Cindy A. Nguyen

Zupanov, Ines. Missionary Tropics:The Catholic Frontier in India (16th-17th Centuries) University of Michigan: Ann Arbor, 2005.

Conversion as a Work of Classification and Translation

            In Missionary Tropics, Ines Zupanov examines the Portuguese Jesuit missionary project in India from the beginning of the sixteenth up to the establishment of the East India Company and British imperialism in the seventeenth century. Zupanov closely analyzes the wealth of devotional literature and Jesuit letters such as those of Francis Xavier, Diogo Goncalves, Jacome Fenicio, and Jesuit martyrs. The author attempts to move beyond hagiography, nationalistic histories, and that of institutions to contribute a more critical understanding of Jesuit missions. Missionary Tropics is divided into three parts: the first examines St. Francis Xavier and Thomas the Apostle and the role of sacred relics in Asia; the second examines the experiences and representation of missionary work in India such as the romanticization of martyrdom; and the third part examines missionary reports and attempts to understand Indian culture and religion. Zupanov posits two themes throughout her book—tropics and translation.

Continue reading “BOOK REVIEW: Ines Zupanov’s Missionary Tropics”

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Continue reading “BOOK REVIEW: Rudolf Mrazek’s Engineers of Happy Land”

Kwon, Heonik. Ghosts of War in Vietnam. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2008.

Lincoln, Martha, and Bruce Lincoln. “Toward a Critical Hauntology: Bare Afterlife and the Ghosts of Ba Chúc.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 57, no. 1 (2015): 191–220.

Continue reading “BOOK REVIEW: Heonik Kwon’s Ghosts of War in Vietnam”

Arnold-de Simine, Silke. Mediating Memory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Ledgerwood, Judy. “The Cambodian Tuoul Sleng Museum of Genocidal Crimes: National Narrative.” Museum Anthropology 21, no. 1 (1997).

Ly, Boreth. “Of Performance and the Persistent Temporality of Trauma: Memory, Art, and Visions.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 16, no. 1 (2008): 109–30.

Thompson, Ashley. “Forgetting to Remember, Again: On Curatorial Practice and ‘Cambodian Art’ in the Wake of Genocide.” Diacritics 41, no. 2 (2013): 82–109.

Uk, Krisna. “Aesthetic Forms of Post-Conflict Memory.” In Interactions with a Violent Past: Reading Post-Conflict Landscapes in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, edited by Oliver Tappe and Vatthana Pholsena. Baltimore, Maryland: Project Muse, 2013.

Um, Khatharya. “Exiled Memory: History, Identity, and Remembering in Southeast Asia and Southeast Asian Diaspora.” Positions 20, no. 3 (June 20, 2012): 831–50.

  Continue reading “BOOK REVIEW: Curating Recent Memory in Cambodia”