All religions teach you to be good

This year I spent my Valentine's Day down at the University of Hawaii presenting a paper at their International Graduate Student Conference. UH has the East-West Center, a pretigious area studies program that focuses on all aspects of Asia. I was one of 135 presenters from all over the United States, Canada, the PRC, Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia, Japan, and yes - Hawaii.

It was my first opportunity to present some of the research I conducted in Thailand last year, in between sight-seeing trips. Last month I completed a the first rough draft of a chapter to the dissertation. It examines the Thai government's attempts to eliminate the Catholic Church from Thailand. From 1940-1944, Thai authorities banned Catholic meetings in most provinces, seized or destroyed Church property, and deported or imprisoned many clergy. This campaign of persecution lasted until 1944 when it became apparent that Japan would lose the war and the Thai decided to begin preparing for an Allied return to Southeast Asia. I argue the Thai attacked the Catholic Church as one of the most prominent symbols of the old colonial order they wanted to replace. Despite never being colonized, Thai nationalism from this era was extremely anti-colonial.

It was quite possibly the greatest academic presentation in the history of the modern university. I received some very positive feedback and interesting queries from other particpants during the question and answer session. I also enjoyed other panel sessions involving a diverse array of topics including Cham inscriptions and the resurgence of identity among Taiwan's indigenous peoples. The most important part, of course, is to get the conference on your academic resume.

Next step, revise the article and send off to a journal for rejection...or, possibly publication.


I think I really connected with other students by using their question-answer time to explain why my work was so much more interesting than theirs.