TAMARA LOOS

 

Cornell University                                                                     518 Wood Road

Department of History                                                              Freeville, NY 13068

Ithaca, NY  14853                                                                   Tel: 607-347-6816

Tel: 607-254-5332; Fax: 607-255-0469                                  email: TL14@cornell.edu

 

PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT

2005-                 Associate Professor, History Department, Cornell University

1999-05     Assistant Professor, History Department, Cornell University

 

EDUCATION

Ph.D.         Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 1999. Major field in Southeast Asian History;

Minor fields in Modern Chinese History and Women’s Studies.

M.A.          Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 1994. Southeast Asian History.

B.A.           Pomona College, Claremont, CA, 1989. Graduated cum laude in Asian Studies.

 

FELLOWSHIPS and GRANTS

2009          Cornell Society for the Humanities Research Grant

Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies Seed Grant

2008          Cornell History Department Faculty Research Grant

2007          LaFeber Research Grant, with Samson Lim

2006          Cornell History Department Faculty Research Grant

2004          J.S. Knight Writing Program, Sophomore Seminar Grant

2002          Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship at Harvard

Cornell President’s Council of Cornell Women Affinito-Stewart Grant

Society for the Humanities Faculty Research Grant, Spring

Cornell History Department Jr. Faculty Research Grant, Spring

2001          Cornell History Department Jr. Faculty Research Grant, Spring

1999          Lauriston Sharp Dissertation Prize

            Messenger-Chalmers Dissertation Prize

            Women’s Studies Dissertation Fellowship, Spring

1998          Buttrick-Crippen Fellowship, Honorable Mention

Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Grant in Women’s Studies

            Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship, Spring

            Beatrice Brown Award, Cornell Women’s Studies Program

1997          President's Council of Cornell Women Grant, Cornell University

1996          Mellon Fellowship, Cornell History Department

1995          Social Science Research Council’s (SSRC) Dissertation Fellowship

1994          Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship

1993          FLAS, Khmer language

            SSRC Predissertation Grant for research in Thailand and Cambodia, Summer

1992          FLAS, Khmer language, Fall

                  Chiang Mai Advanced Summer Thai Grant, language training in Chiang Mai

1991          FLAS, Thai language Academic Year and SEASSI

            Sage Fellowship Award (Mellon Foundation), Cornell History Department

 

PUBLICATIONS: Books and Book Chapters

Subject Siam: Family, Law, and Colonial Modernity in Thailand (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). A book-length social and legal history of nineteenth and early twentieth century Siam that focuses on gender, justice, modernity, and national identity through the lenses of family law, the Malay Muslim south, and polygyny.  

http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4401

 

“Introduction,” Cocktail: A Play about the Life and HIV Drug Development Work of Dr. Krisana Kraisintu by Ping Chong and Vince LiCata (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2009), vii-xxv. Translated into Thai.

 

“Competitive Colonialisms: Siam and Britain on the Malay Muslim Border,” The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand, edited by Rachel Harrison and Peter Jackson (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009).

 

“Stranger Bedfellows: Sodomy, Sex and Politics in Siam.” In Other Pleasures: Sodomy and Diverse Sexual Acts in Asia, ca. 400 -1940, edited by Raquel Reyes, et. al. Submitted (2009) to Palgrave Macmillan.

 

“The Politics of Women’s Suffrage in Thailand,” in Women’s Suffrage in Asia: Gender, Nationalism and Democracy, edited by Mina Roces and Louise Edwards. London and NY: RoutledgeCurzon Press, 2004: 170-194.

 

Critical Introduction, Five Years in Siam: From 1891-1896, Vols. 1-2, by H. Warington Smyth (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1898, rep. 1994).  Also published on the web in December 2002 by Lewis P. Orans at http://www.pinetreeweb.com/hw-smyth-five-years-00.htm

 

 

PUBLICATIONS: Current Book Projects

Biography of Dr. Krisana Kraisintu. I will spend the 2009-2010 academic year traveling with and writing about the life and work of Dr. Krisana Kraisintu, a Thai female pharmaceutical doctor who has saved thousands of lives in Thailand, Africa, and other countries by formulating and manufacturing affordable generic drugs to treat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other maladies that strike the poor in particular. The book will also focus on her audacious and unwavering conviction that “teaching people how to fish is better than giving them fish.” Dr. Krisana transfers technological know-how (provides gratis drug formulas and pharmaceutical training) to the poorest African countries in order to break the cycle of dependency of lesser developed countries on wealthier countries and multinational pharmaceutical companies.

