Ashley Thompson, the Hiram W. Woodward Chair of Southeast Asian Art at SOAS University of London, uses Buddha’s life story—his return from heaven and the socio-political order organized around the dissemination of his image afterwards—to contemplate how ideas of absence, return, and transformation shape identity and cultural restitution in Southeast Asia today.

This event was hosted by the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University, a NYSEAN Partner.

Andrew Mertha, Director of the China Global Research Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, discusses his new book. Bad Lieutenants explores the surprising endurance of the Khmer Rouge as a political force in Cambodia for decades after Vietnam’s 1979 invasion. How did the Khmer Rouge retain power, and why were they ultimately unsuccessful in forming a legitimate governing structure? What role did their leadership and political strategies play in their success and failures?

In this episode of Gatty Lecture Rewind, the host Namfon Narumol Choochan interviews Analyn Salvador-Amores (Ikin), Professor of Anthropology and former Director of the Museo Kordilyera at the University of the Philippines Baguio. Together, they discuss how the recent tourism trend has revitalized Kalinga tattoos, a tradition of the ethnolinguistic group in Buscalan village, northern Luzon, Philippines. Having conducted anthropological research on traditional tattoos for over 30 years, Professor Ikin provides nuanced insights into how tourism has changed the village’s landscape, tattoo practices, and gender dynamics among tattoo practitioners.