Vina Orden presents her essay published in CUNY FORUM Volume 11:1, examining how narratives in popular media can perpetuate or challenge existing power structures and colonial mentalities. Orden explores this through the complex dynamics behind the pop culture success of comics like “The United States of Captain America.” Her analysis delves into the diverse creative team behind these comics, including queer, Filipino, First Nation, and South African writers. And she critically questions whether Captain America, despite such diverse creative input, must still operate within a context of “imperial power dynamics” and the realities of the U.S. nation state.

In this webinar, Deconstructing Indonesia confronts the uncomfortable truth that mainstream education, especially STEM, has been a weapon of coloniality. It has enforced a destructive divide between humans and nature, privileging extraction over reciprocity and silencing millennia of indigenous wisdom.

This talk is presented by Nathanael Pribady, MS student in Learning Analytics at Teachers College, Columbia University. This seminar was hosted by NYSEAN Partner, Deconstructing Indonesia.

In this episode of Talking Indonesia, the hosts speak with Egi Primayogha, the advocacy coordinator for the NGO Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW), about their assessment of the current government and their recent report titled Catatan Kritis (critical notes) on the first year of the Prabawo-Gibran government.

Julia Lau, Fulcrum editor and Coordinator of Indonesia Studies Program at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, speaks to Dr. Ian Wilson about power, politics, and popular culture, including the phenomenon of 'preman' in today's Indonesia. Ian Wilson is a Senior Lecturer of Politics and International Studies and Principal Fellow at the Indo-Pacific Research Centre. Associate Dean Research, School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, at Murdoch University.

In a report for the Early Warning Project, Made Supriatma discusses the risk of mass atrocities against Indigenous Papuans in Papua, Indonesia. Despite developments in the region's administrative structure, increased military presence, and revived transmigration and food estate development programs, marginalization still fuels Papuan nationalism.

In an article for the Association for Asian Studies, Anna Zulueta and Alexa Theodoropoulos enter into a dialogue about the legacies of colonization and authoritarian rule, and how in spaces like Brown University, where the absence of Filipino representation persists, linguistic representation and curricular reforms are the first steps in rectifying historical injustices.

Nicholas Kuipers discusses his new book, States Against Nations (Cambridge University Press, 2025), specifically how Indonesia's civil service examination is a method of bureaucratic selection. Despite its meritocratic measures, Kuipers asserts that these exams can reinforce existing inequalities within society. Drawing on large-scale surveys, experiments, and archival documents, States Against Nations provides a thought-provoking perspective on the challenges of bureaucratic recruitment and unearths the tension between state- and nation-building goals.

Nationalism is an inherently unifying and totalizing force. But what happens when other identities begin to encroach on certain visions of what it means to be Indonesian? Deconstructing Indonesia, a student-run seminar, pays special attention to Chinese Indonesians, one of the minority groups in Indonesia.