MUHAMAD ALI received his BA in Islamic studies from the State Islamic University (Indonesia), an MS from the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh, and a PhD in history (Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the world) from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His dissertation examines the varying impacts of Dutch, British and Japanese colonial powers on transmission and reproduction of Islamic knowledge in sermons, edicts and curricula in Indonesia and Malaysia. He was a fellow at the East-West Center, Hawaii, where he did a research assistantship on ethnic conflict in Southeast Asia and attended courses on cultural studies. Specializing in Islamic studies and Southeast Asian Studies, Muhamad Ali has been writing and speaking on jihad, violence and peace, gender relations, Islam and the West, interfaith dialogue and global education, Islam and politics, liberal Islam, religious pluralism, and other religio-cultural issues. Ali has taught courses such as Qur’anic studies, Islam and International Relations, Muslim politics, and Orientalism. In 2007-08, Ali taught "Introduction to Asian religions," "Reading the Qur’an," "Islam in Southeast Asia," and "Introduction to Islam." His recent publications include a book (Multicultural-Pluralist Theology, Kompas, 2003), and articles on women and jihad ("Encyclopaedia of Women and Islamic Culture," 2004), edicts on interfaith marriage in Indonesia (Studia Islamika, 2003), liberal Islam in Indonesia (American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 2005), categorizing Muslim beliefs and practices (Moussons, Paris, 2007), and a chapter on Islam in Southeast Asia in a book published in Denmark (2008), among others.

BART BARENDREGT is an anthropologist who lectures at the Institute of Social and Cultural Studies, Leiden University, in the Netherlands. He has published on Southeast Asian performing arts, new and mobile media, and Islamic pop culture as well as the Indonesian landscape and architecture.  His present research concerns information, technology and development in Southeast Asia.

BIRGIT BERG received a PhD in Ethnomusicology from Brown University in 2007. Her dissertation, titled The Music of Arabs, the Sound of Islam: Hadrami Ethnic and Religious Presence in Indonesia, explores the cultural traditions of Arab descendants in Indonesia and also analyzes the role of Arab culture in popular Indonesian Islamic arts. During her dissertation fieldwork, Birgit lived and studied in communities in North Sulawesi, Gorontalo, and Java. Birgit has also completed research on national forms of Christian music in Indonesia (the topic of her MA thesis at Smith College), and she has conducted field research on traditional arts in the Indonesian regions of Gorontalo, Manado/Minahasa, and Sangihe Talaud. After receiving her PhD, Birgit was named a 2007 Presidential Management Fellow. She currently resides in Washington, D.C. and works as the Program Coordinator for Voice of America Broadcasting’s East Asia Division.

SUZANNE BRENNER is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego.  She received her PhD in Anthropology and Southeast Asian Studies from Cornell University in 1991.  Her interests include sociocultural anthropology; gender, family, and social transformation; the anthropology of modernity; contemporary religious movements; and women and Islam. Her regions of specialization are Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia, and the United States. Brenner is the author of The Domestication of Desire: Women, Wealth, and Modernity in Java (Princeton 1998), which won the Harry J. Benda Prize from the Association for Asian Studies in 2000.  She has also published a number of articles on women and gender issues in Indonesia.  She is currently engaged in research that looks at marriage, religion, and politics in both Indonesia and the United States, focusing in particular on the debates over polygamy in Indonesia and over same-sex marriage in the United States.

NICOLE CONSTABLE is professor of Anthropology, affiliated faculty in Asian Studies and Women’s Studies, and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her BA from the University of California at Santa Barbara and her MA and PhD from the University of California at Berkeley.  Her research focuses on gender and migration, transnationalism, virtual ethnography, Hong Kong, China, and the Philippines. She is author of Christian Souls and Chinese Spirits: A Hakka Community in Hong Kong (University of California Press, 1994); Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and ‘Mail Order’ Marriages (University of California Press, 2003); and Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Migrant Workers (Cornell University Press, 2007). She edited Guest People: Hakka Identity in China and Abroad (University of Washington Press, 1996) and Cross-Border Marriages: Gender and Mobility in Transnational Asia (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).

