Schedule

Nov. 27, 2024 | 12:30–2:00 PM

Room

Rm 1, North Ballroom

Moderator

TBA

A1.1

From Convent to Hollywood: Filipina Women, Gender and Philippine Studies

Vina A. Lanzona

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

The study of Philippine history has been enriched by treatments of indigenous and colonial cultures, wars and revolutionary struggles, colonial and postcolonial transformations and especially the stories of the marginalized such as peasants, workers and indigenous Filipinos. But what continues to be inadequate in such rich chronologies are the women, their experiences and struggles, and how gender and sexuality shape our thinking about Filipino history and social realities. Despite recent advances in the histories of the Philippines, women continue to be seen as footnotes or used merely as metaphors to discuss change and continuity.

As a student and professor in Philippine and American universities, I have developed a teaching and research program that aims to highlight issues of women and gender in Philippine studies. Promoting an inclusive perspective on Philippine Studies was also something I championed when I was director of the Center for Philippine Studies in the US. These experiences have been both rewarding, but also frustrating at the same time, in the sense that there’s still so much work to be done. My paper will review and discuss how women have been generally treated in Philippine historiography, especially in textbooks, in the hope of shaping a teaching and research agenda that places women at the center of Philippine history. And I would welcome an exchange with colleagues in and out of the Philippines who have also focused on highlighting the voices of the marginalized, and women, in particular.

A1.2

Reframing Philippine Studies in the Diaspora: Practices, Epistemologies, and the Post-Decolonization of the ‘National’ Imagination

Aurelio S. Agcaoili

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

The epistemic question of Philippine Studies is rooted in the contemporary understanding of the constitutive elements of “studies on the Philippines” that remain centered on “imperial” discourse produced in Manila and by Manila-centered scholars. Such a framing as demonstrated by the practices of academics imagining the Philippines has not only been wanting but has not produced a critical view of the country’s take on belonging, inclusion, diversity, and equity, a view that has assumed Philippine scholarship and knowledge and experience as “always-already” national, and hence, “naturally” homogenized. The continued exportation of Philippine labor to other countries and immigration of Filipinos to North America has solidified that homogenized view in intellectual and academic discourses, initiatives, and practices. This homogenized view has produced a heuristic that regards “the Philippines as Manila” and Manila is the Philippines, and that all abbreviations to an understanding of the country are legit, right, just, and fair. These abbreviations of “things Philippine” in the mind of the larger community is a case of misreading as it is a case of misrepresentation. This misrepresentation peripheralizes further the fact of plurality and diversity of the Philippines as a country made up of various ethnolinguistic cultural communities. There is an inchoate and subtle insertion of the fascistic in this idea and idealization of Philippine Studies that does not question its assumptions in the political, economic, and cultural aspects of communal life whether that life is domestic or diasporic. A post-decolonial approach to a new reading leading to a more equitable understanding of “things Philippines” would be necessary to fairly address the epistemological deficit of the skewed Philippine Studies as currently practiced, produced, and reproduced. 

A1.3

Foreign Social Science Researchers as Philippine Scholars: Institute of Philippine Culture’s (IPC) Visiting Research Associate Experience

Mary Racelis

Ateneo de Manila University

Since 1968, the Institute of Philippine Culture, School of Social Sciences, Ateneo de Manila University, has welcomed the entry and affiliation of foreign scholars as Visiting Research Associates (VRAs). The program has enabled 480 VRAs over a period of 55 years to undertake wide-ranging in-country studies of Philippine society and culture. The roster of VRAs reveals predominantly American senior researchers in the 1960s and 1970s, shifting to a mix of scholars from Japan and other nationalities. Years later, diversity grew with the influx of post-doctoral and PhD dissertation researchers, among them a few Filipinos studying abroad. IPC affiliation enabled them to have a Metro Manila research base, Rizal Library access and nationwide connections with Filipino academics. Foreign affiliates obtained a 47 (a) (2) special non-immigrant visa issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs, which simplified their entry and gave them flexible timeline advantages. With these organizational aspects of IPC’s VRA program as background, this paper highlights VRA profiles, their research topics, published results and other local involvements to ascertain their influence and contributions to understanding and theorizing Philippine society and culture. In summary, attention centers around a large set of post-World War II foreign social scientists who, in the course of their academic careers, chose to become Philippine scholars. Locating their narratives in global contexts over the past half-century offers new insights to understanding Dialogo—then and now.

A1.4

The Emergence of Maritime Anthropology in the Philippines: Collaboration between Filipino and Japanese Researchers Shaping a New Academic Discipline

Cynthia Neri Zayas

University of the Philippines Diliman

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