Julie Thi Underhill
One 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, WA
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, WA
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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.
Conference Presentations
This paper was presented at the American Studies Association annual conference, November 2009, at a War Crimes panel chaired by Lisa Yoneyama.
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.
This paper was presented at the American Studies Association annual conference, November 2009, at a War Crimes panel chaired by Lisa Yoneyama.