TONY DAY taught Indonesian and Performance Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia, from 1978 to 1998. He is currently a Visiting Professor in History (part-time) at Wesleyan University. His most recent publications are: (ed. with Keith Foulcher) Sastra Indonesia Modern: Kritik Postkolonial, Edisi Revisi 'Clearing a Space' (2008);  "'Self' and 'Subject' in Southeast Asian Literature in the Global Age," in Asian and Pacific Cosmopolitans: Self and Subject in Motion, ed. Kathryn Robinson (2007); "Locating Indonesian Literature in the World," Modern Language Quarterly 68,2, 2007; and (ed.) Identifying with Freedom: Indonesia after Suharto (2007).

ARIEL HERYANTO is the author of State Terrorism and Political Identity in Indonesia; Fatally Belonging (Routledge, 2006), co-editor of Popular Culture in Indonesia; Fluid Identities in Post-Authoritarian Politics (Routledge, 2008), and Challenging Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia; comparing Indonesia and Malaysia (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003). He is currently a Senior Lecturer and Convener of the Indonesian Program at Asia Institute, The University of Melbourne. He has also taught in Indonesia and Singapore. Ariel received his MA from the University of Michigan, USA in Asian Studies, and his PhD from Monash University, Australia in Anthropology. While in Indonesia, his country of birth, he was active in literary and theatrical production. He has been writing opinion columns (now over 600 in total) for major newspapers and magazines in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Ariel also administers the Asian Media and Contemporary Cultures group on Facebook that he created in 2007.

RHOMA IRAMA, musician, composer, record producer, film star, and Islamic proselytiser. Rhoma Irama has been a dominant force in Indonesian music and popular culture since the early 1970s. Composer of hundreds of songs and star of over 20 films, Rhoma Irama occupies a central place in the history of dangdut, a music genre that blends Malay, Indian, Middle Eastern, and western musical forms. Using print and electronic media to defend the genre against claims that it was backward and unsophisticated, he paved the way for dangdut to become Indonesia¹s most popular music. Rhoma Irama¹s lyrics express themes of everyday life, love, social criticism against class inequality, and Islamic messages. He is closely identified with dakwah (religious) compositions, which are designed to inform, instruct, and lead his listeners. Rhoma Irama has garnered attention both at home and throughout the world as the "King of Dangdut" (Raja Dangdut). His songs have been the subject of scholarly articles and world music books and textbooks.

ISHADI S.K. is the founder and President of Trans TV Indonesia (Transformation Television of Indonesia). Under his leadership, within 10 months of broadcasting in September 2002, Trans TV ranked fourth among ten commercial television stations in Indonesia. He spent almost his entire professional career at TVRI (the Indonesian national television station), beginning as a junior reporter in 1968 and ending as the president director of TVRI in 1992.  During 1996-1998 he was the Operational Director of the private television station TPI (Indonesian Educational Television). In 1998 he was appointed the Director General of Radio, Television and Film for the Department of Information. Ishadi S.K. received his M.A. from Ohio University and his Ph.D. in Mass Communication at the University of Indonesia. His dissertation was entitled "Discourse Practice in the RCTI, SCTV and Indosiar News Rooms: A Critical Analysis of News Text Production Processes at the edge of the President Soeharto Era (May 12th -20th 1998)." He has taught courses at the University of Indonesia (Jakarta), Gajah Mada University (Yogyakarta), University of Sanatadharma (Yogyakarta), and University of Airlangga (Surabaya).

GAIK CHENG KHOO researches Southeast Asian cinema, specializing in independent filmmaking in Malaysia. Her book Reclaiming Adat Contemporary Film and Literature in Malaysia (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006) focuses on Malay middle class  writers and filmmakers who recuperate Malay custom (adat) in the face of on the one hand, resurgent Islam and on the other hand, a potentially homogenizing western modernity. She is also interested in issues of race and cosmopolitanism and teaches cultural studies and gender at the Australian National University.

