Date: Wednesday, March 18, 2026

Time: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

Location: NYU Wagner – 2nd Floor, Lafayette Conference Room 105 East 17th Street New York, NY, 10003 United States (map)

Organizer:NYSEAN (co-sponsored by SUNY/CUNY SEAC)

Type/Location: Hybrid / New York, NY

Description:

Join NYSEAN for the book launch of Enduring Otherwise: Muslim Queer and Trans Worldmaking in Indonesia by Ferdiansyah Thajib, Senior Lecturer in the Standards of Decision-Making Across Cultures MA Program at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Rianne Subijanto, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Baruch College-CUNY, will moderate the discussion.

About the Book:

Drawing on ethnographic research in multiple locations in Indonesia, Enduring Otherwise examines how Muslim individuals and communities grapple with the challenges and possibilities of inhabiting queer and trans religiosity. Some distance themselves from religious tenets because of the harms implicated in them, while others immerse themselves in religious practices and spiritual values, seeking to reimagine them. There are also those who remain caught in tensions, having to navigate a life entrenched in ambivalence. Yet across these varied engagements, they continue to find ways to keep going. Offering a nuanced account of the affective politics of worldmaking at the intersection of sexuality, gender, and religion, Enduring Otherwise highlights how the drawn-out moments of hope, failure, improvisation, and exhaustion experienced by queer and gender non-conforming Indonesians configure efforts to create a world where no one will have to endure the unendurable anymore.

About the Author:

Ferdiansyah Thajib is senior lecturer in the Elite Graduate Program “Standards of Decision-Making Across Cultures” at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU) Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. He is co-editor of Embracing Faith and Desire: Queer and Feminist Engagements with Islamand Christianity as Lived Religions and Affective Dimensions of Fieldwork and Ethnography.

Registration:

To attend the event in person, please register here.

To attend the event virtually, please join the zoom meeting here.

Webinar recording available via YouTube (below)

Date: Monday, February 23, 2026

Time: 05:00PM - 06:30PM EST

Speakers:

• Joel Sawat Selway (Ph.D. 2009, University of Michigan) is a Thai-British associate professor of political science at Brigham Young University. He has published extensively on Thai politics, including a Cambridge University Press book Coalitions of the Wellbeing (2015) analyzing the politics of the 30-baht scheme, an edited volume with University of Michigan Press Regional Movements and Identity Demands in Developing Democracies (2024), plus over 30 journal articles and book chapters on subjects ranging from the politics of health in Thailand, Thai elections and electoral reform, ethnic inequality in Thailand, Thaksin and populism, regionalism in Lanna, Thai nationalism, and Buddhism and politics. He has recently completed two book manuscripts: a solo-authored work on regionalism in Thailand and a co-authored volume on Thai nationalism (with Jacob Ricks, Singapore Management University). He is the co-founder and managing editor of ThaiDataPoints, an academic blog on Thai politics dedicated to the application of transparent methodological and theoretical analysis of current  events in Thailand.

• Dr. Kyaw Yin Hlaing is the Chairman of the Myanmar Scholars Network and a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore. He has been actively involved in community peace-building initiatives across various regions of Myanmar and possesses extensive experience in conducting research on Myanmar politics.

Moderator:

• Meredith Weiss is a professor of Political Science, focusing on the comparative politics of Southeast Asia, at the University at Albany, SUNY. She is also the director of the SUNY/CUNY Southeast Asia Consortium. 

Watch a recording of the webinar below!

Through installations, textiles, and community-rooted practices, this UKAI Initiative exhibition surfaces questions of global consumption, environmental injustice, and diasporic memory. Amid histories of upheaval and dispossession, it gestures toward the quiet, everyday work of stitching connections and tending to what has been frayed. Through gestures of care and reclamation, the exhibition proposes pathways toward mended relations, making whole what has been fractured, materially and socially.

FEATURING
Marion Aguas
Abby Manwiller
Rennel Lavilla
Glenn Philip Martinez Aquino
Eyecan Creatives
Mari Islas-Hall
Cecilia Lim
Jaclyn Reyes
Ryan Santos Phillips & Gisela Zuniga
Ezra Undag
Andre Zarate

*If you experience difficulty while trying to view the virtual exhibition, please use another browser.

November 18, 2025 - 2:00pm (PT) / 5:00pm (ET)

Following the wars in Vietnam, over two million people fled to country with the collapse of the Republic of Vietnam. That exodus, referred to by many as “the boat people” resulted in nearly half dying while in flight, battling the elements, starvation, and pirates.

Vietnamerica follows Master Nguyen Hoa as he returns to former refugee camps in Southeast Asia after three decades abroad to search for the graves of his wife and two children. Having fled Vietnam in 1981 on a boat with his family and friends, Hoa was the only survivor.

Executive Producer Nancy Bui of the Vietnamese Heritage Foundation joins GETSEA and 25 universities across North America to watch Vietnamerica together simultaneously and connect via Zoom for a discussion with the filmmaker about the Vietnamese diaspora, their struggle, and how Master Hoa’s story is a prism to see the larger group.

For more information on the film, visit http://vietnamericamovie.org. If you are interested in holding a screening on your campus, contact GETSEA Director of Communications, Chris Hulshof, at chulshof@wisc.edu.