 

“Violent Intimacies: Affect in Siam.” This book project on affect, intimacy and violence in Thai history is organized around five key court cases selected for their ability to reveal emotional texture and richness in their historical context. It begins with a case of romantic love turned sour between a young Siamese man and a British woman in 1900. The sentimental language of love and shame that saturates the writing about this attempted murder-suicide begins a project that aims to integrate affect and violence among intimates into studies of Thai history. Both emotions and intimate violence are seen as universal, a view that makes these topics intriguing relevant and yet troublingly difficult to write about with the kind of specificity that is necessary to make these categories culturally and historically meaningful. It asks what access historians have to emotions, whether emotions have a place in the writing of history, and if so, what place that is.

 

PUBLICATIONS: Articles

“Transnational, Colonial and National Histories of Sexualities in Asia.” American Historical Review (Dec. 2009) (refereed).

 

“The Politics of Sexual Violence in Siam.” Jutyun: warasan satriniyom thai [Stance: the Thai Feminist Review], 2 (2008), 21-52.

 

“A History of Sex and the State in Southeast Asia: Class, Intimacy and Invisibility.” Part of Special Issue on “International Marriage, Rights and the State in Southeast and East Asia,” to Citizenship Studies 12, 1 (Feb. 2008) (refereed).

 

“In Celebration of Professor David Kent Wyatt.” Southeast Asia Program Bulletin (Fall 2007).

 

“Invited Commentary” on Michael Peletz, “Where are all the transgendered ritual specialists? Gender pluralism in Southeast Asia since early modern times,” Current Anthropology 47, 2 (April 2006).

 

“Sex in the Inner City: The Fidelity between Sex and Politics in Siam.” The Journal of Asian Studies 64: 4 (Nov. 2005): 881-909 (refereed).


“Siam’s Subjects: Muslims, Law, and Colonialism in Southern Thailand,” Southeast Asia Program Bulletin (Winter-Spring 2004-2005): 6-11.

 

“Issaraphap: The Limits of Individual Liberty in Thai Jurisprudence,” Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 12:1 (1998): 35-75 (refereed).

 

“Balancing the Scales of Justice,” Thailand Times English Daily (Bangkok, 13 February 1996).

 

PUBLICATIONS: Book Reviews

Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China by Tianlian Zheng. Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries (forthcoming).

 

Bombay Anna: the Real Story and Remarkable Adventures of the King and I Governess by Susan Morgan. Journal of Historical Biography (forthcoming).

 

Khmer Women on the Move: Exploring Work and Life in Urban Cambodia by Annuska Derks. Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries (June 2009).

 

Pirates, Prostitutes and Pullers: Explorations in the Ethno- and Social History of Southeast Asia by James Warren. Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries (May 2009).

 

The Emotions: A Cultural Reader ed. by Helena Wulff. Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries (Oct. 2008).

 

Thailand: The Worldly Kingdom by Maurizio Peleggi. Journal of Southeast Asia Research 15, 3 (Nov. 2007).

 

Seditious Histories: Contesting Thai and Southeast Asian Pasts by Craig J. Reynolds. The Historian 69, 4 (Winter 2007): 805-806.

 

Male Bodies, Womens Souls: Personal Narratives of Thailand’s Transgendered Youth by LeeRay Costa and Andrew Matzner. Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries (Oct. 2007).

 

The Flaming Womb: Repositioning Women in Early Modern Southeast Asia by Barbara W. Andaya. Pacific Affairs 80, 1 (Spring 2007).

 

The Flaming Womb: Repositioning Women in Early Modern Southeast Asia by Barbara W. Andaya. Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries (Feb. 2007).

 

Legal Evolution and Political Authority in Indonesia: Selected Essays by Daniel S. Lev. Indonesia (April 2005).

 

Lords of Things: The Fashioning of the Siamese Monarchy's Modern Image by Maurizio Peleggi. The Historian 66/02 (2004).

 

Woman, Man, Bangkok: Love, Sex and Popular Culture in Thailand by Scot Barmé. The Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (June 2003).

 

Sex and Borders: Gender, National Identity, and Prostitution Policy in Thailand by Leslie Ann Jeffrey. The Journal of Asian Studies 62:2 (May 2003).