SARAH E. KRIER is an anthropologist specializing in women’s health, ethnomedicine, gender and sexuality in Indonesia. After living in Indonesia from 2000 to 2004 teaching English and volunteering with the Indonesian Planned Parenthood Association and other nonprofit organizations, Krier came to the University of Pittsburgh to pursue a PhD in Anthropology with a focus on Medical Anthropology and a Masters in Public Health in Behavioral and Community Health Sciences. Last fall Krier begin a year of full-time dissertation fieldwork in Central Java researching The Jamu Industry, Women’s Health and Islam in Contemporary Indonesia. Through theoretically informed ethnographic and historical examination, she is investigating the jamu industry, the local belief systems supporting this industry, and how Indonesian Muslim women experience jamu in contemporary Indonesia. After returning to Pittsburgh in late September, Krier will be finishing up her dissertation and MPH thesis while teaching undergraduate courses in the Department of Anthropology.

MERLYNA LIM is Assistant Professor of the Consortium of Science, Policy and Outcomes at the School of Justice and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University. She was awarded a Ph.D. with distinction (cum laude) from University of Twente in Enschede, the Netherlands with a dissertation entitled "@rchipelago Online: The Internet and Political Activism in Indonesia." Her research interests revolve around the mutual shaping of technology and society, focusing particularly on social, cultural, and political dimensions of the new media and information and communication technology.  Lim holds the following awards: Annenberg Networked Publics Research Fellowship (2005-2006), Henry Luce Southeast Asia fellowship (2004), Oxford Summer Doctoral Fellowship (2003), and NWO Wotro Fellowship (2003-2005). She has published extensively on cyberpolitics/activism, cyberculture/religion, democratization, globalization and civil society, particularly in Asian context. Among her recent publications is Islamic Radicalism and Anti Americanism in Indonesia: The Role of the Internet.

DREW McDANIEL is Professor of Media Arts and Studies at Ohio University.  He specializes in Southeast Asian media and journalism.  Since 1980, he has been a staff consultant at Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development, a UN-chartered organization in Malaysia where he spends a portion of each year. McDaniel's publications include Electronic Tigers
of Southeast Asia: The politics of media, technology, and national development and Broadcasting in the Malay World.

NORITAH OMAR received her Ph.D. from Indiana University, Bloomington. She is currently a senior lecturer at the Department of English, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). Recently, she received a Visiting Fellowship from the Centre for Research in Women’s Studies and Gender Relation at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, and subsequently, was invited to present a paper at the University of Victoria, Canada on “Women and Islam: Between Theory and Practice.”  She sits on the editorial boards of several local and international journals and her research interests include post-colonial theory and literature, and gender studies. To date, she has written articles on the application of feminist theories in literature and culture studies, national identity and Malaysian literature, and gender and sexuality in Southeast Asian literature.  At present, she heads two nationally funded projects on postcoloniality and Malaysian literature and the construction of Islamic Malaysia through Malaysian literature. 

ZAKIR HOSSAIN RAJU is Senior Lecturer of Communication and Cultural Studies at Monash University, Sunway campus, Malaysia. He obtained PhD in Cinema Studies from La Trobe University, Melbourne in 2005. He taught at La Trobe and Monash University in Australia as well as at Independent University and University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Raju served as a Visiting Scholar at Australian National University, Canberra in 1999 and at University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur in 2007. He is the author of Bangladesh Cinema and National Identity: In Search of the Modern? (Routledge, forthcoming 2008). He has published many articles in journals including Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (CSSAAME), Screening the Past, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Cinemaya, and in anthologies including Madrasas in South Asia: Teaching Terror? (Routledge, 2007), Contemporary Asian Cinema (Berg, 2006) and Being and Becoming: The Cinemas of Asia (Macmillan, 2002).

