The Division of the Arts & Humanities is pleased to announce that Sylvia Tiwon will be Chair of the Department of South and South East Asian Studies, as of July 1, 2023.
Tiwon is Associate Professor in the Department of South and South East Asian Studies and teaches literature, gender, oral and cultural studies of Southeast Asia with a focus on Indonesia. Her areas of interest include national and pre-national literatures, oral discourse and mythologies, as well as socio-cultural formations at the national and sub-national levels. She has undertaken fieldwork in a number of cultural regions in the Indonesian archipelago. Her work includes the book, Breaking the Spell: Colonialism and Literary Renaissance in Indonesia (1999), and articles on literature and poetry, on women and the national imaginary, development, post-colonialism and cultural resistance in English and Indonesian. She is a founding member of the Indonesian network Praxis and member of its Board of Education She is currently completing a book on women in the production of discourse in Indonesia and launching new research on poetry and resistance in Indonesia.