Adventures of Isabel

I’m not entirely certain what winding mental path led me to the rectory of St. Catherine’s Church in Carcar, Cebu. Some of it has to do with reading for a course on literature of social movements in the Philippines — it was to Carcar that the Visayan revolutionary Leon Kilat went seeking reinforcements for [...]

In the latest in a long string of outrageous human rights and civil liberties violations perpetrated by the Thai government, political scientist Giles Ji Ungpakorn is facing prison for lese majeste — insulting the king — in a recent article about the 2006 Thai coup.
You can read the offending paragraphs here and judge for [...]

I’m back to Jose Rizal again. For someone whose professed interest is human rights and modern political science, I seem to spend a lot of time studying 19th century intellectual history. (It is all related, I swear!). For all that I find many of Rizal’s political stances objectionable, I can’t help but [...]

These past few weeks have been incredibly busy. On top of all the usual nonsense, I have to get ready for my trip to Southeast Asia, I’m going to be presenting a paper at a grad student conference at Cornell in March, and I’m spending a lot of time trying to persuade people to [...]

A new semester, and as usual I’ve spent most of the past week running from office to office trying to persuade people to bend the rules for me.I really can’t decide whether there is something wrong with me or something wrong with the system that makes this such a pattern. As far as I [...]

I highly recommend “The Arroyo Imbroglio in the Philippines,” political scientist (and former teacher of mine) Paul Hutchcroft’s new article in The Journal of Democracy to anyone interested in a lucid summary of a century of Philippine political history. In an impressively concise article (13 pages), Hutchcroft manages to address most of the key [...]

I’m pretty sure only one person will really appreciate this (and you will very quickly know who you are, my friend) but since I’ve been too busy and burned out to do any extra-curricular writing these last few days, I figured I’d post this:

One of the most common critiques of Rizal’s narrative of nationalism comes [...]

Continuing my series of desk portraits, here is the wreckage of my desk as I near the home stretch of a marathon last-minute paper revising session:

It may not be a system of organization that works for anyone else, but I seem to have done alright for myself with it so far.

Now, if I can [...]

During our discussion about Eric Tagliacozzo’s Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States along a Southeast Asian Frontier, one of my classmates coined a new term: “Cool-guy academic.” Which is to say, the type of academic — preferably as nerdy as possible — who focuses on “cool guy” topics like smuggling, piracy, drugs, organized [...]

Oh, I am so bad.Looks like I’m back to posting about how I don’t ever post.School seems to do this to me.What can I say? By and large, I find what I’m doing in school interesting. Which is why I’m here. But it doesn’t make for great narrative. As in — I actually [...]