University of Michigan. Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies

In 1977 the University of Michigan Center for South and Southeast Asia Studies received support from the Henry Luce Foundation for a three-year project on "U.S.-Philippine Interactions as Reflected in Oral Histories." One part of the grant-funded project was to provide monies to Michigan faculty and students undertaking oral history, both in the Philippines and among Filipinos and Americans with Philippine experience (former diplomats, teachers, missionaries, servicemen, colonial officials, etc.) in the United States. As a result of this project, the Bentley Historical Library received tapes from two researchers, Michael Cullinane, at that time research associate in the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies and later associate director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies of University of Wisconsin--Madison, and Petra Fuld Netzorg, manager of the Cellar Book Shop in Detroit, Michigan, which specialized in Philippine publications.

University of Michigan area center established in 1961 to study Asian languages, history, and culture.

The Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies (CSSEAS) was founded in 1961 with a grant from the Ford Foundation as part of a new American effort following World War II to study Asian languages, history and cultures. In 1959 the College of Literature, Science and the Arts (LS&A) had proposed the expansion of "area studies" at the University of Michigan. This proposal included the establishment of four "area centers": the Center for Chinese Studies, the Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies, the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies as well as CSSEAS, using the Center for Japanese Studies as a model. Special emphasis was placed on the mastery of foreign languages and field research abroad. CSSEAS soon became a distinguished "area center," an institution within the American university system supporting interdisciplinary study on a specific cultural and geographic region of the world.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s CSSEAS sponsored and hosted many conferences and summer programs, bringing together scholars, students and South and Southeast Asians from around the world. Associates are drawn from the faculty and students of existing University of Michigan departments and programs, especially history, political science, anthropology and linguistics to work together and share ideas about South and Southeast Asian topics. Many students do dual concentrations in South and Southeast Asian studies and other subjects, especially business and linguistics. In 1993 CSSEAS became part of the International Institute, which administers the university's area centers.

More current information can be found at CSSEAS's website: http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/csseas/