Faculty members from the Department of Literature of the Faculty of Arts and Letters presented their research studies in an international conference jointly organized by the International Council for Historical and Cultural Cooperation Southeast Asia (ICHCC-SEA) and the Philippine Historical
Association (PHA), held at the Manila Hotel and De La Salle
University from September 14 to 16, 2017.
Themed as ʺThe Malay World: Connecting the Past to the Present,” 106 papers were presented from delegates coming from ASEAN countries mostly from Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Presented were papers on the following themes:South East Asian Studies, Archeology, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Education, Humanities, International Studies, Literature, Sociology, Political Science and other related areas.
Five Literature faculty members delivered their papers which were discourses that combine history with literature, education, culture, and gender studies. Prof. Felicidad G. Pereňa presented a critical inquiry on the role of the performing arts in the construction and deconstruction of Rizalʹs image titled “Jose Rizal, Pride of Malay Race, Reified in Philippine Performing Arts.ˮ
Asst. Prof. Jeanette P. Grajo presented an analysis of the theoretical and conceptual interconnection among cultural policy, nation, and pedagogy in her research work “Locating the Nation in the 21st Century Regional Literature: The Philippine Experience.ˮ
Assoc. Prof. Luciana L. Urquiola, Ph.D., used three dramatic plays of Nick Joaquin as a springboard for the study of androgynous female protagonists in a combined historygender study titled “Discoursing the Existentialist Feminism in the Fiction of Nick Joaquin through Character Analysis of
Androgynous Female Protagonist.ʺ
Similarly, the paper of Ms. Christine Ivy Nogot titled ˮConceptualizing Female Gender Roles in Philippine Culture and History through Literatureʺ is a gender study which posits that the identity of female protagonists in literature is
culturally and historically conditioned. Asst. Prof. Ma. Eloisa S.
Perez revisited the past in reconstructing the identity of the central
characters in her research work titled “Cultural Trauma in South East
Asian Novels: History, Identity, and Testimony.ˮ
The ICHCC-SEA and PHA initiated the inclusion of other
disciplines aside from history, to provide a venue for a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary exchange in the 2017 Malay World
international conference. This allowed intersectional dialogues
among participants who presented their discourses in various
subjects or themes.
Corollary to this, the Philippine Historical Association launched
its PHA Journal 2017 which featured historical and cultural researches
in Southeast Asia. This issue had accepted and published the papers
“Jose Rizal, Pride of Malay Race, Reified in Philippine Performing
Artsˮ by Prof. Felicidad G. Pereňa and “Locating the Nation in the
21st Century Regional Literature: The Philippine Experienceˮ by Asst.
Prof. Jeanette P. Grajo.
The ICHCC-SEA consists of three professional organizations,
namely, Society of Indonesian Historians, Malaysian Historical
Society, and the Philippine Historical Association which collaborated
in hosting this conference as per Memorandum of Understanding
signed in 2015. Plenary speakers included Prof. Emeritus Dr.
Muhammad Haji Salleh of Universiti Sains Malaysia; Nadzan Haron
of the Malaysian Historical Society; Dr. Reynaldo Ileto of Nanyang
Technological University; and Dr. Rommel Curaming of the University
of Brunei Darussalam.
