On September 20th, 2023, the Asian Division of the Library of Congress will host a virtual panel discussion on Mangyan scripts, literary heritage, and collections. The panel will feature speakers from the Mangyan Heritage Center, Inc., the Newberry Library, the Library of Congress, and a curatorial affiliate at the Yale Peabody Museum. Presenters will discuss Mangyan writing, literary forms, and also Mangyan holdings at their institutions. To learn more about the speakers, please see their bios at the end of the post.
The panel is scheduled to take place on Zoom from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. US Eastern Daylight Time. Registration is free and available via the following link: https://bit.ly/mangyan-scripts-fb
The program will consist of presentations followed by a Question and Answer session where audience members will get a chance to interact with the speakers.
This panel event seeks to raise awareness about Mangyan literary culture, and opportunities for research on Mangyan-related topics both at the Library of Congress and other institutions in the United States, as well as in the Philippines. It also aims to draw attention to Indigenous cultures and contributions, specifically those of the Mangyan.
“Mangyan” is a term often applied to several Indigenous groups on the island of Mindoro in the Philippines. It is sometimes a contested term because historically only one of the ethnic groups—Hanunuo—refers to itself as Mangyan. This event provides a space to learn more about the Hanunuo and other groups labeled “Mangyan.”
Related to this event, readers might find the following Mangyan-related resources at the Library of Congress of interest:
Available remotely online
• Digital collection: Mangyan bamboo collection from Mindoro, Philippines, circa 1900 to 1939
• Research guide on the Mangyan bamboo collection
• Blog post on the Library’s Mangyan bamboo collection
Available only onsite
• Hanunuo-Mangyan poems ambahan session: from the collection of anthropologist Antoon Postma of Mangyan Research Center
• Harold C. Conklin Philippine collection, 1955-1995
• Harold C. Conklin recordings from Luzon and Mindoro, Philippines
To learn more about this event and Mangyan holdings at the Library of Congress, please contact Southeast Asian reference librarians via Ask-a-Librarian: https://ask.loc.gov/asia.
An earlier version of this blog post noted that the term “Mangyan” is sometimes a contested one because only the Hanunuo refer to themselves as Mangyan. The author has been informed that while this is historically true, at present, the usage of the term “Mangyan” is no longer rejected by the different Indigenous groups on Mindoro, though care should be given to highlight that each group has its own distinct language and cultural tradition. Even so, some scholars still take issue with using “Mangyan” to refer to Indigenous groups on Mindoro other than the Hanunuo. This added note serves to remind readers of the evolving understanding of the term “Mangyan.”
Bios of Panelists
Uyan Daay is in charge of community-based cultural projects and activities at the Mangyan Heritage Center. Uyan is a script master and culture-bearer. She was the assistant researcher in a recently completed Mangyan script documentation project, funded by the Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation through the United States Embassy in the Philippines.
Emerenciana (Emily) Lorenzo Catapang has been the executive director of the Mangyan Heritage Center since its founding in 2000. She also acts as the librarian-archivist of the MHC library, which houses a comprehensive collection of documents on the Mangyans. In 2005, she received a fellowship for visiting archivist at the Rockefeller Archive Center in New York. While there, she gave lectures on the Mangyans at several organizations and universities and searched for Mangyan documents and artifacts in libraries and museums in the United States, including the Library of Congress. She also gives lectures about the Mangyans at educational institutions and organizations in the Philippines and abroad.
Louward Allen Zubiri is the current Head Researcher at the Mangyan Heritage Center. His primary research interests are language contact, change, and variation in Philippine languages; description, documentation, and revitalization of endangered Philippine languages; and mother tongue and Indigenous education and community development. He has undertaken community engagement with a focus on advocacy, training, and research for and with Indigenous communities in the Philippines.
Patricia Okubo Afable is an anthropologist whose primary ethnographic and archival research is on Philippine Cordillera peoples, cultures, and histories. Born in Baguio City, she attended the University of the Philippines and Yale University. Currently, she is a curatorial affiliate at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.
Will Hansen is the Roger and Julie Baskes Vice President for Collections and Library Services, and Curator of Americana at the Newberry Library. Mr. Hansen holds a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He began his career in libraries at the Newberry in 2003 as a Circulation Assistant and then, in 2004, as the library’s Reference Assistant. After serving as Assistant Curator of Collections at Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library from 2007 to May 2014, he returned to the Newberry in 2014.
Mr. Hansen has published articles on Herman Melville, active learning with primary source materials, archives of “born-digital” materials, and other topics. He has led hundreds of hands-on instructional sessions with rare books and other primary sources, as well as teaching Adult Education Seminars at the Newberry on a variety of American literature and history topics. His curated exhibitions at the Newberry include “Hamilton: The History Behind the Musical” in 2017; “Melville: Finding America at Sea” in 2019; and “¡Viva la Libertad! Latin America and the Age of Revolutions” in 2021.
Analú María López (Huachichil/Xi’iui) is the Ayer Librarian and Assistant Curator of American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library. She helps steward the Indigenous studies collection while guiding library users through, connecting them with, and interpreting materials linked to it. Her interests include historically underrepresented Indigenous narratives, the preservation, revitalization, and teaching of Indigenous languages, decolonial theory (inside libraries and museums), and building relational community collaborations for access to resources within colonial institutions. She holds a Master of Library and Information Sciences with a certificate in Archives and Cultural Heritage Resources and Services from Dominican University. Ms. López began her career with the Newberry in 2004. After working for other libraries and museums in Chicago for 13 years, Ms. López returned to the Newberry in her current role in September 2017.
Joshua Kueh is a Southeast Asia Reference Librarian at the Asian Division of the Library of Congress, where he covers the Philippines and other island countries in Southeast Asia. He holds a doctorate in history (trans-regional) from Georgetown University, specializing in topics related to Southeast Asia, Chinese overseas, and the Spanish empire in the Philippines. Prior to coming to the Library of Congress, he taught courses on Southeast Asia and migration in the region at Georgetown University and the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. A major project that he has recently worked on is the digital presentation of the Library’s Mangyan Bamboo Collection from Mindoro, Philippines, circa 1900-1939—a collection of 77 bamboo items, and accompanying documents, which are now freely available online.
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