Mission

Southeast Asian Studies has traditionally been a field in which "Western" scholars have dictated the terms and raised the questions. Scholars and students in Southeast Asia itself have been the receptors of knowledge "about" themselves filtered through the often refractional and refractory colonial and post-colonial lens. The internet and international conferences are slowly and quite refreshingly eroding this traditional approach and has allowed students and scholars worldwide to learn "from" each other rather than simply learn about" each other.

The Thai/Lao/Cambodian Studies Group (TLC) is an affiliate of the Southeast Asian Council (SEAC) of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS). It aims to bring together scholars and students who work in many fields (History, Anthropology, Botany, Women's Studies, Religious Studies, Ethnomusicology, Linguistics, Archaeology, Architecture/Urban Planning, Development Studies, Philology, Political Science, Environmental Sciences, Philosophy, among others) who find themselves informed by data and experiences in Thailand, Cambodia, and/or Laos. Its website (tlc.ucr.edu) and its annual meeting (at the AAS meeting) is a place for these scholars and students to share resources and expertise.