Julie Thi Underhill
California College of the Arts, Writing and Literature, Faculty Member
- History, Research Methodology, Religion, Humanities, Gender, Media Studies, and 85 moreGender Studies, Visual Studies, Women's Studies, Film Studies, Gender and Sexuality, Photography, Postcolonial Studies, Islamic Studies, Feminism, Race and Ethnicity, American History, Sociology of Religion, Creativity, Gender History, Indigenous Studies, Anthropology of Gender, Ethnic Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, Refugee Studies, History of Sexuality, Sex and Gender, Native American Studies, Colonialism, Indigenous Knowledge, Diasporas, Documentary (Film Studies), Film Theory and Practice, History of Slavery, Post-Colonialism, Indigenous or Aboriginal Studies, Asian American Studies, Southeast Asia, Women and Gender Issues in Islam, Hinduism, Photographs, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Labour history, Transnational and World History, Women & Film, Gender And Violence, Gender Theory, Indigenous Research Methodologies, Vietnam, Religion and Colonialism, Vietnam War, Indigenous Epistemologies, Diaspora Politics, Historical Films, Native American Politics, Migration and Ethnicity (English Literature), Indigenous Film, Colonial Desire, Identities, Colonialism (History), Indigenous Movements, Islam in the Southeast Asia, Vietnamese History, Gender in Film, Ethnicity and Race in Film, Military Sexual Trauma, Feminist Film, Indigineity, Asian-American Film, Culture, Poetry, Documentary Film, Cross-Cultural Studies, Border Studies, Borderlands Studies, Autobiographical Memory, Environmental Racism, Environmental justice, global sustainability, Environmental Politics and Governance, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Education for Sustainable Development, Environmental Sustainability. Global Development and Environmental Protection, Champa, Cham Studies, Chams, Vietnamese American literature, Comparative Religion, Material Culture Studies, Material culture of religion, Vietnamese American Filmmakers, Rape Culture, Settler colonialism, Settler Colonial Studies, Comfort Women, and Visual Research, Visual Framing, War Images, Reporting in conflicts and wars, media in Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan, Political Communication with emphasis on the framing of elections and candidates, political crisis, revolutions.edit
- One year after her Cham-French Vietnamese mother and American father evacuated during the Fall of Saigon, Julie Thi U... moreOne year after her Cham-French Vietnamese mother and American father evacuated during the Fall of Saigon, Julie Thi Underhill was born in the United States.
Since 1999, she's studied the Cham and their Austronesian, Hindu, and Muslim kingdom of Champa, which thrived for 1,500 years in present-day Viet Nam. Her work addresses Cham origins, religious forms, mortuary rituals, matrilinealism, and the history of conquest, colonialism, war, and emigration from Viet Nam and Cambodia. She's interested in the intersections of Cham historical memory, ethnic identity, spirituality, and acculturation. She also focuses upon gender, remembrance, and mourning in Island/Southeast Asia, postwar exodus, postcolonialism, critical auto/ethnographic theory, and documentary filmmaking and photography.
Julie's experience includes 25 years of humanistic photography, two postwar study tours, oral histories of survivors and veterans of wars in Viet Nam, Cambodia, and El Salvador, and inclusion in Maxine Hong Kingston's 'Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace' and in Gina Masequesmay's and Sean Metzger's 'Embodying Asian/American Sexualities.'
Julie continues to edit the feature-length documentary she filmed in 2006 of her Hindu Cham grandmother's second burial ceremony. In collaboration with Asiroh Cham at UCLA, Julie works a documentary on the Khmer Rouge war crimes tribunal's genocide charge against five senior KR officials, who attempted to decimate the ethnic Cham in Cambodia during Pol Pot's regime. She filmed in Cambodia in June and July 2010.
Julie was a Chancellor's Fellow at UC Berkeley, in pursuit of a doctorate in Comparative Ethnic Studies. Her first book concerns the historical memories and cultural practices of the Cham of Viet Nam, Cambodia, the United States, and elsewhere in the diaspora.
Previous Education:
2007-09, Master of Arts in Ethnic Studies, University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
2005-06, fellow at UMass-Boston's William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences, Boston, MA
2002-05, film/video production courses at Portland Art Museum's Northwest Film Center, Portland, OR
1997, photography courses at Instituto Allende, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico
1994-2000, BA in art, social/cultural history, and documentary production/theory from The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WAedit
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Cover and book design © 2006, by Ayelet Maida, A/M Studios Cover photograph, “Infantry moving forward to take up front line positions at evening, their images reflected in a rain-filled crater, at Hooge, Flanders, October 1917,” by Frank... more
Cover and book design © 2006, by Ayelet Maida, A/M Studios Cover photograph, “Infantry moving forward to take up front line positions at evening, their images reflected in a rain-filled crater, at Hooge, Flanders, October 1917,” by Frank Hurley. ... Printed in the United States of ...
