South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies Commons^™

Editor's Introduction, Brent H. Otto S.J.

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Jainism And Catholicism – Dialoguing Spiritually, Bryan Lobo

Journal of Global Catholicism

The inter-spiritual dialogue between Jainism and Catholicism lends itself towards discovering similarities and dissimilarities between the two spiritualities. Recognizing this discovery, this paper, without claiming to be exhaustive as regards the spiritual themes, discusses the chosen themes to facilitate greater reflection and potential to re-discover elements that can help the growth of understanding and practicing the preferred spirituality.

Hindu Poetry And The Project Of An Inter-Spiritual Catholic Theology, Francis X. Clooney

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article engages the work of the Indian south Indian Tamil-language Vaiṣṇava poet saints known as the Alvārs. The article specifically focuses the First HundredHoly Linked verses of Poykai Ālvār to argue for inter-spiritual learning between Catholics and Hindus. The article concludes with personal reflections on this encounter within the context of the global Catholic Church

Kicau Kericau: The Chirps And Warbles Of A Bird-Human Story, Airien Ludin

Masters Theses

This thesis tells the tale of bird-human relationships and what it means to live alongside one another, subverting the hierarchical view of humans as above birds inherited from colonial history. It asks how the practice of illustration can function as a site of Two-Eyed Seeing, where scientific and local knowledge are held together as an entangled narrative. It also examines how mendongeng (storytelling), as I have experienced it within Indonesian culture and everyday contexts, can help us understand birds as a companion species with their own agency.

This project takes two forms: first, a picture book titled Sun Bird …

Jadughar: The House Of Magic, Dhruvi A. Shah

Masters Theses

Jadughar or the House of Magic is what people call a 'museum' in parts of South Asia. The practice of museum making, at its origin, is the act of collecting, preserving, interpreting and representing a culture’s tangible and intangible heritage to make it accessible to diverse audiences. Since the early 19th century such practices have been performed at various kala bhandars (art centers) in India, without the need of a formal or institutional organisation. The British introduced the model of a ‘museum’ in South Asia, with the aim of not only preserving ethnographic collections, but also showcasing their power and …

Laila: A Doll Memoir Of 1947 Partition Of India And Pakistan, Maleeha Malik, Maleeha Fatima Malik

Children's Literature (MFA) Theses

This abstract examines a creative and critical work centered on the 1947 Partition of India, which displaced approximately fourteen million people and caused one million deaths. The narrative introduces Laila, an anthropomorphized doll who functions as both witness and archive, embodying the memories and traumas of multiple child survivors. Through Laila’s journey across India, Pakistan, and the diaspora, the text explores themes of identity, belonging, loss, and intergenerational memory.

Blending personal family history with historical analysis, the author situates Laila within lived experiences of migration, silence, and religious marginalization, particularly as part of the Ahmadi Muslim community. The narrative foregrounds …

Children Past Curfew: Surveillance, Resistance, And Childhood In Philippine Martial Law Children's Literature, Krisna Marie T. Balolong

Children's Literature (MA) Theses

This paper examines how two Philippine children's books depict state surveillance and its effects on a child's perspective of family, authority figures, and childhood. Through analysis of Augie Rivera's Isang Harding Papel and Sandra Nicole Roldan's At the School Gate, this project makes a connection between children's literature and surveillance studies, offering new framework to engage with children’s literature depicting authoritarian regimes and state violence, especially in cases where children were targets of their governments. Each book is examined by their representations of state surveillance during the Martial Law era of the Philippines, as well as each characters’ individual …

Indian Cosmology And Archaeoastronomy Of The Khmer Stone Temples In Sakon Nakhon-Thailand, Duangden Boonpok

International Review of Humanities Studies

This article is multidisciplinary study of cosmology, archaeology and astronomy of the Khmer stone temples in Sakon Nakhon. The study investigates of the temple’s architectural structure and environmental geography which related to the astronomical knowledge. The result of study found that the plan and structure of temples is influenced by the concept of Indian cosmology which has Mount Meru as the central axis. Buildings is signified as mountain or heaven with high and multi-layered base. The main building is symbolically important as the origin of power for the whole temple. The objects and positions are the transforming of cosmology concept …

For The Time Beings, Tori Hong

Masters Theses

For the Time Beings is a socially engaged installation and artist book exploring the material consequences and future possibilities of sociocultural time theories. Time, in the West, is typically associated with Newtonian linearity, while in the East, time theory relies on Buddhist principles. These epistemologies reinforce hierarchical and patriarchal structures. Centered on Indigenous Asian and Asian American perspectives, For the Time Beings challenges dominant ideologies of existing in time and space.

