Education About Asia: Online Archives

Browse and download over 1,500 articles — feature articles, lesson plans, interviews, classroom resources, and book and film reviews — from Education About Asia (EAA)!

Sign up for the EAA Digest E-Newsletter and receive monthly updates and announcements from the EAA editor. Subscribe

Help us do more

by supporting EAA through print subscriptions and donations.

How to use the EAA Online Search Engine

PLEASE NOTE: All article and essay illustrations, including many images and graphics necessary for understanding the content, may be viewed in the PDF.

  1. 1

    Use the dropdown menus

    to search by author, geographic location, article type, and academic field

  2. 2

    Enter keywords

    to search the full text of articles (where search terms may not appear in the article title, eg.)

  3. 3

    View an article

    by clicking on its title. To view the original print version of the article, select “PDF”

Search for Articles

(culture, history, art, marriage, etc...)

NOTE: Archive articles may be downloaded and reproduced for personal or classroom use only.

Online Supplement

India’s Historical Impact on Southeast Asia

by Patit Paban Mishra

India’s historical impact on Southeast Asia forms an important component of world history. In this age of globalization, relations between two significant regions are important. The Look East and Act East policies have become the catch word of Indian foreign relations since the 1990s, where Indian policymakers desired close cooperation with Southeast Asian countries. This is nothing new from an Indian perspective, but an enactment of déjà vu. What we know of today as Indian and ...

Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

Surveying Southeast Asia with the Newest Edition of Southeast Asia in the New International Era by Robert Dayley

by Margaret B. Bodemer

Southeast Asia can seem overwhelming to integrate into a course, given its eleven countries and considerable cultural diversity. Robert Dayley’s Southeast Asia in the New International Era steps in to save the day. Organized into thirteen chapters, the book provides a thorough overview and introduction to the political developments of each of the eleven countries. The introductory chapter provides a historical survey and a discussion of cultural features of the region, and the concluding chapt...

Feature Article

Postcolonial Religious Conflict in Southeast Asia

by Matthew Kosuta

“All religions teach people to be good people,” or so the Thai saying goes. This fits in with the general belief throughout Southeast Asia that religion is a good thing—though of course each person believes his/her religion to be the highest good. It is not surprising, then, that religious belief and practice remain key elements in Southeast Asian private and public life, with secularism little more than a theory. Religion continues to define the majority of people’s sense of self in Sou...

Online Supplement

How Free Are Postcolonial Polities? Select Nation Profiles

by EAA Staff

Freedom House is an independent organization that advocates for increased freedom and democracy around the world. Partnering with frontline human rights activists to advance democratic change, Freedom House recognizes that freedom is only possible within the context of a democratic government that is accountable to its own people. Established in New York City in 1941, Freedom House has expanded to include offices in a dozen countries. Furthermore, among its goals include collaboration with li...

Feature Article

Democracy in Asia

by Clayton D. Brown

In June 2015, Utah State University hosted a graduate-level workshop for teachers on “Democracy in Asia: A Universal or American System?” Eight Asia specialists from three universities convened to share their expertise with local educators. Recognizing that a brief article cannot do justice to a weeklong workshop, we are still committed to extending the fruits of that local outreach to a broader community. What follows are a few highlights from each workshop session, including suggested sour...

Feature Article

An EAA Interview with Satu Limaye: Why Southeast Asia Matters for America and the World

by Satu Limaye

Satu Limaye was named Director of the East-West Center in Washington in February 2007. He is also a Senior Adviser at the CNA Corporation, a nonprofit research and analysis organization located in Alexandria, Virginia. From October 2005 to February 2007, he was a Research Staff Member of the Strategy and Resources Division at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) and from July 1998 to October 2005 Director of Research and Publications at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS), a...

Feature Article

Teaching and Learning About Southeast Asia

by Linda Cuadra, Sara Van Fleet

Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, East Timor, Việt Nam, and the Philippines— why is it important for middle, high school, and college students to learn about Southeast Asia? What might interest them about this area sprawling between the Indian and Pacific oceans, between India, China, and Australia? Young people struggle to learn a wide range of subjects in school and as undergraduates. They often complain that what they learn has little relevance to th...

Feature Article

USG Asia Council: Teaching Southeast Asia Workshop

by Paul A. Rodell, Salli Vargis

On April 11th and 12th, 2014, the Asia Council of the USG hosted a workshop titled “Teaching Southeast Asia” for university and college faculty. In total, six sessions of one hour and fifteen minutes each were conducted by five presenters and covered a wide range of topics: basic history, religion, cartography, global trade networks, economics, religion, literature, and indigenous cultures. This workshop was the third in a series sponsored by the Asia Council that began in response to state ...

