out of our kitchen to get to my office in the dining room with all the plastic storage crates holding teaching files lined up underneath the piano in the living room. I shared all three meals with my husband every single day in the past year except on the one day a week that he worked in the office. Our dog, Cliburn, must have happily wondered, at first, why we were home all the time. His excited yelping at people and dogs passing by our front yard had occasionally become part of the Tagalog Zoom class landscape.

There were difficult moments, too, some more grave than others. The Tagalog Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) for 2020-2021 had a stressful experience of trying to rebook her flight back to the Philippines numerous times starting in mid-March 2020 when Cornell decided to switch to virtual instruction due to the pandemic. She was finally able to leave Ithaca and get home safely in late May 2020. Additionally, two Tagalog students, who during normal times were doing very well academically, experienced difficult challenges in their mental and emotional well-being last Spring semester. Thankfully, with the combined assistance and support from the Dean’s Advising Office, the counseling services, as well as their professors and families, they were able to recover completely.

And then COVID-19 hit our families in Manila in March of 2021. Things got overwhelming with the sudden passing of my husband’s brother to cancer, followed by COVID-19 infection of six family members a few months after, one of them losing the battle after only a week of hospitalization. It felt so surreal since this virus not only takes lives like a thief in the dark, but also takes away from families all the norms of grieving and traditions of honoring the dead to help them heal.

It will take time to come to terms with the trauma and havoc that this pandemic wreaked and still threatens to inflict on millions of people. But for us, sharing our grief with loved ones, and the full recovery of the other five infected family members gave us a renewed sense of hope and gratitude. The kindness and generosity of friends and relatives during those times of difficulty was also very heartwarming and reassuring. READ MORE

In his 1952 annual report, Professor Kahin explains: A special effort was made during the course of 1952 to bring to Cornell at fairly regular intervals visiting lecturers possessing a particular knowledge of one or more of the various Southeast Asian countries. Some of these people met with scheduled seminars, while special meetings of students and staff in the Program were arranged to be addressed by others. In addition, our students were encouraged to meet with these people informally for talks in those cases where these visitors were here for more than a day.

In the very first few years of SEAP’s existence, many famous and well-known individuals came to give lectures at Cornell. These included Professor Paul Mus, US Ambassador to Thailand Edwin Stanton, Luang Bisuddhi Suriyabongs, Professor Pe Nuyent (Chairman of the Department of Political Sciences, the University of Rangoon), Sanya Dhammasak, Prince Piya Rangsit, Margaret Mead, Indonesian Ambassador to the UN Ali Sastroamidjojo, Lieutenant Governor of the Netherlands Indies H.J.van Mook, and Mom Luang Tooi Xoomsai. Amazingly, in addition to the eight Indonesian government officials who stayed at Cornell for a whole month, seventeen visitors gave lectures in 1952. In 1953, the practice of bringing notable lecturers to campus continued, among those who came to Cornell was Ngo Dinh Diem. He returned to South Vietnam the following year to become prime minister under Emperor Bao Dai.

Thus, SEAP was one of first—if not the first—to institutionalize a lecture series at Cornell in order to construct a new field of study and to educate its graduate students about Southeast Asia.

1950-1970

Both Professor Stanley O’Connor (SEAP 1959-1965) and Professor Charles Keyes (SEAP 1959-1965) of the University of Washington confirmed that the Brown Bag lectures were already in existence when they arrived. With the help of Emily Donald who did most of the legwork in finding data of the early years, I can now pronounce that the Brown Bag luncheon lecture program was established on February 26, 1959. Eight graduate students—Jack Carroll, Ngoc Thu Phan, Idrus Djajadiningrat, Herbert Feith, Jasper Ingersoll, Joo D. Khoo, Donald Pond, and David Wurfel—sent a note to members of the Southeast Asia Program announcing that regular meetings would be held at 102 West Avenue every other Thursday for talks during the lunch hour. Soon, however, the lectures became weekly events. The note gave the following reasons for establishing the regular lunch hour talks:

…to enable members to know each other better and to share more fully our individual experiences and interests in Southeast Asia. This would also provide a forum for speakers whom many of us have otherwise no opportunity to hear: visitors to Ithaca, Cornellians recently back from Asia, and so on.

The suggestion was that faculty and students would meet to eat lunch by bringing their own sandwiches in typical “brown (paper) bags.” SEAP would provide coffee. As an aside, by the time I arrived ten years later in 1968, in addition to coffee, there were also cookies! The Brown Bag lecture series retained its name even after free lunches were provided when I became director of SEAP in 1998. From pizza, coffee, soda, and cookies, the graduate student committees have, over time, opted for more healthy victuals and diversity of cuisines. The Brown Bag (BB) lecture series was renamed the endowed Ronald and Jeanette Gatty lecture series in 2014. SEAP’s Thursday luncheon lecture series is the only one on campus that provides free lunch for its audience.