For nearly a year, I’ve burned handwritten prayers on new and full moons. The ashes of these prayers are incorporated into reverential drawings of chosen ancestors, made with charcoal …

Hearing Caste: Dalit Resistance Through Folk Music In West Bengal, India, Antara Bhattacharyay

Music Honors Projects

Caste—a graded structure of hierarchy—has historically shaped identities in South Asia and persists to this day. In opposition, Dalits (caste-marginalized communities) have utilized diverse mediums to communicate their resistance. In this thesis, I analyze the role of music in Bengali Dalit resistance through the work of Dalit singer-songwriter Smritikana Howlader (b. 1960). Based on ethnographic research, I investigate how folk music becomes a mode of Dalit historiography. In particular, I explore how Howlader aims to transcend caste boundaries through song, evoking shared humanity. I argue that Howlader’s performances combat dominant caste discourse and Dalit erasure, furthering Bengali Dalit resistance.

The Tales Of Maruni, Sikuma Rai

Theses and Dissertations

Sikuma Rai journeys into the fading indigenous genre of Maruni—an eastern Nepali song and dance form—narrating letters to her late grandfather. Accompanied by her father, and a devoted folk musician from an upper-caste background, she traces echoes of memory, identity, and the fragile inheritance of indigenous culture.

40 Years Passing By In (A) “Heartbeat”, Christopher Janney

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This article outlines the forty-year history go Christopher Janney’s iconic performance work “HeartBeat.” Trained as an architect and jazz musician, Janney combines these two disciplines to create large interactive light/sound installations and performances. On the one hand, he attempts to make architecture more like music, more “alive” using real-time sensing devices as on his “Harmonic Convergence” installation on the Miami International Airport. On the other hand, he attempts to make music more like architecture, more physical more visual. In his “HeartBeat” performance, a dancer wears a heartbeat device that amplifies his/her heartbeat in “real time.” Over this pulse, live musicians …

Yoga Sūtra Book Four And The Yogabindu, Christopher Key Chapple

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

Four themes from the fourth pāda of Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra are examined here: karma (IV:2-13), individuality (IV:16), humility (IV:20-22), and freedom (IV:29-34). Affirmations and variant interpretations of these four are provided from Haribhadra Virahāṅka’s Yogabindu, most likely composed a century or two later.

Collective Karma: From The Yogasūtra To Taylor Swift, Zoë Slatoff

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

The Indian knowledge traditions speak at length about karma, which is divided into three categories—accumulated (saṃcita), ripe (prārabdha), and future (kriyamāṇa). While much is said about our individual karma and how it affects our repeated reincarnation in cyclic existence, how does this affect others and how do others affect us? In other words, as this paper explores, what is our reciprocal and collective karma?

Painting Liberation: A Visual Ontology Of The Interplay Of Mind And Consciousness In Book Four Of The Yoga Sūtras, Melissa Townsend

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This presentation explores how artistic practice can illuminate philosophical questions about the nature of mind, consciousness, and liberation as articulated in Book Four of the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali. Through a series of paintings that visually translate these sūtras, I propose that art offers a unique, experiential means of engaging with the complex relationship between citta (mind) and puruṣa (consciousness).

The paintings function as a form of “visual ontology,” inviting viewers to engage with abstract philosophical concepts in a sensory, tangible way. By depicting the interplay between the mutable processes of the mind and the unchanging awareness of consciousness, these …

Transformation Of Buddhist Musical Practices From The 7th-13th Centuries As A Response To Political And Social Disorder In Medieval India, Stephan Duran

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This article gives an account of the development of Buddhist musical practices on the Indian subcontinent from their earliest, datable instances, to the disappearance of Buddhist institutions from India proper, demonstrating the persistence of descendant traditions of Sanskrit Buddhist chant and song in contemporary Japanese, Tibetan, and Newar esoteric Buddhist communities. It is argued that the Buddhist musical theory and praxis of these three cultural spheres both preserve features of ancient and medieval Indian Buddhist music and sonically illustrate the transition from political and social order to de-centralized social organization, a shift that took place between the 7^th and …

