Thammasat University students are cordially invited to participate in a free online webinar about propaganda and morality panics in Indonesia.
The Thammasat University Library collection includes books on the subject of gender studies in Indonesia.
These were generously donated to the library by the late Professor Benedict Anderson and Ajarn Charnvit Kasetsiri, among important books of interest for students of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) studies, political science, literature, and related fields.
These 2800 books from the personal scholarly library of Professor Benedict Anderson at Cornell University, in addition to a previous donation of books from the library of Professor Anderson at his home in Bangkok, are shelved in the Charnvit Kasetsiri Room of the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus.
The 6 May event is part of The Monash Indonesian Seminar Series, a collaboration between Monash University Library in Australia and the Monash Herb Feith Indonesian Engagement Centre.
As its website states,
The Monash Herb Feith Indonesian Engagement Centre is a dynamic platform for developing strong collaborations and exchange between academic researchers, creative industry, and government, industry and alumni leaders from across Monash and Indonesia. The Centre acts as a hub for engaging Indonesia, providing a platform for media outreach from Monash and Indonesian partners though research briefs, commentary on public issues, short videos and social media posts.
The center was named in honor of Professor Herbert Feith, an Australian academic and world leading scholar of Indonesian politics.
The TU Library also owns a number of books by Professor Feith about different aspects of Indonesian political history.
The webinar will be held on Thursday, 6 May 2021 starting at 4pm Bangkok time.
Students may register at this link.
For any further questions, please write to
Speakers will be Ms. Nursyahbani (Nur) Katjasungkana, LLD, a feminist lawyer and human rights activist and Professor Saskia Wieringa, honorary Emeritus Professor at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
The TU Library owns several books on gender studies by Professor Wieringa.
These include Rethinking gender planning: a critical discussion of the use of the concept of gender; The birth of the new order state in Indonesia: sexual politics and nationalism; Gender, tradition, sexual diversity and AIDS in postcolonial Southern Africa: some suggestions for research; Women’s sexualities and masculinities in a globalizing Asia; and Sex and sexualities in contemporary Indonesia: sexual politics, health, diversity, and representations.
As the Monash University website explains about two past morality panics in Indonesia, in 1965 and 2015:
In this seminar Saskia and Nur will discuss the background of these two campaigns, in the light of the current situation of a decline of democracy, the rise of majoritarian conservative Muslim values, the continued power of the country’s security forces and the economic and political oligarchy…
Speakers:
Nur Katjasungkana is a feminist lawyer and human rights activist. She graduated from Law at Airlangga University in 1978. Nur has contributed greatly to women’s rights in the context of domestic violence law, having been Commissioner of the National Commission on Violence Against Women and co-founder and first Secretary General of the Indonesia Women’s Coalition for Justice and Democracy.
From 1999 to 2004 she was a member of the People’s Consultative Assembly in Indonesia and then became a Member of the Indonesian Parliment until 2009. Nur was also a member of the World Bank’s Advisory Council on Gender and Development from 2013 to 2015…In 2019 she was awarded an honorary doctorate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
For her commitment and tireless work, she was nominated for the 2006 1000 PeaceWomen Across the Globe Nobel Prize and GlobeAsia Magazine named her one of the most inspiring and influential women in Indonesia.
Saskia Wieringa
Saskia Wieringa is an honorary Emeritus Professor at the University of Amsterdam. She is also the co-founder of the Kartini Asia Network.
Saskia chairs the International People’s Tribunal on the 1965 Crimes Against Humanity in Indonesia and co-organized the Tribunal on that topic, held in November 2015.
She has written and (co-) edited more than 30 books and over 200 articles.
In a blog posted last year, Professor Wieringa declared:
In 2004, I converted to Islam. Some of my lesbian-feminist friends took it badly, saying I had betrayed their ideals, as they considered Islam to be “always-already” anti-woman. But I have always been optimistic. When I was young, a popular saying was: two religions on a pillow, that means the devil is between them. The reference was to Protestantism and Catholicism. At the moment this enmity is hardly felt in the Netherlands. Inspired by my love for the most wonderful feminist Muslim woman I had ever come across in the world, my decision at the time seemed very logical to me. The Islam she believed in could be my Islam as well. And why did Christianity and Islam have to be so antagonistic? After all they share a common origin with Judaism. I did not want to succumb to the Islamophobia so common in the West. An added advantage of my conversion was that I myself and my work on Indonesian feminism and the LBT movement would be more intelligible in Indonesia itself. I became inspired by Indonesian friends and scholars interpreting Islam in a progressive, feminist way, with space for human, women’s and sexual rights. The Indonesian LGBT movement was expanding at the time, calls for sexual rights were being voiced more openly.
In the last few years, however, the space of a human rights-oriented, inspiring and tolerant Islam in Indonesia has been shrinking. A virulent campaign of political homophobia that started by the end of 2015 is increasingly marginalizing the LGBT community. Bars are raided, transwomen are forced to cut their hair and be more manly, lesbian couples are chased from their apartments; defendants of the LGBT community are being accused of being both perverts and communists… Their definition of Islam is not mine nor that of my liberal friends. Our space is shrinking, but we will keep up the fight for an open, contextual, inspiring and tolerant Islam, which is inclusive of gender diversity.
How will my journey continue? To me all religions have their progressive, human rights-oriented sides. Though of course I am also very much aware that all religions have been and still are being used for hate-filled actions.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)