Thammasat University students are cordially invited to participate in a free webinar: Of Harems and Eunuchs: Theravada Buddhist Courts of Mainland Southeast Asia in Comparative Perspective.

The event will take place on Thursday, 16 September, at 9pm Bangkok time.

It is sponsored by the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC), the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) and the New York Southeast Asia Network (NYSEAN).

The Thammasat University Library collection includes many books about different aspects of Theravada Buddhism.

For further information or with any questions, kindly write to this email address:

sseac@sydney.edu.au

The speaker will be Professor Katherine Bowie.

The TU Library collection also includes several books by Professor Bowie.

As the event website indicates,

Of Harems and Eunuchs: Theravada Buddhist Courts of Mainland Southeast Asia in Comparative Perspective

Description

For the inaugural TS4 webinar, we are delighted to host Professor Katherine A. Bowie (University of Wisconsin-Madison) to delve into the complex world of harems in the Theravada Buddhist courts of mainland Southeast Asia.

Unlike Europe, Asian courts were characterized by the presence of harems whose members ranged from empresses to eunuchs. Once the focus of prurient interests, recent scholarship on harems has increasingly highlighted their complex roles in ensuring the continuation of dynasties over time and forming political linkages, both within and across empires. These studies have typically focused on specific courts. However a comparative perspective reveals that the structure of harems varied widely and that its members were embedded in very different networks of power.

Join Professor Katherine A. Bowie for the inaugural TS4 webinar, as she considers ways in which the harems of the Theravada Buddhist courts of mainland Southeast Asia differed from those of the Chinese, Mughal and Ottoman empires, highlighting differences in the power of court women, the regulation of sexuality, the rules of succession, the selection of queens, and the role of eunuchs.

Katherine A. Bowie is a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. She was president of the Association of Asian Studies, 2017-2018. With fieldwork experience in Thailand covering over four decades, her research interests include historical anthropology, village politics, nation-state formation, gender, and Theravada Buddhism. Her publications include Rituals of National Loyalty: An Anthropology of the State and the Village Scout Movement in Thailand (Columbia University Press, 1997) and Of Beggars and Buddhas: The Politics of Humor in the Vessantara Jataka in Thailand (University of Wisconsin Press, 2017).

About the TS4 Series:

Sponsored by the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC), the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) and the New York Southeast Asia Network (NYSEAN), this virtual seminar series brings together social science experts from across the globe to discuss pressing issues facing Thailand. In addition to providing in-depth scholarly analysis of social issues in Thailand, this series will foster new opportunities for networking between those working in Thailand and around the world.

Her faculty homepage notes that Professor Bowie

has conducted extensive research in Thailand for over 40 years. Combining archival research with oral histories, interviews and participant-observation, her work explores Thai peasant history, political economy, social movements, electoral politics, gender and, most recently, research on anthropological approaches to Theravada Buddhism.   She has just completed a book manuscript on the Vessantara Jataka, the best known of the 500+ folktales about the previous lives of the Buddha. Entitled The Politics of Humor: The Vicissitudes of the Vessantara Jataka in Thailand, this work explores the history of variations in the interpretations and performances of this popular story across three regions of Thailand. Her current research focuses on northern Thailand’s most famous monk, Khruubaa Srivichai ( (1878-1938).

The website of the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre adds further information:

• On the ground in Southeast Asia
• Working across disciplines to solve the region’s challenges
• Find out how
• Sydney Southeast Asia Centre
• Supporting research, education and partnerships in Southeast Asia
• The Sydney Southeast Asia Centre builds on the expertise of and facilitates collaborations between over 400 University of Sydney academics who specialise in Southeast Asia.

• Australia and Southeast Asia: it’s a marriage some may have taken for granted, but we haven’t. At the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre, we put our researchers into fields, classrooms and labs across the region to do real work.
• From business to education, health, law, and veterinary science, we’re making sure Australia and the region develop together to face the challenges of the 21st century. Our innovative approach reflects Southeast Asia’s rich diversity and growing importance in the world’s geopolitical landscape.
• We foster partnerships and collaboration between researchers and practitioners working on critical real-world Southeast Asia issues, such as economic and social reform, infectious diseases and the environment.
• Our work makes a real difference by informing decisions in government, industry and the wider community.

Earlier this year, the University of Wisconsin announced that Professor Bowie had established a Thai Studies Funds:

Over the past several months, Professor Katherine Bowie, Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Anthropology and Southeast Asian Studies, has donated $60,000 to support the study of Thailand at the UW-Madison. This endowment fund will be housed in the University of Wisconsin Foundation and will be administered by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. Building on earlier donations by the Thai Alumni Association and the Royal Thai Embassy, this fund is intended to support a wide range of initiatives and activities (on and off campus) related to our program’s long-standing commitment to the study of Thailand.

Since her arrival at UW-Madison in 1988, Professor Bowie has been at the forefront of our Center’s activities, having served as Director on two occasions, 2001-02 and 2011-14, and having mentored a large number of MA and doctoral students, not only in Anthropology but in a wide range of disciplines. Her academic accomplishments and leadership have been most recently evidenced by her election as President of the Association for Asian Studies (2017) and by her appointment as Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor at UW-Madison (2017). These honors clearly indicate the esteem in which she is held by her peers at this university and across the globe. In addition to her commitment to her many students, Katherine is widely acknowledged for the many contributions she makes to her discipline and to Thai studies. Her most recent book, Of Beggars and Buddhas: The Politics of Humor in Vessantara Jataka in Thailand, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2017.

The “Thai Studies Fund” will take its place alongside the Center’s two other endowment funds, the Southeast Asian Studies Fund established through a Mellon Foundation challenge grant (1991-1993) in support of language instruction and our Center Fellowships and Field Research Grants for graduate students in all fields of Southeast Asian studies, and the Judith L. Ladinsky Memorial Fund, established in 2014 in support of Vietnamese studies at UW-Madison.

Katherine sees her gift as just the beginning and hopes to encourage others to contribute to its growth or, as she puts it: “the endowment fund has a long way to go before it reaches a goal of $1 million.” Please join us in expressing our deep appreciation for Katherine’s immense generosity and commitment.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)