PUBLIC LECTURES

Asian Civilisations Museum, Empress Place (ACM)
(Free Admission. Donation Appreciated)

Korkkadu: A Tamil Village Through the Ages
By Dr. Ulrike Nicklas, South East Asian Studies Programme, NUS
5 October (Wednesday), 7-8pm

Using photos and videos, Dr. Nicklas looks at the effect of industrialisation on a typical Tamil village. How has caste composition and hierarchy changed over the years? What has been the effect of industrialisation on village life and customs? Dr. Nicklas will answer these and many questions in this fascinating and entertaining lecture.

Christ’s Story in a Filipino Setting – The Pasyson
By Professor Reynaldo Ileto, Professor and Coordinator, Southeast Asian Studies Programme NUS
6 October (Thursday), 7-8pm

Christianity of the Roman Catholic variety was introduced to the Philippines in the late sixteenth century. In order to facilitate conversion, Spanish missionaries and their Filipino assistants retold the story of Jesus’ passion and death in the vernacular languages. Over the centuries many versions of the story appeared, thoroughly adapted to the local setting. The Pasyon, as it was called, was chanted on all important occasions, not just Holy Week, and also dramatised in passion plays called Sinakulo.

In this visual presentation, Professor Ileto shall examine various ways in which Christ’s story was ‘localised’ by Filipinos and the extent to which it has become their own story.

Clothing and Colonialism
By Dr. Tim Barnard, Department of History, NUS
26 October (Wednesday), 7-8pm

Dress, manners and appearance are the outward manifestations of a society. Join Dr Barnard in this fascinating lecture to examine how the arrival of European colonialism in Asia transformed this ‘social skin’ in variety of societies, leading to a greater appreciation of how our appearance reflects a number of social, political and religious movements in the past 200 years.