Feature Article

Teaching Southeast Asia Interactively: The ASEAN “Plus Three” Simulation

by Ivan Dinev Ivanov, James Robert Masterson

Interactive simulations, games, and role-playing exercises have become popular methods to engage students in the classroom by assigning them specific roles within a political process and asking them to act like real political actors. These exercises offer numerous advantages, including improved information retention, development of critical thinking, speaking and presentation skills, and increased student interest in the subject.1 In the essay below, we present the advantages of selecting ASEAN ...

Online Supplement

Three Southeast Asian Nations: Brunei, Cambodia, Laos

by The EAA editorial office

Brunei Geography and Population Area: 2,226 square miles, slightly smaller than Delaware Population: 422,675 Government Freedom House rating from “Freedom in the World 2015” (ranking of political rights and civil liberties in 195 countries): Not Free Type: Constitutional sultanate Chief of State and Head of Government: Sultan and Prime Minister Sir Hassanal Bolkiah (since October 5, 1967) Elections: none Legislative branch: Legislative Council (33 members, appointed by the...

Columns, Web Gleanings

Web Gleanings: Southeast Asia in the Humanities and Social Science Curricula

by Judith S. Ames

SOUTHEAST ASIA Map of Southeast Asia This map gives the reader an idea of the complicated geography of Southeast Asian countries. Each country is shown with a different color, making it easy to identify them. Ancient Lights: The Geography and Cultures of Southeast Asia (video)

Feature Article

Asia’s Turtle Crisis and Conservation: Environmental Education and Cultural Geography

by Bradley R. Reynolds, Thomas P. Wilson

[caption id="attachment_13587" align="alignleft" width="300"] Chinese Box Turtle (Cuora flavomarginata). ©123RF.com[/caption] Turtles are heavily exploited in Asia, not only for the pet trade, but also as a food source and for use in traditional Asian folk medicines. Along with habitat destruction, increased urbanization, and pollution, such over-exploitation is driving what conservationists are calling the Asian turtle crisis, a precipitous decline in Asian turtle populations. Currently, ov...

Book Review Essay, Resources

The River’s Tale: A Year on the Mekong

by Gerald Fry

The great rivers of the world seem to have a magical appeal to writers. Fulfilling a long-held dream, Edward A. Gargan embarked in 1998 upon a roughly 3,000 mile journey down the Mekong River from near its source (at an altitude of 16,441 feet) in Tibet down to the Mekong Delta where it flows into the South China Sea. Early on we learn that the Mekong is called the Dzachu in Tibet and the Lanang Jiang in China.

Essay, Resources

Teaching About Southeast Asian Transition Economies: Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and East Timor

by Robert L. Curry Jr.

Most transition economies are countries that are in the process of reforming their institutional structures that rely extensively upon centralized government planning agencies and state-owned enterprises to allocate scarce national resources and distribute the resulting output. These countries are in the midst of shifting responsibilities for allocating and distributing resources to institutions that feature decentralized markets, private business enterprises and a supportive legal system that p...

Book Review, Resources

Developing the Mekong Subregion

by Greg Ringer

Nearly three decades after the Khmer Rouge retreated from Phnom Penh and the U.S. military withdrew from Laos and Vietnam, the six countries of the greater Mekong subregion (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma or Myanmar, and China’s southern Yunnan Province) now collectively represent one of the world’s fastest growing regional economies. While the current global economic crisis has severely disrupted political and economic stability throughout Asia, their sustained growth and social h...

Feature Article

Teaching About Southeast Asian Economics

by R. L. Curry Jr.

The rich cultural and social milieu of Southeast Asia provides a superb background within which to study the region’s national economies and the way that they are linked as an economic region, particularly via participation in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The intellectual richness of the region’s diversity is augmented by the wide variety of national economic structures that add to the regional mosaic. As a result, studying and teaching about Southeast Asia is truly an...

Book Review, Resources

Stalking the Elephant Kings: In Search of Laos

by Gerald Fry

BY CHRISTOPHER KREMMER HONOLULU: UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI’I PRESS, 1997 Once drawn into the vortex of the Cold War and a key Southeast Asian “domino,” contested violently and vigorously by the U.S. and USSR superpowers, Laos later slipped into relative oblivion and became what journalist Stan Sesser describes as the “forgotten land.” The Australian Christopher Kremmer’s intriguing new volume draws attention to a “landscape as dramatic and beautiful as any, and people of great civility...

Essay, Resources

Outreach Programs at the National Resource Centers for the Study of Asia

by Anne L. Foster

Increasingly, Asian history, culture, language, and politics are being integrated into the K-12 curriculum in schools across the nation. Many teachers are now teaching subjects, then, in which they received little or no training while in college. Fortunately, however, centers for the study of Asia at universities around the country have, under the auspices of Title VI of the Higher Education Act, established National Resource Centers (NRCs). One of the nine programs within the Center for Interna...

New to EAA?

Before viewing the full archives, view Editor’s Choice Articles, handpicked by EAA Editor, Lucien Ellington, which provide a good overview of EAA and introduction for new readers.