At twenty-two, Julie Thi Underhill met her dying grandmother Thị Oai and began a portrait series in her mother's home village. Seven years later, she returned with her family to Phước Lập, a Hindu Chăm village in south central Viet... more
At twenty-two, Julie Thi Underhill met her dying grandmother Thị Oai and began a portrait series in her mother's home village. Seven years later, she returned with her family to Phước Lập, a Hindu Chăm village in south central Viet Nam, where she photographed and filmed her grandmother's final ceremonies for her documentary Second Burial. Underhill offers these family portraits from 1999 and 2006 as an extended elegy for her grandmother.
Research Interests:
In 2010, diaCRITICS managing editor Julie Thi Underhill wrote the following in-depth historical and photographic essay about the persecutions of the Cambodian Chăm under the Khmer Rouge rule of Democratic Kampuchea from 1975 to 1979. The... more
In 2010, diaCRITICS managing editor Julie Thi Underhill wrote the following in-depth historical and photographic essay about the persecutions of the Cambodian Chăm under the Khmer Rouge rule of Democratic Kampuchea from 1975 to 1979. The first essay of its kind, this essay quickly became one of the most-visited pages on diaCRITICS, as it begins to fill an informational vacuum about the Chăm presence in Southeast Asia.
Research Interests: Southeast Asian Studies, Racial and Ethnic Politics, Genocide Studies, Race and Ethnicity, Cambodia, and 15 moreEthnic and Racial Studies, Justice, Ethnic minorities, Islam in the Southeast Asia, Ethnicity, Southeast Asian Politics, Racial and ethnic discrimination, Ethnicity & Ethnic Conflicts, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Political Violence in Cambodia & the Khmer Rouge, Champa, Cham, Cham people, Chăm people, and Chăm
This two-page article written by Julie Thi Underhill and published in "Islamic Horizons" provides an overview of the reGenerating Champa conference held at UC Davis in May 2015. It addresses the scope of the conference and lists the... more
This two-page article written by Julie Thi Underhill and published in "Islamic Horizons" provides an overview of the reGenerating Champa conference held at UC Davis in May 2015. It addresses the scope of the conference and lists the panelists and presenters. reGenerating Champa was co-directed by Julie Thi Underhill and Azizah Ahmad.
Research Interests: Indigenous Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, Diasporas, Cambodia, Vietnamese History, and 16 moreSocial Activism, Islamic Studies, Islam in the Southeast Asia, Diaspora Studies, Vietnam, Southeast Asian Politics, Cambodian History, Diaspora and transnationalism, Activism, Youth activism, Vietnamese studies, Political Violence in Cambodia & the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia History, Champa, Cham Studies, and Cham Diaspora
At twenty-two, Julie Thi Underhill met her dying grandmother Thị Oai and began a portrait series in her mother's home village. Seven years later, she returned with her family to Phước Lập, a Hindu Chăm village in south central Viet Nam,... more
At twenty-two, Julie Thi Underhill met her dying grandmother Thị Oai and began a portrait series in her mother's home village. Seven years later, she returned with her family to Phước Lập, a Hindu Chăm village in south central Viet Nam, where she photographed and filmed her grandmother's final ceremonies for her documentary Second Burial. Underhill offers these family portraits from 1999 and 2006 as an extended elegy for her grandmother.
Research Interests: Religion, Hinduism, Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies, Area Studies, and 36 moreAsian Studies, Anthropology, Ethics, Visual Studies, Indigenous Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, Social Sciences, Photography, Social Philosophy, Diasporas, Contemporary Art, Asian American Studies, Feminist Philosophy, Critical Race Theory, Southeast Asia, Cambodia, Urban Studies, Indonesia, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Diaspora Studies, Vietnam, Feminist Ethics, Documentary Photography, Fine Art Photography, Southeast Asian Literature, Southeast Asian history, Hindu Philosophy, Death and Dying, Mourning and Remembrance, Bali, Vietnamese diaspora, Native American Philosophy, Political Philosphy, Southeast Asian Art History, Cham Studies, Comparative Modernities, and Southeast Asian Religion
Research Interests:
Pairing image and text, 'Troubling Borders' showcases creative writing and visual artworks by sixty-one women of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, Thai, and Filipino ancestry. The collection features compelling storytelling that troubles the... more
Pairing image and text, 'Troubling Borders' showcases creative writing and visual artworks by sixty-one women of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, Thai, and Filipino ancestry. The collection features compelling storytelling that troubles the borders of categorization and reflects the multilayered experience of Southeast Asian women. The diverse voices featured here have been shaped by colonization, wars, globalization, and militarization. For some of these women on the margins of the margin, crafting and showing their work is a bold act in itself. Their provocative and accessible creations tell unique stories, provide a sharp contrast to familiar stereotypes-Southeast Asian women as exotic sex symbols, dragon ladies, prostitutes, and "bar girls"-and serve as entry points for broader discussions on questions of history, memory, and identity.
