Contact
Expertise Summary
I am a graduate (PhD 2016) of the doctoral program in Cultural Studies at the University of Minnesota, with a minor in Moving Image Studies. In addition to my work as a scholar, I have over fifteen years' experience as a filmmaker, with projects ranging from ethnographic documentaries to experimental and intergeneric work, as well as music videos, commercials and subculture-based films. My research interests include Southeast Asian and other global cinemas (with Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and India as core areas of interest), digital and analog media, film and literary studies, postcolonial studies, gender studies, religious studies and ethnography and visual anthropology. In addition to these areas of specialization, my background includes a broad, comparative engagement with Western and non-Western philosophy and historiography. I position Southeast Asia as an emerging locus for the production and study of media in the Global South.
My forthcoming book, Archipelagic Features: Screening Southeast Asian Modernity (University of California Press 2025), compares the development and politics of form and style in Southeast Asian, American and other world cinemas from the mid twentieth century until the present. The book focuses especially on the expression of historically embedded understandings of gender and power in regional films. Building on and "testing" my scholarly work in the public sphere, my latest feature film, Banyak Ayam Banyak Rejeki (Many Chickens, Lots of Luck Indonesian 2021) adapts and deploys the fragmented structures and "matrifocal gaze" that my book locates in Southeast Asian movies of the 1950s, 60s, 70s and beyond. My teaching likewise emphasizes the importance of connecting theory and practice, and during my time at the University of Nottingham I have worked to build new media production facilities on campus, while adding production-based assessments to many film and media theory modules. My long engagement with the region as a researcher and practioner has imbued my scholarly and creative work with a nuanced sense of geopolitical contexts and their particular media histories, reflected across my scholarship, teaching and creative work.
My current film project, a collaboration with the independent horror producer Kuman Pictures in Kuala Lumpur, is set in Malaysia. It combines political documentary with supernatural conventions to visualize an alternate sacred geography connecting Southeast Asia to other global locales. In addition to Southeast Asian cinemas, I study and teach American and European "New Wave" film movements, am well versed in classic Swedish and Soviets cinemas, and take a special interest in post apocalyptic narratives from Hollywood and elsewhere.
Teaching Summary
At UNM I teach:
MLAC 3020 Southeast Asian Cinemas, MLAC 1025 Reading Film and Television, MLAC 1026 Producing Film and Television, MLAC 2019 Cultural Politics.
I also co-teach for , MLAC 1154 Culture and Society, and MLAC 2004 Researching Culture, Film and Media.
I supervise and serve as examiner for PhD, Mres and Masters students.
Other teaching experience:
From 2011-2014 I was a regular guest lecturer in critical theory and ethnography for the George Mason University Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution graduate workshop (students were from MA and PhD programs at George Mason) in Indonesia.
From 2008-2014 I was a regular guest lecturer in visual anthropology and ethnographic practice for the Haverford College Center for Peace and Global Citizenship Summer Program in Indonesia.
At the University of Minnesota (2008-2016) I taught Introduction to Film Study, and Intermediate Digital Cinema, and assisted in several other culture, film and literature-related courses.
Research Summary
Current interdisciplinary film/ethnography/historiography project: Pulau Besar: An Island of Tolerance in the Malay World, funded by a 2023-24 Pump Priming Grant from the University of Nottingham:
Located in the Straits of Malacca, 15km from Malacca city, Pulau Besar is an island of significant religious import. Its place in the history of the Malay world has sparked ongoing debates over its status and meaning in the present--as a symbol of the coming of Islam to the archipelago, and of the precepts of interreligious tolerance that Pulau Besar's illustrious 15th century inhabitants attached to its arrival. The island's numerous tomb-shrines (keramat) continue to be sites of popular veneration not only by Muslims but people of other faiths and ethno-cultural groups. Yet due to the island's contested status, historically momentous sites are subject to neglect or threatened with demolition.
