New Directions in Thai Studies

Preedee Hongsaton is a Research Fellow at Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Sweden. He is currently a member of the collaborative research programme Imperial Expansion and Intercultural Diplomacy: Treaty-making in Southeast Asia, c.1750−1920. Ying-kit Chan is an Assistant Professor of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore. He was formerly a research fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden University. His latest book is Southeast Asia in China: Historical Entanglements and Contemporary Engagements (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023).

• 1. Introduction.- Part I. New Histories.- 2. Historiography of Thai Nationalism: A Critique of Debates over Lost Territory.- 3. Rethinking National Defense during the Reign of King Chulalongkorn.- 4. Papered Forestry: Leases, Laws, and the Enactment of Forest Administration.- 5. Ordinary Archives, Fragmented Scenes: Making Public Queer History at Museum Siam.- Part II. New Disciplines.- 6. Religion in Transition: From Buddhism to New Religious Movements and Invisible Religions in Thailand.- 7. Cultural Strategy as Status-Anxiety Management: Evidence from Thailand’s Cultural Relations with Japan during the Pacific War.- 8. Sensitizing Thai Studies: (Multi)sensory Approaches to Thai History and Culture.- Part III. New Comparisons.- 9. Crematoria: King Rama V’s “Strategy of Hygiene” and Western Hygiene Reform in the Late Nineteenth Century.- 10. Thailand and Japan’s Comparative Centralization and Economic Development, 1850-World War I.- 11. George Orwell in Thai Political Landscape: The Global Texts and the Local Reception.- 12. Ideological Dichotomies: Thai Historiography in Representing Indochina during the Cold War Period.