 

Other Pasts, ed. by Barbara Watson Andaya. The Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (June 2002).

 

Re Orient: Change in Asian Societies by Aat Vervoorn. Indonesia (Oct. 2000).

 

OTHER MEDIA: Radio Interviews

“Underreported: Unfolding Tensions.” Forty minute radio interview about tensions in southern Thailand conducted by Leonard Lopate for his weekly show, Underreported, that tackles stories that are often relegated to the back pages of U.S. news. 9 December 2004. WNYC. http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/episodes/12092004

 

COURSES

      Telluride Summer Program Course on Foreign Policy as Subversion.

      History 1910: Modern Asian History. Team-taught undergraduate lecture course.

History 3960/6960 Southeast Asian History from the 18th Century. Graduate and

undergraduate lecture course and graduate seminar.

History 100.95 A Matter of Fact? History, Gender, and Difference. Freshman Writing Seminar.

History 207/507 The Occidental Tourist: Travel Writing & Orientalism in Southeast Asia. Graduate and undergraduate seminar.

History 2170 Subversion as Foreign Policy. Sophomore Seminar.

History 4000 Honors Proseminar. Seminar on approaches to writing history for undergraduate history majors who plan to write an honors thesis.

History 416/616 Seminar on Gender and Sexuality in Southeast Asia. Graduate and undergraduate seminars.

History 480 Gender Adjudicated: Law, Family, and the State in Southeast Asia. Graduate and undergraduate seminar.

History 487 Narrating Lifeworlds: History and Auto/Biography in Southeast Asia. Graduate and undergraduate seminar.

History 604 Colonial Encounters. Graduate seminar.

History 687 Seminar on Modern Thailand. Graduate seminar.

History 703 Supervised Graduate Reading. Topics include:

Comparative colonialism

Theories of travel and tourism

Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia

Historiography of Southeast Asia

Burmese history and historiography

Thai literature

Burma and Manipur

Topics in gender and sexuality

Topics in Thai history and historiography

Violence and criminality in Thai history

Violence and reconciliation in the Southern Philippines

History 709 Introduction to the Graduate Study of History

 

LANGUAGES

Thai (proficiency in reading, speaking, writing)

Indonesian/Malay (beginning)

 

ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICE

Cornell University

Search Committee, Einaudi Center Director, Spring 2009

Chair, Humanities Council, Society for the Humanities, 2007-2008

Humanities Council, Society for the Humanities, 2004-2009

Search Committee, Anthropology, 2005-2006

Search Committee, Southeast Asia Librarian, Spring 2000

Faculty Senator, Faculty Senate, 2000-2001

 
History Department

Honors Committee, 2008-2009

Curriculum Committee, 2003-2005, 2007-2009

Asia Caucus Chair, 2007-2009

Search Committee, South Asian History, Fall 2004

Convener, Doing History Workshop, Fall 2004

Coordinator, Comparative History Colloquium, Spring 2001-Spring 2002, 2003-2004

Undergraduate Honors Committee, 2003-2005

Cornelius DeKiewiet Prize Committee, Spring 2002

Placement Officer Committee, Spring 2001

Messenger-Chalmers Undergraduate Prize Committee, 1999-2001

Search Committee, Medieval History, Fall 2000

Faculty Advisor to First Year Undergraduates, 2000-2006

 

Southeast Asia Program

Associate Director, 2008-2010

Chair, Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2008-present

Editorial Board, Southeast Asia Program Publications, 1999-present

Executive Committee, 1999-present (meets biweekly)

Curriculum and Student Committees, 1999-2002

Lauriston Sharp Dissertation Prize Committee, Spring 2002

Consultant, Digitization Project, 2000-2007 (see http://seasiavisions.library.cornell.edu/)

 

Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Mellon Fellow Selection Committee, 2003-2004

Curriculum Committee, 2001-2003

Graduate Affairs Committee Co-Chair, 1999-2000

Steering Committee, 1998-1999

Executive Board, 1998-2000

 

      Workshops and Conferences

      “Gender Pluralism: Southeast Asia Since Early Modern Times.” I organized, raised funds, and hosted a major interdisciplinary workshop based on a new book manuscript written Professor Michael Peletz (anthropology, Emory) on gender, transgender, and the state in Southeast Asia. International, national, and local scholars participated on four panels which met for two days. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 22-23 Feb. 2008.

