The Center for Southeast Asian Studies organizes and sponsors a number of events such as lectures, film screening, workshops, symposia, conferences, exhibits, and performances throughout the year. Several of these events are in collaboration with other U-M units, and are often free and open to the public.
Friday Lecture Series | "What Strange Woman is Here?": Laura Benedict's Fieldwork among the Bagobos of the Southern Philippines, 1906-1908
Juan Fernandez, PhD, University of Wisconsin – Madison
For fourteen months between 1906 and 1908, the American anthropologist Laura Benedict was conducting participant observation fieldwork among the Bagobos of Mindanao, a people infamous in the colonial anthropological imaginary for their practice of human sacrifice, but likewise for the richness of their material culture. Benedict's work has largely been overshadowed by her physical and mental breakdown resulting from the grueling conditions she faced in the field, but likewise, Fernandez argues, was a situation that stemmed from her intense commitment not only to the work of research, but also to her deep identifications with the Bagobos. According to her contemporaries, her later fieldwork was characterized by an increasing "paranoia" towards the American hemp planters of the region, whose incursions, she believed, caused "a severe crisis in [the Bagobos'] tribal history," representing a breakdown of their "traditional" way of life, thus looking on in horror at the Bagobos' acculturation. This talk analyzes Benedict's fieldwork to make sense of the early history of anthropological fieldwork in the American colonial Philippines by contextualizing Benedict's fieldwork praxis through her gendered experiences of research, and examining the way that the Bagobos of Mindanao invited, of their own volition, Benedict's participation in their cultural and religious life.
Juan Fernandez is assistant professor of Southeast Asian history at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where he is working on his first book project, "Becoming Natives," which is a history of how gender and ethnographic fieldwork intertwine to produce anthropological knowledge in the early twentieth century in the American Philippines.
If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at valdezjo@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.
Juan Fernandez is assistant professor of Southeast Asian history at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where he is working on his first book project, "Becoming Natives," which is a history of how gender and ethnographic fieldwork intertwine to produce anthropological knowledge in the early twentieth century in the American Philippines.
If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at valdezjo@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.
| Building: | Weiser Hall |
|---|---|
| Event Type: | Lecture / Discussion |
| Tags: | Anthropology, Asian Languages And Cultures, Southeast Asia |
| Source: | Happening @ Michigan from Center for Southeast Asian Studies, International Institute, Asian Languages and Cultures |
