Events

This seminar is co-organised by the Philippines Study Group, Asia Research Insitute, and the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, NUS

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Julius Bautista, Department of Southeast Asian Studies, NUS 

ABSTRACT

What does being “Chinese” mean in the Philippine urban society context and over time? How can a micro-historical ethnographic approach such as biographies to the study of ethnic identities help us answer this question? Richard Chu’s lecture focuses on the history of the Chinese in the Philippines and on his research on the Chinese merchant families and community in Manila from the late nineteenth century to the present. More specifically, his lecture examines the different historical factors, actors, and events that constantly shape and reshape what it means to be “Chinese” in the Philippines.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Richard T. Chu (A.B. Ateneo de Manila University; M.A. Stanford University; Ph.D. University of Southern California) is Five-College Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His research focuses on the history of the Chinese and Chinese mestizos in the Philippines, centering on issues of ethnicity, gender, and nationalism. His first monograph The Chinese and Chinese Mestizos of Manila: Family, Identity, and Culture 1860s-1930s (E.J. Brill, 2010) examines and analyzes the familial and business practices of Chinese merchant families as they negotiated the attempts of colonial governments to control them. He is currently working on his second major book project that analyses the different newspaper articles and other textual materials that deal with the “Chinaman” question in the Philippines during the American colonial period. He teaches courses on the Chinese diaspora, Philippines, U.S. empire in the Pacific, and Asian/Pacific/America.