 

      “The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Power, Aesthetics and the Role of Cultural ‘Others’ in the Making of Thai Identities.” I assisted Professors Peter Jackson (ANU), Rachel Harrison (SOAS) and Thak Chaloemtiarana organize, raise funds and host a international interdisciplinary workshop on Thailand’s ambiguous relationship with Western forms of modernity. Thai, Australian, US, and European scholars joined the two day conference. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 4-7 November 2004.

 

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

Field

Elected Member, Southeast Asia Committee, Association for Asian Studies (AAS), 2003-2006

Elected Member, Executive Board, Thailand/Laos/Cambodia Committee, AAS, 2004-2006

Editorial Board Member, South East Asia Research, SOAS, University of London, 2008-

           

Referee

Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications

The University of Wisconsin Press

The University of Washington Press

The Nordic Institute of Asian Studies

Journal of Asian Studies

The Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

Comparative Studies in Society and History

Curzon Press/RoutledgeCurzon Press

Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

The International Feminist Journal of Politics

Journal of Burma Studies

Cornell University Press

Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context

Policy Studies, East-West Center, Washington

Women’s Studies International Forum

Asian Studies Review

 

 

SELECTED CONFERENCE PAPERS AND INVITED LECTURES

 

2009

“Paragon of Postmodern Transnationalism or Modern Cosmopolitianism? The Case of a Thai Activist Doctor in Africa.” Conference of Varieties of Modernities, University of Zurich, September 2009.

 

“Biographies of the Living: The pleasures and perils of writing about a living Thai history-maker.” Conference on Asia for University Educators, Southeast Asia Program Outreach, Cornell University, Ithaca, January 2009.

 

2008

“Morality Tales: Writing Buddhism into the Biography of a Thai Scientist.” Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Conference on Religion in Southeast Asian Politics: Resistance, Negotiation and Transcendence. National University of Singapore, December 2008.

 

“Violent Intimacies: Affect in Thai History.” Comparative History Colloquium paper, Cornell University History Department, Ithaca, April 2008.

 

“Sex and Intimacy in Colonial Southeast Asia.” Panel Discussant. Association for Asian Studies, Atlanta, April 2008.

 

“Violent Intimacies: Love, Murder and Affect in Siam.” Southeast Asia Brown Bag lecture. Cornell University, Ithaca, February 2008.

 

“Alternative Histories of Violence, 1973-76.” Organizer, Chair and Discussant for the 10th International Conference on Thai Studies, Thammasat University, Bangkok, January 2008.

 

2007

“Violent Intimacies: History and Affect in Siam.” Southeast Asia Program Talk, University of California, Berkeley, November 2007.

 

“ ‘Othering’” Social Processes and Cultural Expressions.” Panelist for conference on Imagining Muslims/Imagining Others: South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Europe. Cornell University, September 2007.

 

“Violent Intimacies: Humanity and the History of Siam.” Focus Asia Workshop: The Intersections between Desires and Violences. Center for East and Southeast Asian Studies, Lund University, Sweden, April 2007.

 

“Colonial Siam: Family, Sex/Gender, Law and Malay Muslims in Thai History.” Opening talk in the Thai language for workshop on Subject Siam, sponsored by Thammasat University, Mahidol University and Silkworm Books. Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand, March 2007.

 

“State of the Field: Sexuality in Asian History.” Roundtable on Gender and Sexuality in World History, American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, January 2007.

 

2006

“A History of Sex and the State in Southeast Asia: Class, Intimacy and Invisibility.” Conference on International Marriage, Rights and the State in Southeast and East Asia, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, September 2006.

 

“Competitive Colonialism: a History of Siam and the Malay Muslim South.” Islam in Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Symposium. Berkeley-UCLA Southeast Asia consortium, UCLA, Los Angeles, May 2006.

 

“Siam’s Competitive Colonialism in the Malay Muslim South.” Keynote speaker for 6th Annual Graduate Student Conference, Southeast Asia Center, Northern Illinois University, Dekalb, IL, February 2006.

 

“Self-Reflexivity on Southeast Asia from the Frozen Tundra.” Southeast Asia Center, Northern Illinois University, Dekalb, IL, February 2006.

 

“Competitive Colonialisms: Siam and the Malay Muslim South.” Southeast Asia Program, Yale University, New Haven, CT, January 2006.

 

 

2005

“Profitable Topics: Publishing and Subject Matters in Southeast Asian Studies.” Panel on History, Genealogies and Research: The Influence of Training and Employment on Southeast Asian Historical Studies, AAS, Chicago, April 2005.