RICHARD SCAGLION is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh. His primary geographic interests are in island Southeast Asia and the Pacific, where he specializes in the comparative study of Austronesian societies and the Melanesian region. A recipient of a praxis award from the Washington Association of Professional Anthropologists, Scaglion's applied research has involved the anthropology of law and sustainable development in island nations. He has a special relationship with the Abelam people of New Guinea, with whom he has conducted long-term field research beginning in 1974. He is the former Director of Customary Law Development for the Law Reform Commission of Papua New Guinea and has been a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University, the University of Hawai'i, and the East-West Center. He is author or editor of numerous books and articles including The Globalization of Food (Waveland Press, 2002).

SHAMSUL AB studied anthropology and sociology for his BA Honours (1973) and MA (1976), at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur and social anthropology for his PhD (1983) at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. His award winning book, From British to Bumiputera Rule (Singapore: ISEAS, 1986), based on a PhD that examines the phenomenology of class and ethnic relations at the Malaysian village community-level, was reprinted three times, last in 2004. He has been Professor of Social Anthropology [since August 1991] and has served as the Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities (April 1997-March 1999], Director, the Institute of the Malay World & Civilization (ATMA) [April 1999-January 2007], and, the Founding Director, Institute of Occidental Studies (IKON) [October 2003 – December 2007], and, since October 2007, the Founding Director, Institute of Ethnic Studies (KITA), at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia. He has served and/or is still serving on various national-level and international-level research, institutional and policy-related committees. He has been a frequent commentator on Malaysian current affairs in local mass media and international media.

R. ANDERSON SUTTON is Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he has taught ethnomusicology since receiving his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1982.  He has published extensively on music of Indonesia; his current research concerns the presentation of traditional and popular musics on television in Asia and the synthesis of traditional and pop elements in “fusion” music, with particular focus on South Korea as well as Indonesia.  At the University of Wisconsin-Madison he has served as director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, as co-director of the research group on Media, Performance and Identity, and nationally on the Executive Boards of the Society for Ethnomusicology and the Society for Asian Music. 

ANDREW N. WEINTRAUB is an ethnomusicologist specializing in the music of Indonesia, particularly Sundanese music, dance, and theater of West Java. His articles have appeared in edited books and journals including Popular Music, Ethnomusicology, Asian Music, Asian Theatre Journal, Perfect Beat, and Balungan. Weintraub is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in ethnomusicology and popular music, and directs the University of Pittsburgh gamelan program. He is the author of Power Plays: Wayang Golek Puppet Theater of West Java (Ohio University Press, 2004), and co-editor of Music and Cultural Rights (University of Illinois Press, forthcoming). He is currently writing a book about the history of Dangdut, a form of Indonesian popular music.

SARAH WEISS studied at the University of Rochester / Eastman Conservatory and New York University, receiving her PhD from NYU.  She has taught at the University of Sydney, Australia, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Harvard University. She joined the faculty of the Department of Music at Yale in 2005. Primarily conducting research amongst performers in Central Java and Sulawesi, Indonesia, her geographical interests also include performance from around Asia. Weiss has published on issues of gender, aesthetics, theatre, and comparative religions in musical contexts in journals, edited collections, and encyclopedias. Her book Listening to an Earlier Java: Gender, Aesthetics, and the Music of Wayang in Central Java was published by the KITLV Press in 2006 and she is working on a new comparative book on women and performance in religious contexts entitled Ritual Soundings: Women, Religion, and Music to be published by the University of
Illinois Press. Her most recent fieldwork has been with a cappella singing groups at Yale, a continuing project she is conducting with her graduate students (recently written up in an article on NBCSports.com). She serves on various editorial boards and committees for music journals and societies. She has performed and taught Central Javanese gamelan music for 15 years, regularly appearing as a vocal soloist in performances around the United States.

Sponsored by: School of Arts and Sciences, Office of the Provost, University Center for International Studies, Global Studies Program, Asian Studies Center, Indo-Pacific Council, Department of Music, Women's Studies Program, Department of Anthropology, Film Studies Program, Department of English, Cultural Studies Program, Consortium for Education Resources on Islamic Studies (CERIS), and Ohio University's Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Silkscreen Festival, and Falcon Interactive (Indonesia).

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