My
research interests include images and visual culture, media and
mediation, memory and violence, specifically in Indonesia. I recently completed Demanding Images: Democracy, Mediation and Image-Event in Indonesia (Duke University Press, 2020), a book on the work of images in Indonesia’s
post-authoritarian public sphere. I look at range of images—from
political campaign stickers, to street art, to documentary photography,
to contemporary art work, to youtube videos and selfies—that circulate
in public giving form to people’s imaginings of Indonesia’s troubled
past, its democratic transition, and its uncertain and contested
future. My first book, Refracted Visions: Popular Photography and National Modernity in Java (Duke
University Press, 2010)
examined the role of popular photography in the making of national
subjects and postcolonial Java. A current project explores visuality,
violence, and the ethnic Chinese minority in Indonesia. I am interested
in how contemporary artists are giving visual form to memories that
have been otherwise excluded from public discourse and official historical
narratives. I teach at Queens College and the CUNY
Graduate Center.
Selected
Publications
Demanding Images: Democracy, Mediation, and the Image-Event in Indonesia, Duke University Press, 2020. "Zones of Refuge: Excavating Memories of Violence in the Work of FX Harsono," History of the Present, Vol 8 (2), Fall 2018: 177-208. “Beyond
the ‘Savage Slot’: Ethnography and the National Identity Photograph,”
in Photography, History, Difference, edited by Tanya Sheehan, Dartmouth
University Press, 2015. “Seeing the Unseen in Indonesia’s Public Sphere: Photographic Appearances of a Spirit Queen” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 56(1), January 2014: 1-33. Refracted Visions: Popular Photography and National Modernity in Java, Duke University Press, 2010. |
Courses Taught:
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