The first BB lecture meeting was held on Thursday, March 5th at 12:15 p.m. at 102 West Avenue. The Thursday lunch hour thus became a tradition since 1959. Another important feature of the lecture series is that it is managed by a graduate student committee chaired or co-chaired by one or two of its members. In this way, students are involved in the shaping of the field by identifying speakers whose works or knowledge were either foundational, exciting, emerging, or trending. The leadership and participation of all students at the lectures and following dinner meeting also facilitated their entry into the international scholarly network beyond the SEAP community. Faculty involvement in selecting speakers has been mainly in advisory roles.

102 West Avenue is the address of the Modern Indonesia Project building where Professors Kahin, Anderson, graduate students writing dissertations (or married with children), and visiting fellows had offices. That building was a rundown (at one time condemned) former fraternity house. It was finally declared unfit for habitation, demolished, and made into a parking lot. It was the predecessor to the Kahin Center.

102 West is well-known to the early scholars of Southeast Asia because many foundational dissertations (later published as books) written there gave credit to that building. The slanting floors, rickety stairs, loose bannisters, and drafty windows surprised visitors who were amazed that this famous building that produced so much early scholarship on Southeast Asia was so dilapidated and unworthy of its reputation. However, Professor Kahin famously declared that scholarly productivity is inversely related to the underwhelming magnificence of 102 West.[i]

Professor Stan O’Connor sent me an email that succinctly summarized the importance of the early BB lectures. Professor O’Connor writes:

People were widely scattered and eager to find people with similar obsessions and experience. Several seemed quite odd, but very lively…including many European scholars and some public officials from Southeast Asia…  All this had a wonderful feeling of beginnings and discovery… Almost everyone in this small community came to 102 West Avenue adding excitement to the jumble and provisionality of the building itself. These were high energy occasions. Everyone showed up for what was often quite exciting…you did have the feeling of something into being. The talks were exploratory, searching, and consequential. There was limited reading of research papers or reflection on methodological anxieties. The Brown Bags did what they were intended to do: build an intellectual community.

When I arrived in 1968, the Brown Bag lectures at 102 West were unrivalled on campus as a “must attend” and “standing-room only” events. Because of the US involvement in Southeast Asia and the anti-Vietnam War movement, interest in the region peaked from the mid-1960s until the end of the 1970s. The lectures and those in attendance—graduate students from SEAP and beyond, and almost all SEAP faculty members—were eager to witness the energy, excitement, and discovery of new knowledge that began to shape Southeast Asian Studies as a viable field of study, and to learn about a region that was important to US foreign policy. Scholars and government officials from beyond Cornell came to talk about their work and how it was relevant to our common interest. Many of the lectures, if not most, presented raw data and unfolding discoveries. In a sense, those who attended the talks were also participants of the presenter’s journey and experience.

The majority of speakers in the 1960s were professors, both well-established scholars and younger scholars who helped to shape Southeast Asian Studies as a viable field of study. Some of these scholars (now well-known) included Harry Benda, Ruth McVey, J.A.C. Mackie, Nicholas Tarling, Robert O.Tilman, Wang Gung Wu, James Peacock, Bernard Fall, A. Thomas Kirsch, William Klausner, Lucien Hanks, Elizer Ayal, Alexander Griswold, Josef Silverstein, David Wyatt, Robert Pringle, John Smail, Frederick Bunnell, Wilhelm Solheim, Stanley Tambiah, David Wilson, Herbert Philips, Ben Anderson, David Marr, Hans Dieter Evers, and James Siegel.

The tradition of enhancing the understanding of Southeast Asia also continued into the 1960s with talks given by prominent personalities and US officials who were involved in the affairs of the region. The names of speakers who were not associated with universities included, for example, Colonel Ngoc Thao Pham (Armed Forces of the Republic of Vietnam); Van Dinh Tran (Vietnam Embassy); Francis Underhill (U.S. Army War College); Sukich Nimmanhaemin (Thai Ambassador to the U.S.); Colonel George Benson (U.S. Army Attache, Djakarta); Anthony Eden (Earl of Eden and former UK prime minister who spoke about Vietnam in the international situation); Mohamad Roem (former prime minister of Indonesia); Paul Sitthi-Amnuay (Vice President, Bangkok Bank, NY); Gunnar Myrdal (author of Asian Drama); Mohammad Hatta (former prime minister and VP of Indonesia); General Carlos Romulo (former Foreign Secretary and President of the University of the Philippines); Soejatmoko (Indonesian Ambassador to the U.S.), Douglas Pike (United States Information Service), and C.V. Devan Nair (Malaysian MP and future President of Singapore).

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