• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.89-114
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• 2018

In this paper, I argue that while area studies in the United States has declined since the end of the Cold War, its area impulse of has emerged in other fields of inquiry, particularly Asian-American Studies. Accordingly, I explain how the collective reflections of Filipino-American scholars on empire, migration, diaspora, and identity point to the consolidation and viability of the transpacific as an area, which spans both the United States and the Philippines. Addressing several problems with this straddling-mainly as criticisms of Filipino-American Studies-I show how the transpacific serves as a bridge between Philippine Studies and Filipino-American Studies, and helps define the boundaries and overlaps between both fields of inquiry.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.27-54
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• 2017

Brian Ascalon Roley's American Son, one of the outstanding Filipino American novels after the LA riots, critically deals with a racial issue of his community which has been intermingled with the myth of model minority. Gabe and Thomas, considered as obedient Filipino younger immigrants, are asked to achieve the American dream as a way to place themselves at the center of the mainstream white society. However, they recognize that they cannot be accepted as a suitable subject for the invincible racism deeply rooted in the society. While Tomas refuses to become a model minority by identifying himself with the Mexican, Gabe is expected to become an idealistic subject of model minority by his mother since he complies with the rules of the mainstream society. However, he accepts his brother's violent way of life in that violence is necessary to protect his family from the racial discrimination in America. Though he is his mother's hope for model minority, he recognizes the only condition to achieve her expectation is the American society where there is no racism at all. However, by taking the case of Gabe and Thomas, Roley suggests that the younger generation of Filipino American immigrants have no choice but to accept violence to survive in the American society because racism always threatens their life.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.115-120
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• 2018

This paper provides comments on Janus Nolasco's paper and the role that transnational or transpacific studies can play in overcoming the division between Philippine Studies (area studies) and Filipino-American scholarship. It draws attention to the fact that the crossing of localities and boundaries is always historically grounded and that the historical contexts in which Filipino diasporic communities are located vary one from another. It also considers the antecedents of more inclusive approaches to understanding the past and the present, and historical agency.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.1311-1337
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• 2010

This paper deals with one of the hottest debates in the history of the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) since its inception in the late 1960s. In 1998 at Hawai'i, the AAAS awarded Lois-Ann Yamanaka its Fiction Award for her novel Blu's Hanging, only to have this award protested. The point at issue was the inappropriate representation of Filipino American characters called "Human Rats" in the novel. This event divided the association into two groups: one criticizing the novel for the problematic portrayal of Filipinos in colonial Hawai'i, and the other defending it from the criticism in the name of aesthetic freedom. Such a "crisis of representation" in Asian American identity reflects on the ways in which local Hawaiians are positioned in the complicate power dynamic between oppositional Hawaiian identity and cosmopolitan diasporic identity within the larger framework of Asian American pan-ethnic identity. The controversial event triggered the eruption of Asian Americans' anxiety over the identity-bounded nation of Asian America where intra-racial classism and conflict have been at play, which are primary themes of Blu's Hanging. This paper shows how Yamanaka's Blu's Hanging becomes so disturbing a work to prevent the hegemonic formality of Asian America identity from being fully dogmatic. Ultimately, it contradicts the political unconscious of the reading public and unmasked its false consciousness by engendering a "free subjective intervention" in the ideological reality of colonial Hawai'i.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.41-70
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• 2019

As a response to Peter Jackson's call for a Southeast Asian Area Studies beyond Anglo-America, this paper argues that the achievement of this salient objective hinges on an understanding of the idea of positionality and what it entails. Drawing from reflections from Filipino scholars, positionality can be understood not merely as one's determination through geographic location or self-knowledge of one's condition within the politics of knowledge production; rather, it is the power and opportunity to claim a place from which one understands reality in one's own terms, and the capacity to effect influence within her intellectual domain. In redefining positionality as such, one realizes that crucial to establishing Southeast Asian Area studies beyond Anglo-America is acknowledging the importance of the vernacular in the production and circulation of knowledge, as well as the constant danger of English as the global lingua franca, established in the guise of an advocacy that resolves unevenness by providing equal opportunity for all intellectuals to gain "global prominence." This paper argues that, instead of trying to eradicate unevenness, one can acknowledge it as the condition of being located in a place and as a privileged position to think and create beyond the shadow of Anglo-American theory.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.133-148
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• 2017

In spite of being one of the first countries in Asia to establish an institution devoted to the study of the Asian region, area studies in the Philippines has languished over the years. In contrast, area studies programs of her neighbors have grown by leaps and bounds, invigorated by both public and private support. This observation becomes more glaring as Filipino scholars have made a name for themselves in the field of Southeast Asian Studies abroad. The paper is an appraisal of the current state of Southeast Asian area studies and the extent of its operation by the Philippines' top four universities, namely: the Asian Center of the University of the Philippines, the Ateneo de Manila University, the De La Salle University, and the University of Santo Tomas. Starting from the inception of area studies in the mid-1950s leading to a template patterned after the North American - European model, the paper then describes the challenges and its decline in the 80s toward its progression on a paradigm defined by the growing importance of, and actors within, the region. The paper expresses the view that one, the role of the government was both a boon and a bane in the development of area studies; and two, that the rapid economic growth and immense integration in the region in the last two decades gave a new impetus to Southeast Asian area studies, an enormous opportunity to capitalize on for Philippine universities.