Modernist Transitions: Cultural Encounters Between British And Bangla Modernist Fiction From 1910s To 1950s, Shamika Shabnam

Critical Humanities

A Review of Modernist Transitions: Cultural Encounters between British and Bangla Modernist Fiction from 1910s to 1950s

Damn The Dams: Framing ‘Schizophrenic’ Discourses Of The Hindu Right, Nandita Ghosh

Critical Humanities

This article examines the concept of schizophrenia as a cultural metaphor in order to analyze the Hindu Right’s contradictory language-framing politics within the public domain, particularly in relation to building mega dams on rivers Narmada and Bhagirathi. In so doing, it intends to examine the nature of the public domain itself that enables such framing politics within the context of late 20^th-early-21^st-century global capital. Language battles in the public domain have intensified during this period, especially through various forms of digital media. In India, the various groups that form the Hindu Right have often mixed the …

Recovering Constitutional Identity In Colonial South India: Sedition, Sovereignty, And Small-C Constitutionalism In Pudukkottai, Bharath Gururagavendran

National Law School Journal

Constitutional identity is easiest to identify when it has already been credentialed: by a constitutional text, constituent authorisation, or judicial recognition. What remains visible when those markers are absent? Through a historically grounded study of the ‘Little Kingdom’ of Pudukkottai, a princely state in colonial South India, this article examines whether constitutional identity can be recovered from the small-c life of a polity whose opportunities for formal constitution-making were structurally foreclosed. Pudukkottai had no big-C moment. Its constitutional life, if it had one, must be reconstructed from less authoritative materials. The article argues that the absence of a constitutional text …

The Meanings Of The Hospital De San Lázaro In Seventeenth-Century Manila, Francis Galasi

Journal of Global Catholicism

The Hospital de San Lázaro was a specialized health facility in the early modern Philippines, dedicated to the care of lepers and sufferers of other contagious diseases. While it was established for this specific purpose, its role in colonial society varied. This versatility reflected the distinct priorities and commitments of the groups pulled into its orbit, as each charged San Lázaro with a unique meaning. This article explores how and why these groups—the indigenous Filipinos, the Spanish residents and the Discalced Franciscans—understood San Lázaro in their own way. It highlights the ability of fixed institutions, such as a hospital, to …

Chasing The Albino Pygmy Giraffe, Charles H. Haddad

School of Communication and Journalism Faculty Publications

It's never a good sign when someone is knocking on the door of your hotel room at seven in the morning. That's especially true if you have been schlepping eight college students across Western China, as I had been for the past week. I now heard in this soft rapping the death knell of my fledgling professorial career. Wrapping a ratty, threadbare pillow around my head, I tried to shut out the insistent rapping. Of course, that didn't work. Bad news has a way of butting in.

So begins my novel “Chasing the Albino Pygmy Giraffe.” It is a laugh-aloud …

In Conversation: Patricia Irene Dacudao On Abaca Frontier: The Socioeconomic And Cultural Transformation Of Davao, 1898–1941, Patricia Irene N. Dacudao, Philip Gooding

History Department Faculty Publications

In this interview, Patricia Irene Dacudao discusses her book Abaca Frontier: The Socioeconomic and Cultural Transformation of Davao, 1898-1941, which was published by Ateneo de Manila Press in 2023.

The Provenance Of A Pali- And Thai-Language Manuscript At The Rollins College Library: A Buddhist Book Of Merit And Its Long Journey From Southeast Asia To America, Wenxian Zhang

Faculty Publications

Through researching the provenance of a Buddhist manuscript written in the Pali and Thai languages currently held at Rollins, this article seeks to answer the question of how a religious document created in Thailand ended up in a liberal arts college library in America. Regarded as an act of devotion by many Buddhist followers in Southeast Asia, the use of folding manuscripts (samut khoi) has been observed for centuries. The folding manuscripts served as handbooks and chanting manuals for Buddhist monks, who often recited in religious ceremonies while paying tributes to the deceased, with the hope of reincarnation in a …

The Migration Of South Asians From India To Guyana: The Journey, Struggles In A New Land, Reasons For Changes Over Time And Their Cultivation Of A New Culture., Cynthia C. Harry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Indians from different regions of India arrived in Guyana through indentureship in 1838. They were under a five-year contract and had to work on the sugar plantations for the duration of their indentureship. While they tried to persist their Indian culture, assimilation in their new environments and interaction with people of different cultures, allowed them to develop a culture unique to Indo Guyanese heritage.

