The Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute (SEASSI) is pleased to announce that the Usha Mahajani Memorial Prize for 2018 has been awarded to Phianphachong Intarat (University of Hawai’i at Manoa). The prize is a memorial to Professor Usha Mahajani, whose scholarship on Southeast Asia was brought to an abrupt end by her tragic death in 1978. Professor Mahajani, a native of India, received her Ph.D. in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University. She was the author of Nationalism in the Philippines and The Role of Indian Minorities in Burma and Malaysia and numerous articles on Southeast Asian politics and international relations. At the time of her death she was professor of political science at Central Washington State University. The prize was established by a gift from her husband to the Association for Asian Studies, and SEASSI administers the competition for the prize on behalf of the Southeast Asia Council of AAS.
Phianphachong Intarat, the 2018 recipient of the Usha Mahajani Prize, completed her undergraduate degree at Thammasat University in political science and is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in anthropology at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, with an emphasis on Myanmar. At SEASSI, Ms. Intarat was awarded the Mahajani Prize for her achievements as a language learner in second-year Burmese, for her contributions and commitment to the Burmese language program (in and out of class), and for her potential as a scholar of Southeast Asian studies. She was selected from a group of seven other highly qualified nominees for the prize out of 91 SEASSI participants. Congratulations!
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AAS Members: Please vote in the Fall 2018 AAS Elections! An electronic ballot was sent to your email address of record in September.
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We are now accepting organized panel and roundtable proposals for the sixth AAS-in-Asia conference, which will be held in Bangkok, Thailand on July 1-4, 2019. (No individual paper proposals will be accepted.) The proposal submission deadline is Monday, October 22 at 5:00pm Eastern time.
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Registration and housing for #AAS2019 in Denver, Colorado are now open. After a successful introduction of GREEN registration rates in Washington, D.C. earlier this year, we are pleased to offer them again in Denver. Those who GO GREEN will save $10 on their conference registration; they will NOT receive a copy of the print program.
Panel participants: remember to register by the November 8 deadline to ensure your inclusion in the print program!
Graduate students: enter this year’s graduate student lottery for a chance to win one of ten (10) free student registrations! The submission deadline is October 15, 2018; see the conference website for more details.
The preliminary conference program is now available to view. The full program will be posted in December.
We are pleased to offer financial support—a maximum of $250 per family—on a reimbursement basis to panel participants in need of professional childcare services during the conference in Denver. Funds are limited and will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis, so please contact the AAS as soon as possible to express your interest in this program. More information and contact information is available at the conference website.
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The Southeast Conference of the AAS will meet January 18-20, 2019 at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN. Paper and panel abstracts must be submitted by October 31, 2018.
We welcome submissions for the AAS Member News & Notes column, so please forward material for consideration to mcunningham@asian-studies.org. Please note that we do not publish book announcements in this space; new books by AAS Members will be announced on the association’s Twitter feed (@AASAsianStudies) and Facebook page (@AASAsianStudies).