Gatty Rewind Podcast

In this episode, host Namfon Narumol Choochan speaks with Arnisson Andre Ortega, Associate Professor from the Department of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University. First, they discuss his current project, "City of Imperialism," which examines the legacy of former U.S. military bases in the Philippines. Then, they unpack his lecture, "Geonarratives of Hope and Resistance," which is a...

In this episode, host Namfon Narumol Choochan speaks with Courtney T. Wittekind, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Purdue University. Together, they discuss Dr. Wittekind's lecture, which is part of her forthcoming book, City of Speculation: Unsettled Futures in Urban Myanmar (Stanford University Press), and explore how speculation unfolds amid political, economic, and social instability. Foc...

In this episode, host Namfon Narumol Choochan and Carrie Mo, a master's student in Asian Studies, interview Taomo Zhou, Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore, about her research on the life of Francisca Casparina Fanggidaej, an Indonesian transnational activist in the Afro-Asian movement and the mother of seven. Because of her involvement with the Communist...

In this episode, host Namfon Narumol Choochan, joined by Yi-Jen Chen, a Cornell PhD student in Anthropology, interviews Liang Wu, a postdoctoral associate in Environmental Humanities in the Southeast Asia Program and the Department of Science and Technology Studies. Together, they explore what it means to rethink "maritime Southeast Asia." Rather than treating Southeast Asia as a fixed geographic...

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 ec...

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 Bui...

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 d...

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 contest...

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 fo...

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 anth...

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 th...

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, Domesti...

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...

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 h...

In this episode, host Namfon Narumol Choochan interviews Ian Baird, Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Together, they discuss how his travels across southern Laos, northeastern Thailand, and northern Cambodia inspired his study of the House of Champassak. This interview uncovers how and why the Champassak royalty maintained its influence even after the dissolution of  C...

In this episode, host Namfon Narumol Choochan interviews Prof. Bradley Simpson, Professor of History at the University of Connecticut. Prof. Simpson reflects on his path from human rights activism to academia. This conversation examines Indonesia's "moderate middle" engagement with the New International Economic Order (NIEO) under the Suharto regime, exploring how and why its moderate stance in NI...

In this episode of Gatty Rewind, host Francine Barchett and guest co-host Evelyn Fettes (Cornell PhD candidate in Linguistics) join Dr. Rachel Leow, Associate Professor of Modern East Asian History at the University of Cambridge, for a journey through the Southern Seas. Dr. Leow challenges landlocked, nation-bound histories of Southeast Asia by exploring oceanic imaginaries—from Chinese creole dre...

In this episode, Francine Barchett interviews Heidi Kühn, founder of Roots of Peace and 2023 World Food Prize laureate. Kühn shares how a background in journalism and a life-changing cancer diagnosis led her to launch a global mission: turning "mines to vines." She recounts how her organization cleared landmines in places like Vietnam and Afghanistan. Along the way, she offers moving stories about...

In this special celebratory episode, host Francine Barchett reunites with Michael Kirkpatrick Miller, a PhD candidate in Cornell's Department of History, who happens to be the original creator of the Gatty Rewind podcast! Michael shares fresh insights from his dissertation on Dutch colonialism in Indonesia, focusing on how the colonial state constructed Ambonese men as a "martial race" through the...

In this episode, host Francine Barchett teams up with co-host Lijun Zhang, a Cornell PhD student in history, for a riveting conversation with Dr. Martina Nguyen, Associate Professor of History at Baruch College, City University of New York. Dr. Nguyen shares the story of a provocative newspaper column penned by prominent Vietnamese intellectual Nguyễn Văn Vĩnh, under a female pseudonym! She explor...

In this episode, guest co-host Iris Luo (Cornell PhD candidate in Human-Centered Design) joins host Francine Barchett to interview Elissa "E" Domingo Badique, a Cornell PhD candidate in Performance and Media Arts. E describes their winding journey—from serving as a community advisor at Harvard to working as a makeup artist in Japan. But it was a fandom studies class that sparked their research int...

In this episode, guest co-host Anke Wang, a Cornell PhD candidate in History, joins host Francine Barchett for a tag-team interview with Dr. Hieu Phung, Assistant Professor of Vietnamese and Southeast Asian History at Rutgers University. Dr. Phung discusses her research on how pre-modern environmental factors shaped political and administrative systems in Vietnam, with a focus on state-building in...

In this episode, host Francine Barchett interviews Dr. Kristian Karlo Saguin, Associate Professor of Geography at the University of the Philippines Diliman. Dr. Saguin unpacks his recent Gatty Lecture, based on his award-winning book Urban Ecologies on the Edge: Making Manila's Resource Frontier (winner of the Benda Prize). Their conversation explores the complex socio-environmental dynamics of La...

Welcome to Spicy SEAP! This special edition of the podcast recreates the popular TV show Hot Ones—but with a twist! Instead of chicken wings, our guests take on a lineup of spicy Southeast Asian dishes, from snacks to main courses and mysterious desserts. Host Francine Barchett is joined by Lijun Zhang, a PhD candidate in History and co-chair of the Cornell Southeast Asia Program (SEAP) Gatty Lect...

In this episode, Francine Barchett sits down to interview Dr. Benjamin Tausig, an Associate Professor of Critical Music Studies at SUNY Stony Brook University. Dr. Tausig shares his work on the transnational dialectic of queerness and race in Cold War-era Thailand. He describes the complex intersections of American military influence, local nightlife, and the socio-economic transformations that sh...