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This book is conceived as a reader for use in American studies, Asian American studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender studies, performance studies, and queer studies. It also contains new scholarship on... more
This book is conceived as a reader for use in American studies, Asian American studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender studies, performance studies, and queer studies. It also contains new scholarship on Asian/American sexualities that would be useful for faculty and students. In particular, this volume highlights materials that receive little academic attention such as works on Southeast Asian migrants, mixed race cultural production, and Asian/American pornography. As an interdisciplinary anthology, this collection weaves together various forms of 'knowledge' -- autobiographical accounts, humanistic research, community-based work, and artistic expression. Responsive to the imbrication of knowledge and power, the authors aspire to present a diverse sample of discourses that construct Asian/American bodies. They maintain that the body serves as the primary interface between the individual and the social, yet, as Elizabeth Grosz noted over a decade ago, feminist theory, and gender and sexuality studies more generally, 'has tended, with some notable exceptions, to remain uninterested in or unconvinced about the relevance of refocusing on bodies in accounts of subjectivity.' This volume attempts to address this concern.
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'Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace' is a harvest of creative, redemptive storytelling—nonfiction, fiction, and poetry—spanning five wars and written by those most profoundly affected by it. For more than fifteen years, National Book... more
'Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace' is a harvest of creative, redemptive storytelling—nonfiction, fiction, and poetry—spanning five wars and written by those most profoundly affected by it.
For more than fifteen years, National Book Award-winning author Maxine Hong Kingston has led writing-and-meditation workshops for veterans and their families. The contributors to this volume—combat veterans, medics, and others who served in war; gang members, drug users, and victims of domestic violence; draft resisters, deserters, and peace activists—are part of this community of writers working together to heal the trauma of war through art.
Reading their words, we witness worlds torn apart then rebuilt. This epic and timely work is the distilled wisdom of warriors and their loved ones, expressing themselves with breathtaking artistry and truth.
For more than fifteen years, National Book Award-winning author Maxine Hong Kingston has led writing-and-meditation workshops for veterans and their families. The contributors to this volume—combat veterans, medics, and others who served in war; gang members, drug users, and victims of domestic violence; draft resisters, deserters, and peace activists—are part of this community of writers working together to heal the trauma of war through art.
Reading their words, we witness worlds torn apart then rebuilt. This epic and timely work is the distilled wisdom of warriors and their loved ones, expressing themselves with breathtaking artistry and truth.
Research Interests:
The third edition of "Takin' it to the streets" revises the comprehensive collection of primary documents from the 1960s that has become the leading reader about the era. Adopted nationwide, this anthology brings together representative... more
The third edition of "Takin' it to the streets" revises the comprehensive collection of primary documents from the 1960s that has become the leading reader about the era. Adopted nationwide, this anthology brings together representative writings, many of which had been unavailable for years or had never been reprinted. Drawn from mainstream sources, little-known sixties periodicals, pamphlets, public speeches, and personal voices, the selections range from the Port Huron Statement and the NOW Bill of Rights to speeches by Malcolm X, Richard Nixon, Robert Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan, to private letters from civil rights workers and Vietnam soldiers.
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Today I consider how Cham Muslim memories of Democratic Kampuchea circulate within discourses of recognition, the legal and the familial. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) is a Cambodia-United Nations court... more
Today I consider how Cham Muslim memories of Democratic Kampuchea circulate within discourses of recognition, the legal and the familial. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) is a Cambodia-United Nations court currently trying senior Khmer Rouge leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity. As evidence of genocide, Cham Muslims have parceled some of their most unspeakable experiences into legible legal terms. However as new generations negotiate the inheritances of the 1970s, Cham Muslim children and grandchildren hold residues of their family's traumas. In both legal and familial discourses, the legibility and transmission of memory seem paramount to challenging historical silences. Although both articulations of memory seek recognition, the latter approach might be more tangible and effective-either as a supplement to legal testimonies or as oral histories. Efforts to engage family memories might heal the Cham Muslims more than verdicts and symbolic reparations granted by a court of law. Despite the centering of such testimonies, much lingers untranslated between embodied memory and juridical claims, between justice and peace.
This paper was presented at the American Studies Association annual conference, November 2009, at a War Crimes panel chaired by Lisa Yoneyama.
This paper was presented at the American Studies Association annual conference, November 2009, at a War Crimes panel chaired by Lisa Yoneyama.