ASIAN 280: Southeast Asian Cultures

Southeast Asia is a crucial world region that is home to diverse peoples, languages, and religions and has been influenced by migration, trade and colonialism. This course examines themes in the cultures, history, and politics of the countries that constitute Southeast Asia: the mainland states of Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam and the island states of Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, East Timor, and Brunei. The central aim is to study this region's cultural diversity across complex geographies, cross-cultural transactions, and periods of dramatic social change. Understandings of culture will be informed especially by its interconnections with race, ethnicity, nationality, class, and gender.