This thesis focuses on the history of Indian diaspora in Guyana. It evokes the struggles they faced on the ships, and during and after indentureship. It also touches on the political and racial issues they had …

Authorizing Violence: Spatial Techniques Of Citizenship Politics In Northeast India, Samarth Vachhrajani

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Authorizing Violence: Spatial Techniques of Citizenship Politics in Northeast India studies the spatial and legal instruments through which Hindu Nationalism and its political front, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), operates in Northeast India. I document the means through which authoritarian power has been introduced into a democratic structure of governance. Emphasizing the role of architecture and spatial knowledge, I attend to how the violence of disenfranchisement and dispossession is legitimized under the force of law.

For this, Chapter 1, entitled 'Legislating Containment,' turns to the legal instrument of citizenship and studies the Goalpara detention center and multi-purpose criminal …

Imagination, Performance, Expression: Unraveling Global Pakistani Identity, Omaer Naeem

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

Expressions of Pakistani identity are presently being flattened out by both the state and global West, dominantly being explored through religion. This project argues that gender is used domestically and internationally to present a multifaceted resistance to the state’s idea of the national identity. This project interrogates the creation of global Pakistani identity through examining the historical antecedents in imagining Pakistan, resistance to the state’s identity- construction process demonstrated in performing Pakistan, and transnational expressions of identity. This project argues that gender, while leveraged by the state in a top-down construction of national identity, has been used bottom-up to reconfigure …

Loyalitas Masyarakat Jawa Kuno Kepada Raja Berdasarkan Data Prasasti Abad Xiii–Xv Masehi, Victoria Geraldine, Andriyati Rahayu

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

The sima inscription is an edict issued by the king as a gift given to certain parties. One of the reasons for its bestowment is as a reward to those who have shown him loyalty. This paper studies the forms of loyalty shown by the Ancient Javanese People to the king and the factors that influenced it. The study aims to give an understanding of the relationship that existed between the Ancient Javanese people and the king in the XIII–XV Centuries AD. The results of this research provides new insight for the effort to reconstruct the life of the Ancient …

Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the mobility politics of container shipping and argues that technological development, political-economic order, and social infrastructure co-produce one another. Containerization, the use of standardized containers to carry cargo across modes of transportation that is said to have revolutionized and globalized international trade since the late 1950s, has served to expand and extend the power of international coalitions of states and corporations to control the movements of commodities (shipments) and labor (seafarers). The advent and development of containerization was driven by a sociotechnical imaginary and international social contract of seamless shipping and cargo flows. In practice, this liberal, …

The Many Names Of Limahong: Remembering A Chinese Pirate In The Philippines, William Martindale

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

The 1574 attack of Limahong on Manila and the subsequent expulsion of his attempted Pangasinan colony left a profound impact in Philippine history. The threat once presented by Limahong cast a long shadow over Spanish colonization and Philippines security, particularly regarding relations with China and Chinese. As a result, his name was continually evoked in the centuries after his attack. This paper examines how Limahong is remembered in the Philippines. Limahong is remembered as a generic sea-borne threat, a pirate whose name is evoked at any threat from the sea or from China. But, he is also remembered as a …

Forgetting Stories From The Islands, Jeju And Calauit, Raymon D. Ritumban

English Faculty Publications

The traumatic experiences of people from peripheral islands are susceptible to mnemocide. Such erasure of memory is facilitated by “defensive and complicit forgetting,” which, according to Aleida Assmann, leads to “protection of perpetrators.” My paper reflects on the vulnerability of traumas from the islands to mnemocide by looking into [1] the massacre of communists and civilians on Jeju Island, South Korea in 1948 as described in Hyun-Kil Un’s short story “Dead Silence” (2017; English trans.) and [2] the eviction of residents and indigenous people from Calauit Island, Philippines for the creation of a safari in 1976 as imagined in Annette …