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Posted by: Joshua Kueh
The Asian Division is now accepting applications for its Florence Tan Moeson Fellowship, which supports short-term research visits to the Asian Reading Room at the Library of Congress. This year's application deadline is midnight Sunday, January 12, 2025.
Posted in: Announcements, Asian Division, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Uncategorized
Posted by: Cameron Penwell
(The following is a collaborative post with contributions from Elli Kim, Korean Reference Librarian; Joshua Kueh, Southeast Asian Reference Librarian; Cameron Penwell, Japanese Reference Librarian; and Ryan Wolfson-Ford, Southeast Asian Reference Librarian) With Halloween now upon us, we thought it would be interesting to learn more about ghosts, ghouls, and things that go bump in …
Posted in: Asian Division, East Asia, Southeast Asia
Posted by: Ryan Wolfson-Ford
“World War II Records from Burma” is a diverse and unique grouping of documentary materials in the Southeast Asian Rare Book Collection. This post highlights documents from the collection concerning the Indian Independence League and Indian National Army, two Indian diaspora organizations that emerged prior to and during World War II.
Posted in: Asian Division, Southeast Asia
Posted by: Joshua Kueh
This post features answers to frequently asked questions about the Southeast Asian collections at the Library of Congress provided by the Library’s Southeast Asian reference librarians. Librarians touch on types of Southeast Asian materials available, who uses the collections, how the Library acquires its holdings, and how to access them.
Posted in: Asian Division, Southeast Asia, Uncategorized
Posted by: Ryan Wolfson-Ford
Suzanne Karpelès lived a fascinating life of a scholar of Pali, Khmer, Thai, Tibetan, and Sanskrit, at a time when being an Indologist was a male dominated field, making a major impact on academic knowledge of Cambodian Buddhism, among other subjects. Her personal library is full of wonderful treasures from the early days of Western printing of Cambodian Buddhist works and rare Khmer manuscripts like the Reamker, the Cambodian version of the epic Hindu tale, the Ramayana. One can still access her unique library at the Library of Congress where it has found a home with the Southeast Asian Rare Book Collection in the Asian Reading Room.
Posted in: Asian Division, Southeast Asia
Posted by: Joshua Kueh
This blog post highlights a video recording and resources related to a virtual panel event hosted by the Library of Congress Asian Division entitled "Mangyan Scripts, Literary Heritage, and Collections," which took place on September 20, 2023. The event featured presentations on Mangyan writing and literary culture, as well as Mangyan collections at the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.), the Mangyan Heritage Center (Mindoro, Philippines), Newberry Library (Chicago), and Yale Peabody Museum (New Haven). Audience members interacted with speakers in a Question and Answer session following the presentations.
Posted in: Asian Division, Southeast Asia, Uncategorized
Posted by: Ryan Wolfson-Ford
On Friday September 29, the Asian Division of the Library of Congress will be hosting a partial day display and talk in the Thomas Jefferson Building (rooms LJ110/119) celebrating the diversity of the Library’s collections through textiles, in collaboration with the African and Middle Eastern, Prints & Photographs, Geography & Maps, and Rare Books and Special Collections Reading Rooms.
Posted in: African and Middle Eastern Division (AMED), Asian Division, Events, Rare Books and Special Collections, South Asia, Southeast Asia
Posted by: Joshua Kueh
This blog post announces a panel discussion on Mangyan writing from the Philippines, scheduled to take place via Zoom on September 20, 2023. Presenters will speak about Mangyan scripts and holdings at the Mangyan Heritage Center, Newberry Library, Yale Peabody Museum, and the Library of Congress. The post also highlights some Mangyan-related resources at the Library of Congress.
Posted in: Announcements, Asian Division, Southeast Asia, Uncategorized
Posted by: Ryan Wolfson-Ford
The Southeast Asian Rare Book Collection, accessible at the Asian Reading Room, contains some unique items from the Cold War era; specifically, documents produced by the United States Information Agency (USIA) and disseminated in Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Myanmar. This blog features the USIA Cold War-era Thai collection and a series of posters, “Communism or freedom?”
Posted in: Asian Division, Southeast Asia