Hi, everyone.
I'm Elena Shih, an assistant professor of American Studies
and a post-doctoral fellow at the Watson Institute.
And I'm so excited to be teaching a winter session
course on critical approaches to global humanitarianism
in Thailand.
If you do a Google search for human trafficking in Thailand,
you're likely to be bombarded with images
that depict Thailand's flourishing
commercial red light districts.
At first glance, some of these images
are difficult for us to stomach.
They portray young Asian women standing
in public, dressed in lingerie, and engaging in different kinds
of sexual labor and intimate commerce.
But as much as these images disturb us and, perhaps,
compel us to act to stop human trafficking,
they make one huge mistake.
And that is to conflate all forms of sex work
with human trafficking.
What this means in practice is that the majority of American
NGO interventions to stop human trafficking in Thailand
have focused on rescuing and removing women from sex work.
What they haven't done is asked sex workers
whether they want to be rescued in the first place.
And in my work with Thai sex worker rights organizations,
they have consistently asked for rights, not rescue.
Yet, this is a narrative that has been consistently
devalued and ignored in the global anti-trafficking
movement.
The winter session course that I am teaching
aims to tackle this troubling paradox
as just one contemporary manifestation
of global humanitarianism.
This course builds on a tradition of scholarship
and critical development studies and, in American studies,
on the history of US empire.
And I ask one very simple question.
How can global humanitarian movements
be better attuned to the specific local context
in which they are working?
And in this case, we look specifically at Thailand.
We will do this by spending three weeks together
during the January winter session.
The first week in Providence will
be devoted to twice daily meetings where we'll
cover two types of readings.
The first will be an overview of scholarship
in critical humanitarian studies,
looking at various global industrial complexes that
will help us understand the very complicated relationship
between the state, market, and civil society.
This theoretical background will shape
how we understand the second set of readings
that engage what others have written about Thailand
specifically-- its culture, politics, and economics,
to name a few.
While the course begins with an interest in human trafficking,
we also look at two related issues--
that of migrant labor in the deep sea fishing industry,
and the citizenship rights for ethnic minority people
living near the Thai/Burma border.
During weeks two and three, we will travel to Thailand
to visit a range of activists, scholars,
local and international NGOs, global governance institutions,
and government officials.
Most importantly, we will speak with workers
and have the opportunity to ask them what has worked,
what hasn't, and what they really need and want
to survive within the global economy.
Unfortunately, because there are only 12 spots in the class,
I'm asking for a formal application from you all.
I'd love it if you could submit me
a one-page single spaced statement documenting
your interest for taking this class.
In particular, I'd love for you to tell me
how your academic concentration relates to the course content.
You can be absolutely creative here.
And tell me how your background work experience
and prior travel, though you need not have any,
also motivate you.
You can send this statement by October 1st
to my email, which is elena-- E, L, E, N, A-- underscore Shih--
S, H, I, H-- @brown.edu And you can also feel free to email me
if you have any other questions about the class.