Arnika Fuhrmann

Vita

Arnika Fuhrmann is an interdisciplinary scholar of Thailand working at the intersections of the country’s aesthetic and political modernities. After completing her Ph.D. in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago (2008), she took up a postdoctoral fellowship at the Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry. In September 2010 she joined the University of Hong Kong’s Society of Scholars in the Humanities as a research scholar. Recent articles have appeared in Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture, Oriens Extremus, and positions: east asia cultures critique (forthcoming 2011). Her book project Ghostly Desires examines how Buddhist-coded anachronisms of haunting figure struggles over sexuality in contemporary Thai cinema. Her new research project, Under Permanent Exception: Violence, Buddhist-Muslim Coexistence, and (New) Media in the Thai South, extends her interests in sexuality and cinema into the domain of interreligious conflict. It proposes a reframing of understandings of Buddhist-Muslim antagonisms through the analysis of their quotidian, affective dimensions.

ICI-Project

Tropical Malady: History, Minoritization, and the Thai Feminist and Queer Avantgarde
This project examines the distinct memory culture that is being constituted by a feminist and queer artistic and political avantgarde in Thailand. To do this, it undertakes a cross-media investigation of visual materials drawn from a reviving, globally circulating independent cinema and a contemporary digital avantgarde. I draw this primary archive into relation to the older visual and literary sources that it appropriates as well as to radical political writing and other materials from print and electronic media that relate to new feminist and queer aesthetic and political spheres. Taking the Thai situation as my case, I examine recent shifts in logics of minoritization and understandings of sexual embodiment in this contemporary sexual public sphere. A vital focus of the postdoctoral research concerns the ways in which queer and feminist artists and filmmakers use or refuse rhetorics of loss in a public sphere that is replete with narratives of loss concerning history and nation, and that in the past decade became the scene of increasingly restrictive state sexual politics.

CURRICULUM VITAE

POSTDOCTORAL POSITIONS

Society of Scholars in the Humanities, University of Hong Kong, Research Scholar, September 2010–August 2012

Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Research Fellow, September 2009–August 2010

EDUCATION
University of Chicago
Ph.D., South Asian Languages and Civilizations, 2008, with distinction
Dissertation: “Ghostly Desires: Sexual Subjectivity in Thai Cinema and Politics After 1997”

M.A., South Asian Languages and Civilizations, 1999
Thesis: “Nirat and the Thai Nation: Angkhan Kalayanaphong, the Art for Life poets, and the Politics of Contemporary Thai Poetics”

University of Hamburg (Hamburg, Germany)
M.A., Languages and Cultures of the Southeast Asian Mainland, sehr gut, 1995
Minors: Languages and Cultures of Premodern and Medieval India, Philosophy
Thesis: “Time and Temporality in the Poetry of Angkhan Kalayanaphong”

PUBLICATIONS

BOOK PUBLICATION
Teardrops of Time: Thai Buddhist Temporality and the Aesthetics of Redemption in the Contemporary Poetry of Angkhan Kalayanaphong. Berlin: Peter Lang (forthcoming 2011), 174 pages.

JOURNAL ARTICLES (PEER-REVIEWED)
“Nang Nak—Ghost Wife: Desire, Embodiment, and Buddhist Melancholia in a Contemporary Thai Ghost Film,” in Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture, “Translation and Embodiment in National and Transnational Asian Film Media,” Guest Editor: Bliss Cua Lim, 31.3 (Fall 2009), 220–247. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/discourse/summary/v031/31.3.fuhrmann.html

"The Dream of a Contemporary Ayuthaya: Angkhan Kalayanaphong's Poetics of Dissent, Aesthetic Nationalism, and Thai Literary Modernity," Oriens Extremus 48 (2009), 271–290.

“Making Contact: Loss, Femininity, and the Performance of Impossible Intimacies in the Video Art of Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook,” positions: east asia cultures critique, 29 pages (forthcoming 2011).

“Ekalak Mai: ‘Dontri Haeng Arom’ Nai Kawiniphon Ruam Samai.” (“New Identity: The ‘Music of Emotion’ in Modern Poetry”). Phasa Lae Wanakhadi Thai, vol. 7, no. 5. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University, 1990: 80–88.


BOOK CHAPTERS
“Kan Fao Rawang Thang Wathanatham lae Kan Jad Rabiap Sangkhom: Kan Mueang Rueang Phet Khong Rat Thai Lang Pi 2543” (“Cultural Monitoring and Social Ordering: State Sexual Politics in Thailand After 2000”). In Khwam Lak Lai Thang Phet: Naeo Khit, Sathanakan, lae Khwam Khluean Wai (Sexual Diversity: Concepts, Situations, and Movements), edited by Naruephon Duangwiset et al. Bangkok: Sirindhorn Anthropology Center (forthcoming 2011).

TRANSLATIONS
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook “The Class II,” “The Class III” (“Bot Rien Thi Song,” “Bot Rien Thi Sam.”) Art and Words (Sinlapa Kap Thoi Khwam), Tr. Arnika Fuhrmann, Bangkok: Matichon, 2006, 45–51.

FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS
Research Scholarship, Society of Scholars in the Humanities, University of Hong Kong, 2010–2012
Postdoctoral Fellowship, Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, 2010–2011 (declined)
Postdoctoral Fellowship, Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, 2009–2010
Committee on Southern Asian Studies Fellowship, University of Chicago, 2004–2006
Ingrid Muan Travel Fellowship, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia Studies Group, 2006
Humanities Travel Grant, University of Chicago, 2005
Doolittle Fellowship, University of Chicago, 2002
Century Fellowship, University of Chicago, 1997–2002
Minerva Doctoral Scholarship for research at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1996–1997
DAAD Doctoral Scholarship for research in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 1995–1996
DAAD M.A. Research Scholarship for Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 1989–1990

RECENT COURSES

University of Hong Kong

Culture and Queer Theory, Department of Comparative Literature, undergraduate course, autumn 2011

"New" Cinemas Across National Boundaries: Cinemas of Adversity, Department of Comparative Literature, upper level undergraduate course, spring 2011