FILIPINO SCHOLAR APPOINTED W.E.B.DUBOIS INSTITUTE FELLOW

FILIPINO SCHOLAR E. SAN JUAN RECEIVES PRESTIGIOUS
HARVARD UNIVERSITY FELLOWSHIP


The internationally acclaimed W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard UniveRsity recently announced the award of a prestigious fellowship to E. San Juan, Jr., a Filipino scholar and writer, for Spring 2009.

Currently based in the United States, San Juan recently completed teaching a graduate seminar this second semester in the Department of English, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City. His collection of writings dating back to the sixties, BALIK-BAYANG SINTA: AN E. SAN JUAN READER, was launched last March 12 by the Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Earlier, as a keynote speaker at a West Visayan writers’ conference at the University of San Agustin, Iloilo, from February 14-15, he stressed the intertextual linkage of the nationalist imagination with citizens’ human rights in the context of massive extra-judicial killings, abductions, and unprecedented human-rights violations in the Arroyo regime. His book of poems, SALUD ALGABRE AT IBA PANG TULA, was launched by the University of San Agustin Press under the supervision of Prof. John Iremil Teodoro, director of the Fray Luis de Leon Creative Writing Center.

San Juan is emeritus professor of English and Comparative Literature of several universities in the United States. Before teaching at U.P. Diliman this year, he was Fulbright professor of American Studies at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, and fellow of the Rockefeller Study Center at Bellagio, Italy. He also taught at the University of Trento, Italy, and Tamkang University, Taiwan. His recent scholarly books are Racism and Cultural Studies (Duke U Press), Working Through the Contradictions (Bucknell U Press), In the Wake of Terror: Class, Race, Nation and Ethnicity in the Postmodern World (Lexington), and US Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines (Palgrave Macmillan).

San Juan directs the Philippines Cultural Studies Center in Connecticut and is a member of PEN American Chapter and the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

************************** *************** *********************


KAILANGAN LAMANG, IDUGTONG AT PAGKABITIN ANG MGA AKSIDENTE

“Only connect….”
--E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

“The truth is the whole.”
--Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind




….Di na umasa sa pirasong ass ni Britney Spears “sneaking into the Philippines”
tuluyang sumabak ang katawan sa rali ng GABRIELA
mula Rotunda hanggang Plaza Miranda--

Nasulyapan kita Walang babala’y sinagi pinadaplisan mo lamang….

Ay, titi ng Ama, salbakutang kabuktutan ng rehimeng Arroyo!
Paano maibubuo ang body politic mula sa pira-pirasong lamang ikinalat sa buong daigdig?

Samantala, sentensiyado na si William Corpuz, Pinoy sa California, USA--
nilaslas niya ang lalamunan ng asawa, nilaslas ng walang premeditasyon, di nag-ulik-ulik--
Nagprotesta ang mga Pinay, walang pag-aatubili, pati si Eve Ensler ng “Usaping Puk….”

Salbakutang seksismo ba ang dahilan? O situwasyon ng OFW sa buong daigdig?
Nangyari ito sa “land of milk and honey”--Ay, titi ng American Idols at Lea Salonga!

Saksi tayo sa krimeng extrajudicial killings, salvaging, terorismo ng Estadong neokolonyal
habang ilanlibong U.S. “Special Forces” ay lantad na dumarambong, walang urong-sulong…

Idugtong at pagkabitin lamang ang deliryo ni Corpuz at habeas corpus--
Nilaslas na ang mga lalamunan nina Shirley Cadapan, Luisa Posa-Dominado, Jonas Burgos…
Ay, titi ng Ama, di mabilang na biktima ng sistemang bulok, ng ordeng malupit!

Sa pagitan ng Rotunda at Plaza Miranda, walang premeditasyong hahagkan yayapusin kita
upang tipunin at pagkabitin ang kaluluwa’t katawang hiniwa’t naihiwalay….

Magkapiling tayo, Mahal, panganib/gayuma ng madugong kontradiksiyong sumasabog--


----ni E. SAN JUAN, Jr.