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.

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.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Benjamin Tausig discuss how music features in their new books and how they engage with songs in their various writings. Dr. Wasserstrom discusses the Milk Tea Alliance, a coalition that brought together activists from Thailand, Myanmar, and Hong Kong. Dr. Tausig introduces his latest book, Bangkok After Dark, which places nightlife in Thailand's capital city during the Cold War into a transnational perspective via discussion of jazz pianist Maurice Rocco. Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal offers his remarks on both presentations as well as his own experiences with music and community organizing. The videos and musicians mentioned during the discussion can be found in this YouTube playlist.

Senator Loren Legarda, a four-term senator and passionate environmentalist, has spent much of her years in the Senate authoring landmark laws for environmental protection. Speaking on how bold governance can unlock the Philippines’ vast potential for building a sustainable future, she touches on her role in enacting conservation measures in the country. She also elaborates on upcoming measures to safeguard the country’s oceans and coastal livelihoods, protect biodiversity, and facilitate compliance markets in the 20th Congress.