Building on the few extant studies of the Pulau Besar, we take an interdisciplinary ethnographic and archival approach, using other regional keramat as points of comparison. Closely observing developments on the island while engaging with pilgrims, caretakers, officials and critics, we will produce a 1-hour film, four academic publications, and a public website with primary-source interviews and other materials. Outputs aim to recall and underscore the importance of this vulnerable living archive to the present state of Malaysia's religious and cultural politics. Academically, the island reveals how sacred geographies construct alternate historical maps of imperialism and globalization. As public intervention, our work will delicately but decisively advocate for Pulau Besar's stabilization and preservation as a working, bustling demonstration of the power of local Islam's roots in interreligious tolerance--located off-shore at a suitable distance from mainstream religious sites.
Past Research
GRANTS & FUNDING
2023-24 Pump Priming Grant Scheme, University of Nottingham, Malaysia. For ethnographic research
and filmmaking on tomb-shrines in Southeast Asia during 2024. $8,000.
2022 Special grant from Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Nottingham, Malaysia to
purchase additional media production equipment for student and faculty use. Main applicant. $6,500.
2019 PARC/Capex Project Grant from Univ. of Nottingham, Malaysia to build Digital Media Lab (media
postproduction facility for students and staff) and purchase video/media production equipment for
student and staff use. Head of project/grant. $32,000.
2018 American Institute for Indonesian Studies/Henry Luce Foundation Research Grant. Summer 2018.
$6,000.
2016 Thomas Rose Fellowship for Research in Asia. Graduate School, University of
Minnesota. June-August, 2016. $4000.
2015 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. Graduate School, University of Minnesota. A.Y. 2014-
2015. $22,500.
2014 International Thesis Research Grant. Graduate School, University of Minnesota. June-
August. $5000.
2013 Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship. US Department of
Education (awarded but declined). January-August, 2014. $30,150.
2012 Harold Leonard Memorial Fellowship for Film Study. Graduate School, University of
Minnesota. A.Y. 2012-2013. $22,500.
2012 United States Institute of Peace (USIP) Annual Grant Competition for documentary film project (The Black
Highway/Don't Disturb the Peace). Filmmaker for project, part of team of three other ethnographers (grant
administered through George Mason University Center for Peace and Conflict Studies, Prof. Leslie Dwyer,
PI). June 2012-August 2013. $118,000.
2011 IDEA Multicultural Research Award. Institute for Diversity, Equity, and Advocacy,
University of Minnesota. Co-PI/filmmaker for ongoing, collaborative film/research project in Philadelphia.
June, 2011-March, 2012. $7000.
2009 International Thesis Award/Pre-Dissertation Fellowship. Graduate School,
University of Minnesota. June-August, 2009. $4000.
2009 University Symposium Award in Collaborative Research. Institute for Advanced Study,
University of Minnesota. Filmmaker/co-PI. March-May, 2009. $23,748.
2008 Body and Knowing Research Award. Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota. Co-
PI/filmmaker. Spring, 2008-Fall, 2009. $10,900.
Future Research
Upcoming Book Project: Ethnofiction in Southeast Asia: A Media-Archealogical Exploration. My second book project expands on my previous research, combining it with the particular mode of hybrid visual ethnography I have deployed in recent films, while relating this mode to historical patterns of aesthetic-construction in Southeast Asia. I interrogate foundational theories of documentary film through close examination of an ongoing, two-decade trend in "ethnofiction" (the term originates with French documentarian Jean Rouch) throughout the region, that I argue builds on established local precedents. Following the fall of many Southeast Asian authoritarian regimes in the late 1990s and the rise of reform-era "New Waves" armed with cheap digital cameras, I show how the method (or something resembling it) was effectively reworked by young filmmakers steeped in regional modes of representation where veracity and fabrication are less distinguished than in European and American traditions. In their films, the conventions, limitations and truth-claims generally seen as key to the ethics of other global documentarians are often flagrantly disregarded. I argue that the concept of a universal boundary clearly separating fiction from reality is hence implied to be unnecessary and potentially counterproductive. At the same time, I show how most Southeast Asian filmmakers deploy these techniques not in the name of manipulation, but in the service of a thicker cinematic and political reality rarely achieved by other documentarians.