Initiatives > Indonesia
Information on the University's extensive library holdings for Indonesia is available here.The Hamilton Library, under the stewardship of Southeast Asian Librarian Rohayati Paseng, has special responsibility for collecting local government publications from the East Indonesian provinces of Irian Jaya, Nusa Tenggara and Maluku.
The University offers basic, intermediate and advanced instruction in the Indonesian and Malay languages. The University's Department of Indo-Pacific Languages also offers distance learning in Indonesian!
The University of Hawaii at Manoa is an academic partner with the State Islamic University in Jakarta, Indonesia, and offers student exchange programs with the National University of Singapore and Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Permias, the Indonesian Student Society, has a chapter at the University of Hawaii.
For general information on Indonesia, click here!
A Balinese Tempest
In February 2008, the Department of Theatre and Dance presented A Balinese Tempest at the Kennedy Theatre. Students participated in a intensive six-month training in Balinese music (gamelan), dance, and shadow theatre during the fall of 2007. The production combined shadow theatre with live dancers to create a cross-cultural staging of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, using a style pioneered by visiting artist Larry Reed, who fused Balinese and Elizabethan elements with his hallmark shadowcasting method, which utilizes a giant screen and live performers to create a magical shadow theatre performance.
The production also featured live musical accompaniment by the University of Hawaii Balinese Gamelan Ensemble under the direction of visiting artist and musical director I. Nyoman Sumandhi, an internationally-known dalang (i.e, a Balinese puppet master) and master of traditional Balinese music, dance and choreography.
Malay Manuscripts and Sacred Heirlooms
Uli Kozok, Professor of Indonesian Language and Literature at the University of Hawaii, has been analyzing a fourteenth century Malay manuscript from Kerin - thought to be the oldest known document written in the Malay language.
Professor Kozok is also documenting the sacred heirlooms of the people of Kerinci, which consist of ancient objects such as kerisses, spears, shields, clothes, ceramics, and manuscripts both in Arabic-Malay and in indigenous incung script.
| manuscript | Jakarta Post article |
Special Lectures
Kathy Foley is a Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of California at Santa Cruz who has performed wayang golek purwa regularly since 1979 and has been invited over the last two decades to perform at the Indonesian Wayang Festival (Pekan Wayang Indonesia), a national and international gathering of dalang.
Professor Foley gave two special lectures at the University of Hawaii in February 2008. The first lecture, Shakespeare in Intercultural Asian Theatre Performance, discussed Larry Reed's Tempest and Takahashi Yasunari and Nomura Mansai's Kyogen of Errors in the context of the local and global interface with respect to the current cultural order, the economics of globalization and cross-cultural aesthetics. The second lecture, Dancing the Four Directions: Mask Puppet and Character Type in Southeast Asia, explored the character masks of West Java and wayang golek puppets.
| Brunei | Cambodia | Indonesia | Laos | Malaysia | Myanmar | Philippines |
| Singapore | Thailand | East Timor | Viet Nam | Regional Initiatives |