Initiatives
The jewel in our crown for the academic year 2006-07 was undoubtedly the initiation of an ambitious subtitling project for Southeast Asian film, which was conceived during our weekly screenings of Southeast Asian films on campus. The workshop was held last summer, and the special class conducted by John McGlynn (who came from Jakarta). In the first stages of this project we see the distribution of these films to universities and colleges as an important addition to the teaching of Southeast Asian languages and societies. We envisage, for example, students and teachers becoming engaged in electronically-conveyed conversations about alternative translations or the cultural significance of a particular scene and so forth.
The course on Literature in Translation in Southeast Asia (IP 361), for instance, brought in several overseas guests; Alam Payind, Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at The Ohio State University, gave several presentations; Jonathan Rigg, from the University of Durham, spent a week on campus during which time he gave several lectures, including the third in a special School of Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies lecture series. Because of the prominence of the Ilokano program at the University of Hawai‘i, the Center also contributed to the 2007 Nakem Coference, this year held at Mariano Marcos State University in the Philippines.
A new venture was a Fall 2006 seminar on natural disasters in Southeast Asia, conducted by UHM’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning under the direction of Michael Douglass and James Spencer. It was truly amazing to see how much expertise and experience we had on campus related to all aspects of earthquakes, hurricanes, and epidemics. Greg Bankoff, from the University of Auckland, a historian who has worked extensively on natural disasters, especially in the Philippines, was a valuable guest, delivering several lectures and contributing to our ongoing brown bag lunchtime talks.