 

“In-appropriations: Siam’s ‘Conscious’ Imperialism in Pattani.” Panel entitled, Appropriations: Re-interpreting the Master Narrative of the Colonial Encounter, for the International Thai Studies Conference, Dekalb, IL, April 2005. 

 

“Hegemony in Siam’s Semi-Colonial/Semi-Imperial Status.” Panel entitled, Thailand: Anything But ‘Never Colonized,’ for the International Thai Studies Conference, Dekalb, IL, April 2005.

 

“Subject Siam and Siam’s Subjects: Family Law, Islam and Modernity in Thailand.” University of Toronto, Canada. March 2005.

 

 

2004

“Competitive Colonialisms or Keeping up with the Swettenhams: Siam and the Muslim South.” The Ambiguous Allure of the West, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, November 2004. I helped organize and solicit funding ($24,000+) for this international conference.

 

“Subject Siam and Siam's Subjects: Thailand's Buddhist Modernity in Muslim Pattani,” Clarke Program in East Asian Law and Culture Lecture Series, Cornell University Law School, Ithaca, April 2004.

 

 

2003

“Sex in the Inner City: The Fidelity Between Sex and Politics in Siam,” School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK, November 2003.

 

 

 

“Numinous Peregrinations: Siam’s Buddhist Modernity in Muslim Pattani,” Cornell University Southeast Asia Program Brown Bag Lecture, Ithaca, NY, September 2003.

 

 

 

“Subject Siam: Gender, Justice, and Colonial Modernity,” Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, April 2003.

 

 

2002

“Sex in the (Inner) City: Female Transgender and Same-Sex Eroticism in Siam,” Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, Washington, DC, March 2002.

 

 

 

“Polygyny, Family Law, and National Identity in Thailand,” 12th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, University of Connecticut, June 2002.

 

 

2001

“Capitalism v. Culture: Colonial and National Jurisprudence in Southeast Asia,” on panel I organized, “Comparative Colonial Jurisprudence in Southeast Asia,” Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, Chicago, March 2001.

 

 

 

“Bifurcated Jurisprudence in Colonial Southeast Asia,” Southeast Asia Colloquium, University of Wisconsin-Madison, November 2, 2001.

 

 

2000

“The Politics of Women’s Suffrage in Thailand,” Conference of Thai Studies, Dekalb, Illinois, November 3, 2001.

 

 

 

“Gender and Colonialism in Southeast Asian History.” Invited lecture for course, “Introduction to Southeast Asia,” Cornell University, 2000-2004.

 

 

 

“History’s Future: Travel and Identity in Virtual Southeast Asia,” Cornell Southeast Asia Program Symposium, “Resources Reassessed: Teaching, Writing, and Civic Action,” Cornell University, April 2000.

 

 

1999

“Descent of the Nation:  Sexuality and Family Identity in Siam,” Cornell U. Southeast Asia Program Graduate Symposium, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, April 1999.

 

 

 

“Making Modern Legal Subjects:  Sex, Consent, and the Individual.” 7th International Conference on Thai Studies, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, July 1999.

 

 

Discussant, “Ideas of the ‘Other’ in Southeast Asian Writings,” New York Conference on Asian Studies, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY, October 1999.

 

 

 

“The Agony Column: Understanding Male Same-Sex Relationships in Thailand.” Invited lecture for course, “Gender, Sexuality and Relationships,” Ithaca College, December 1999.

 

 

1998

“Law, Gender, and the State in Siam,” Comparative History Colloquium, Cornell University, March 1998.

 

 

 

“‘Public’ Prosecution: Gendering the Public in Siam,” Association for Asian Studies, Washington, D.C., March 1998.

 

 

1997

“Issaraphap: Limits of Liberty and Autonomy in Thai Jurisprudence,” Southeast Asia Program Brown Bag Seminar Series, Cornell University, May 1997.

 

 

 

“The Discourse of Individualism and the Thai Women's Movement,” Women's Activism Conference, Institute for Research on Women, Rutgers University, May 1997.

 

 

1994

“Development Issues in Southeast Asia,” Cornell University Conference on Improving New York State High School Curricula, Ithaca, July 1994.

 

 

 

“Gender Equity in America,” Gender Equity Issues Panel, Seminar on Issues in American Studies, Bangkok, December 1994.

 

Revised 5/2009