Geronimo Cristobal

Category: Essay

  • The Wisdom of Uz

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    William Blake (1757 – 1827), There Was a Man in the Land of Uz (The Book of Job), 1821 This essay sets directions towards the writing of a material history of the Land of Uz, the setting of the Book of Job, by revisiting textbook historical and archaeological records of the Levant and relevant ancient…

  • The Kingdoms of Israel and Ophir

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    and the power of a fabricated diplomatic history             And they came to Ophir, and fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to King Solomon.                                                                                    — I Kings 9:28.            On July 30th of this year (2023), a most bizarre headline appeared in one of the leading news publications in the…

  • An Archaeology led by Strawberries

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    Atalay, Sonia. “An Archaeology led by Strawberries” in Archaeologies of the Heart. Kisha Supernant, Jane Eva Baxter, Natasha Lyons, and Sonya Atalay, editors. 2020. Springer, New York. xiv + 280. Hieronymus Bosch (circa 1450–1516), The Garden of Earthly Delights, central panel inside (left side), detail: People sit around a large strawberry, c.1490 and 1500 A…

  • Death and Mortuary Rituals in Mainland Southeast Asia

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    W. Higham, Charles F. “Death and Mortuary Rituals in Mainland Southeast Asia: From Hunter-Gatherers to the God Kings of Angkor.” Chapter. In Death Rituals, Social Order and the Archaeology of Immortality in the Ancient World: ‘Death Shall Have No Dominion’, edited by Colin Renfrew, Michael J. Boyd, and Iain Morley, 280–300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,…

  • Less is More

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    Unknown Flemish artist, Triumph of Fortitude, ca. 1535 Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco In explaining how his practice of writing history operates, historian Carlo Ginzburg turns to architect Mies van der Rohe’s adage: “Less is more.”[1] He explains his method using the metaphor of the dilation of a camera lens: “By knowing less, by…

  • Keyword: Primitivism

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    For a fictional volume called Keywords for Southeast Asian Studies         Abstract This article focuses on the historiography of Primitivism in Southeast Asian Studies, understood as the interest shown in non-Western cultures by the European avant-garde. Emerging with the development of anthropology, this movement instigated a protracted debate between ethnology and aesthetic studies. I present examples…

  • Muslim Cool: Race, Religion and Hip Hop in the United States (Su’ad Khabeer, 2016)

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    Eritrea / Colonia Italiana – Muslim brotherhood PPC Military Post to Italy 1935 Photo: Ebay Su’ad Khabeer’s Muslim Cool: Race, Religion and Hip Hop in the United States examines how intersecting ideas of Muslimness and Blackness challenge and reproduce the meanings of race in the US. Confronted by pervasive stereotypes and increased prejudice in post-9/11 America, the group…

  • A Habit of Shores: Seni and Seafaring in Dunia Melayu

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    I am presenting seemingly unrelated variables to tell the story of the SEA and the various shores on which they meet the land. It has been a convention now to present an outline of the presentation and I do so not only to give a semblance of cohesiveness but to trigger your imagination. Warning: We…

  • Gender / Sexuality / Theory of Power

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    Harry Styles at the Grammy Awards in 2021. Boas are a fashion must-have at Styles’ concerts.(Jordan Strauss / Invision / AP) In “Bodies with New Organs” Jasbir Puar examines the neoliberal appropriation of the trans body to reconstitute the pool of able bodied individuals for economic productivity and the development of the national economy. According…

  • Queer Companions (Omar Kasmani, 2022)

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    Religion, Public Intimacy, and Saintly Affects in Pakistan An illustration of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar’s shrine in Sehwan as it was in mid-1800s. Photo: Sindh Culture Department Lauren Berlant writes that unexpected consequences of communicating with meager signs and gestures are the “secret epitaphs” of intimacy. “Often brief and eloquent,” intimate situations also convey an aspiration…

  • Knot of the Soul (Stefania Pandolfo, 2018)

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    Madness, Psychoanalysis, Islam The 72nd chapter of the Qur’an entitled Al-Jinn (The Jinn), as well as the heading and introductory bismillah of the next chapter entitled al-Muzzammil (The Enshrouded One). In Knot of the Soul, Pandolfo ties together seemingly disparate areas of study such as madness and cartography to address, among many others, the compatibility of modern psychology and Islamic eschatology. Towards this end, she…

  • Jinnealogy (Anand Vivek Taneja, 2017)

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    Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi Taneja’s plaiting of themes in contemporary Indian politics and vestiges of unsanctioned Islamic practice reveal the multi-layered undercurrents of Islamic sovereignty that shape the present. Her insights into secularism, political ecology, ethics, and religiosity afford us a deeper look of Islamic ethics and its…

  • Rouge (dir. Stanley Kwan, 1987)

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    Critics hailed Stanley Kwan’s genre defining ghost film Rogue during its Criterion Collection release as a beautiful allegorical melodrama, “the likes of which are no longer done in the West”. Bliss Cua Lim offers a reason why this is the case: “ghostly women embody a strong notion of spatiotemporal nonsynchronism—the existence of noncontemporaneous aspects of…

  • Area/ Region

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    Walker Gavin’s article “The Accumulation of Difference and the Logic of Area” tells us that some of Michel Foucault’s ideas on biopower can still be improved. According to Gavin, Foucault didn’t think past the spatial term “territory” to consider the even more ambiguous term “area”, which according to Gavin is more encompassing of the unboundedness…

  • Semicoloniality, Agency and Occupation

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    The Bogor Botanical Gardens was officially established by the Dutch East Indies Government on May 17, 1817, which became an important part in the history of science in Indonesia. (Wikimedia Commons) In Race and the Education of Desire (1995), Ann Laura Stoler writes about the central role of the construction of race and empires in…

