Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World

The book contains essays on current issues in arts and humanities in which peoples and cultures compete as well as collaborate in globalizing the world while maintaining their uniqueness as viewed from cross- and interdisciplinary perspectives. The book covers areas such as literature, cultural studies, archaeology, philosophy, history, language studies, information and literacy studies, and area studies. Asia and the Pacifi c are the particular regions that the conference focuses on as they have become new centers of knowledge production in arts and humanities and, in the future, seem to be able to grow signifi cantly as a major contributor of culture, science and arts to the globalized world. The book will help shed light on what arts and humanities scholars in Asia and the Pacifi c have done in terms of research and knowledge development, as well as the new frontiers of research that have been explored and opening up, which can connect the two regions with the rest of the globe.

Melani Budianta is a Professor of the Faculty of Humanities, with expertise in literary and cultural studies. She has done research and publication on gender and multiculturalism. She has recently edited an anthology of Indonesian Women Writers (with Yvonne Michalik), and published her research on "Precarious Cosmopolitanism: Work Migration and Cultural Belonging in Globalized Age" in the recent issue of International Journal of Cultural Studies. She has been active in Indonesian women’s movement and in the Inter-Asia scholar/activist network. She is a member of the editorial collective of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Journal, Wacana Journal of Humanities, and other regional and international scholarly journals.

Manneke Budiman teaches literature and cultural studies at the Faculty of Humanities Universitas Indonesia. He serves a member of the Editorial Board of WACANA Journal of Humanities and MAKARA Hubs-Asia (Journal of Human Behavior Studies). He is also co-editor of co-editor of Words in Motion: Language and Discourse in Post-New Order Indonesia (NUS Press, 2012) and contributor to Yvonne Michalik & Melani Budianta (eds) Indonesian Women Writers (Regiospectra, 2015). He published his research on contemporary Indonesian women’s literature, Reimagining the Archipelago: The Nation in Post-Suharto Indonesian Women’s Fiction, in 2013 (Lambert Academic Publishing).

Abidin Kusno is a Professor of Environmental Studies at York University, Canada. His research interests include urbanism, politics and culture, history, and theory of architecture. He currently serves as President of Canadian Council for Southeast Asian Studies. He is the author of After the New Order: Space, Politics and Jakarta (Hawaii University Press, 2013) and The Appearances of Memory: Mnemonic Practices of Architecture and Urban Form in Indonesia (Duke University Press, 2010). He has also served as Editor in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Journal of Architectural Education, Journal of Planning History, Pacific Affairs, and in the International Advisory Board of Journal of Southeast Asian Studies.

Mikihiro Moriyama is Professor of Indonesian Studies and Global Liberal Studies at Nanzan University, Japan. He is the author of Sundanese Print Culture and Modernity in 19th-Century West Java (2005) and coeditor of Words in Motion: Language and Discourse in Post-New Order Indonesia (2012). His interests are in language and literature in Indonesia, particularly Sundanese. He tries to explore people’s consciousness and perception of language and texts in both Sundanese and Indonesian. He has also written essays on contemporary Indonesian literature, and translated Indonesian literary works such as Putu Wijaya, Seno Gumira Ajidarma and Oka Rusmini in Japanese.