New publication

I was just at the “Imagining Cambodia” conference at Northern Illinois University this last weekend, which was a great success; so many excellent presentations. My own paper, “Nuon Chea’s New Buddhism,” was a presentation of an in-process paper on Nuon Chea and his attitudes toward Buddhism, drawing largely on my 2005 interview with him at his home in Pailin. I’ll note here when that paper is submitted for publication.

In my email this morning I was informed that my latest publication, “Khmer spirits, Chinese bodies: Chinese spirit mediums and spirit possession rituals in contemporary Cambodia,” was published today in an edited volume from Thomas A. Reuter and Alexander Horstmann, titled, Faith in the future: Understanding the Revitalization of Religions and Cultural Traditions in Asia. It represents a tentative new direction for myself, and explores the concepts of neak ta  and their common characteristics in Cambodia, especially as regards multi-ethnic contexts.

Here is a photo of one of the two mediums discussed in the paper.

One of the two mediums’ performances discussed in the paper