  • Grupos Filipinos Ilustres, 1911

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    Photo: Grupos Filipinos Ilustres, NCCA/ National Museum Collection This lithograph called Grupos Filipinos Ilustres by Guillermo Tolentino from 1911, created the National Pantheon according to historian Resil Mojares. It imagined heroes, intellectuals, artists, activists and politicians together in a studio portrait. It was a popular fixture in homes during the American occupation of the Philippines,…

  • Lingua Franca (2019, dir. Isabel Sandoval)

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    Isabel Sandoval plays Olivia, a caregiver to Olga played by Lynn Cohen. Filipino director and actress Isabel Sandoval paints the portrait of freedom, inspired by her own journey as a transgender migrant in Donald Trump’s America. Alongside filmmakers Lav Diaz and Brillante Mendoza, Sandoval is among a new breed of filmmakers who are committed witnesses…

  • Bulletproof Equations

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    Preliminary Investigation Into The Possible Origins of Agimat Burmese Yantra Jacket, vegetable ink on cotton, date unknown, Collection: Herbert Johnson Museum. Photo: Author In his memoirs, Benedict Anderson (1936-2015) recalls a story from Soemarsaid Moertono (1922-1987), his Indonesian fellow student in the mid-1960s who showed him drafts of his MA thesis on aspects of traditional…

  • Bophana (dir. Rithy Panh, 1996)

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    Filmmaker Rithy Panh’s passionate story of the Cambodian national tragedy is told through a documentary centered on the enduring love of two of its victims. Panh, who was interned in a Khmer Rouge labor camp before finding refuge in France, returned to a Cambodia traumatized by a massacre that saw the obliteration of a good…

  • The Lover (dir. Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1992)

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                The Lover (dir. Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1992)  is not the typical epic historical romance in the same way as Gone With the Wind might be but it plays on the same elements. While the plot of this well-worn genre revolves around the loss of innocence—which is often an allegory for the colonial experience—and of having…

  • Children of Srikandi (2012)

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    George McT Kahin wrote in his Introduction to Benedict Anderson’s Mythology and the Tolerance of the Javanese (1965) that “anyone interested in contemporary Indonesia, its organization and social and political articulation… comes to realize that in order to achieve any real depth of understanding for these phenomena, it is first necessary to appreciate the enduring…

  • Marriage (Mas Ruscitadewi, 1995)

    Marriage (Mas Ruscitadewi, 1995)

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    Eave hanging (ider-ider) with scenes from the Baratayuda (Great Battle) from the Mahabharata, Ink and pigments on handwoven cotton cloth 18th-early 19th century, 39 3/8 × 276 3/4 inches (100 × 703 cm). Donated originally by Claire Holt and Ben Anderson and transferred from the Echols Collection at Cornell University’s Kroch Library. Photo: Collection of…

  • Mystery Object

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    This brass cylinder is made distinctive by the incisions of figures that resemble reliefs from temples or medieval goblets. Roughly a meter high, the object is shaped like a lighthouse, with a conical head that detaches from the neck. The shape of a lotus bud is inscribed at the tip of this head which can…

  • Archive Style (Robin Kelsey, 2007)

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    Timothy H. O’Sullivan (American, born Ireland, 1840–1882), Black Cañon, From Camp 8, Looking Above, 1871, Albumen silver print from glass negative, 20 x 28.1 cm (7 7/8 x 11 1/16 in. ) Photo: Public Domain/ Metropolitan Museum of New York Survey photographer Timothy H. O’Sullivan, is known for depicting the atrocities of the American Civil…

  • The Age of Barbarians

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    The Age of Enlightenment is commonly thought to precede the rapid development of history as an academic discipline. An awareness of history and the perceived continuity of peoples and nations caused a rapid evolution in the field of applied arts and architecture. This can be observed in the revival of historical styles in painting as…

  • The Sentimental Masks of Marcos and Robredo

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    Abstract How is charisma generated and transformed in the 2022 Philippine Presidential elections? This paper weighs in on the critical discussion of propaganda and political branding, using melodrama and political emotion as lenses to examine the rivalry between Leni Robredo and Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. These two candidates enacted charismatic leadership within online spaces and reworked…

  • May Tenga Ang Lupa

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    Rodel TapayaDrawing Room GalleryJune-July 2022 May tenga ang lupa, may pakpak ang balita (The land has ears, the news has wings) is an aphorism that reminds us not only that contemporary realities have ancient roots but also that nonhuman actors matter in telling the story. In Rodel Tapaya’s own words, it is these stories that…

  • Pensionado Modernists: US-educated Filipino Artists and the Struggle for Independence

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    Abstract The history of American modern art has largely excluded the US empire in its narrative and overlooked the massive direct investments in art education by the US government and private institutions during the 20th century. This essay revisits archival sources on two generations of Filipino pensionados, who were educated during the American colonization of…

  • Gleaning from the Archives of the Pensionado Story

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    From 1903 to 1943, over 14,000 Filipino scholars were sent to the United States to study under a U.S. colonial scholarship called the Pensionado Program. The story of the program was documented in 1943 by Kenneth Munden, Assistant Archivist in the Division of Interior Department Archives, at the behest of the office of the Secretary…

  • Christian Kruik Van Adrichem’s Theatrum Terrae Sanctae: A 16th Century Mnemonic Pilgrimage to Jerusalem

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    Abstract The essay examines an original map of Jerusalem drawn in 1584 by Christian Kruik van Adrichem (1533-1585), a Dutch theologian and humanist. The fold-out map, which was intended to be a historical and devotional guide based on accounts of travelers, portrayed an imagined Jerusalem at the time of Jesus, including the City of David…