Episode 123: Josh Babcock, Department of Anthropology and Science & Technology Studies, Brown University
Release Date: 02/27/2025
Episode 144: Lydia O’Meara, Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, Cornell University
Gatty Rewind Podcast
In this episode, host Namfon Narumol Choochan is joined by Francine Barchett, former host of the Gatty Rewind Podcast and a Cornell PhD candidate in Natural Resources & the Environment. Together, they interview Lydia O'Meara, a postdoctoral fellow at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. Lydia studies how diets in coastal communities can reveal links between human nutrition and marine ecosystem health. Her research focuses on Timor-Leste in the Coral Triangle, a biodiversity hotspot where many people rely on fish but face growing threats from climate change and biodiversity loss....
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Episode 143: Patrick Daly, Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis
Gatty Rewind Podcast
In this episode, host Namfon Narumol Choochan is joined by Trifosa Simamora, a PhD candidate from the New York Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, to interview Patrick Daly, a research scientist for sustainability and resilience in the Department of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Daly gave us a rundown of his lecture, Using Archaeology, History, and Geology to Build a Paleo-Tsunami History for Southeast Asia. We discuss his 20-year endeavor to craft a long history of tsunamis in this region through collaboration between the arts and sciences. Tune in to find...
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Episode 142: Mark Sanchez, Department of Asian Studies, Vanderbilt University
Gatty Rewind Podcast
In this episode, host Namfon Narumol Choochan is joined by Elissa Domingo Badiqué, a recent doctoral graduate from the Department of Performing and Media Arts. Together, they interview Mark John Sanchez, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Sanchez recapitulates his lecture on the legal tactics used by the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG) to defend civil liberties during the martial law era under Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. He then reflects on how his personal journey and positionality have shaped his research. The conversation further explores the...
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Episode 141: Kevin D. Pham, Assistant Professor of Political Theory, University of Amsterdam
Gatty Rewind Podcast
In this episode, host Namfon Narumol Choochan interviews Kevin Pham, Assistant Professor of Political Theory at the University of Amsterdam. Professor Pham’s talk is titled “A Postcolonial Theory of Free Speech,” in which he focuses on North Vietnamese intellectuals and their perspective on new speech in the 1950s. He argues that although the meaning and value of free speech have long been contested in the West, they overlook how people outside of the West, in illiberal conditions, theorize free speech. Growing up in San Jose, Professor Pham was intrigued by a trip to the Middle East and...
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Episode 140: Jangai Jap, Department of International Affairs, The University of Georgia
Gatty Rewind Podcast
In this episode, guest co-host Drake Avila, a master’s student in Asian Studies, joins host Namfon Narumol Choochan to interview Assistant Professor Jangai Jap from the Department of International Affairs at the University of Georgia. They discuss her recent research on ethnic rebellion in Myanmar and why the current explanation of post-independence political exclusion falls short in accounting for the rebellion's onset. Professor Jap shares how her Kachin heritage and NGO work experience in Myanmar have sparked her academic curiosity and shaped her doctoral and current research. Tune in for...
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Episode 139: Analyn Salvador-Amores, Department of Anthropology, University of the Philippines Baguio
Gatty Rewind Podcast
In this episode, host Namfon Narumol Choochan interviews Analyn Salvador-Amores (Ikin), Professor of Anthropology and former Director of the Museo Kordilyera at the University of the Philippines Baguio. Together, they discuss how the recent tourism trend has revitalized Kalinga tattoos, a tradition of the ethnolinguistic group in Buscalan village, northern Luzon, Philippines. Having conducted anthropological research on traditional tattoos for over 30 years, Professor Ikin provides nuanced insights into how tourism has changed the village’s landscape, tattoo practices, and reshaped gender...
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Episode 138: Anocha Suwichakornpong, Associate Professor of Film, Columbia University
Gatty Rewind Podcast
In this episode, host Namfon Narumol Choochan speaks with “Mai” Anocha Suwichakornpong, independent filmmaker, producer, founder of Electric Eel Film, and Associate Professor in Film at Columbia University. Anocha shares how films and filmmaking can be a form of resistance by rethinking the boundary between truth and fiction. They discuss how her previous and upcoming features have engaged with the politics of remembering and forgetting of state violence in Thai history. The conversation also delves into Before It Gets Dark, her most renowned feature, and what the Thammasat Massacre means...
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Episode 137: Chiara Formichi, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University
Gatty Rewind Podcast
In this episode, host Namfon Narumol Choochan interviews Chiara Formichi, H. Stanley Krusen Professor of World Religions, Director of the Religious Studies Program, and Professor of Asian Studies at Cornell University. They discuss how Prof. Formichi’s personal and intellectual journey shaped her research trajectory in Islamic and Southeast Asian studies. Drawing from her latest monograph, Domestic Nationalism: Muslim Women, Health and Modernity in Indonesia, she explores how Indonesian women envisioned their own versions of modernity through gendered care work, from the colonial Dutch East...
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Indonesia in 10 Films: "Soegija" with Arnoud Arps
Gatty Rewind Podcast
Indonesia in 10 Films: "Soegija" with Arnoud Arps In this second episode of “Indonesia in 10 Films,” host Michael Kirkpatrick Miller explores the film Soegija (2012), an ambitious historical drama by director Garin Nugroho. Soegjia follows the non-traditional Catholic national hero Monsignor Albertus Soegijapranata, during one of the most volatile periods in Indonesian history — from the Japanese occupation to the return of Dutch forces after World War II. Rather than focusing solely on its titular figure, the film paints a multifaceted image of intersecting lives of diverse...
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Episode 136: Aditya Bhattacharjee, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow from Asian Studies, Cornell University
Gatty Rewind Podcast
In this episode, host Namfon Narumol Choochan interviews Dr. Aditya Bhattacharjee, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian Studies at Cornell University. Together, they discuss how growing up in Bangkok led him to study the localization and globalization of Hinduism. Focusing on the transnational appearances of Ganesha in Thailand and Thai restaurants in the United States, Dr. Bhattacharjee explains how and why this deity becomes a visible conduit for understanding the globalization of religious practices and religious belonging beyond the exclusively Thai-Buddhist framework. He shares his...
info_outlineIn this episode, host Francine Barchett pairs up with Shreya Chitnavis, a 2024 Cornell MPH graduate, to interview Dr. Joshua Babcock, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and affiliate faculty in Linguistics and Science & Technology Studies at Brown University. Dr. Babcock talks about the limitations of Singapore's racial and linguistic classifications. Reflecting on his findings, he presents a fiction of multi-racial multilingualism as Singapore’s national identity. In Dr. Babcock’s words, "racial community gets performed, policed, and blocked through everyday activity." And dare we say – Dr. Babcock is a researcher with many surprises! He shares how his work in Singapore involves another Singapore…one that is NOT in Asia!
Lightning round: 3:24
Research and Lecture Summary: 9:58
Advice for researchers and recommendations: 47:24
Dr. Babcock ’s top recommendations:
- Ministry of Moral Panic - Amanda Lee Koe
The music on the podcast is from "14 Strings!", a Filipino style Rondalla group established in Cornell University. Check them out here.
Produced by Adam Farihin and Cecilia Liu