Doing Asian Studies in Singapore/Asia: Exploring Epistemological and

Pedagogical Issues

Coordinators: Goh Beng Lan and Robbie Goh, Associate Professors, Southeast Asian Studies; English Language and Literature

Project Description and Scope

In recent years, debates on the “afterlives” of area studies have turned attention to regionally located scholarships as alternative sites from which Euro-American centric visions could be denaturalized. The project of recentering knowledge production back to regions themselves speaks directly to the challenge of de-centring and pluralizing social scientific discourse in the field of Asian Studies.

The relocation of Asian Studies back to the region itself poses epistemological and pedagogical challenges to the practice of Asian Studies at NUS: How can Asian Studies at NUS help contribute to a scholarly commitment to articulate the idioms of experience of the various Asian places and peoples in and on their own terms and in the process also contribute to epistemic dissent/difference which can effect changes in existing canons of knowledge?

The reading group will explore the above and other related concerns as it explores how doing Asian Studies at NUS at a time of changing stakes in knowledge production in a post-Cold War world can help forge a new diverse/polycentric universal project of knowledge that does not explicitly or implicitly return us to Eurocentric legacies?

The scholarly project of this reading group has larger pedagogical/administrative and research agendas, namely to generate a research strategy and direction for Asian Studies in FASS, and contribute to the planning of a graduate curriculum in “Asian Studies.” It is expected that the group will lead towards a high-profile international conference on Asian Studies in Asia, and research projects to follow.

Initial Reading List

  • Alatas, Farid Syed. Alternative Discourses in Asian Social Science: Responses to Eurocentrism: Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2006.
  • Bowen, John. “The Inseparability of Area and Discipline in Southeast Asian Studies: A View from the United States”. Moussons 1(2000): 3-19.
  • Buck, David. “Forum on Universalism and Relativism in Asian Studies”. In Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 50, 1 (1991).
  • Dirlik, Arif. “Asia Pacific Studies in an Age of Global Modernity”. In Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Vol. 6. No.2 (2005): 158-170.
  • Duara, Prasenjit, “Asia Redux: Conceptualizing a Region for our Times”, Conference paper at Tsinghua University, February 22, 2010.
  • Miyoshi, Masao and Harootunian, H.D. Learning Places: The Afterlives of Area Studies, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002.
  • Wallerstein, Immanuel, “Anthropology, Sociology, and Other Dubious Disciplines. Sidney W. Mintz Annual Lecture for 2002”. In Current Anthropology, Vol. 44, No. 4 (2003): 453-465.

Meeting Schedule and Events

About once every three weeks, although given the composition of the group, each individual’s administrative responsibilities and the larger pedagogical/administrative and research agendas of this group, once a month might be a more realistic schedule.

List of Participants

  • A/P Farid Alatas (Head, Malay Studies)
  • A/P Wong Sin Kiong (Head, Chinese Studies)
  • A/P Yong Mun Cheong (Head, South Asian Studies)
  • A/P Thang Leng Leng (Head, Japanese Studies)
  • A/P Goh Beng Lan (Head, Southeast Asian Studies)
  • A/P Robbie Goh (English Language and Literature/Vice-Dean)

The group will be open initially to faculty of the 5 Asian Studies departments, and to select invited members who it is felt can help drive its goals.