Tamara Loos 
Associate Professor
Office: 301 McGraw Hall
Phone: (607) 254-5332
Fax: (607) 255-0469
E-Mail: tl14@cornell.edu
Updated CV
Office Hours: On Leave
Research and Teaching Interests
Tamara Loos is currently writing a book that seeks to integrate emotions, affect and violence into history generally and Thai history in particular. It asks how we can historicize emotions and incorporate them in historical studies without instrumentalizing them. This project utilizes court cases, newspapers sources, personal letters, and novels written since the turn of the 20th century in Thailand.
Her first book, /Subject Siam: Family, Law, and Colonial Modernity in Thailand/ considered Siam's place as a colonized and colonizing power in Southeast Asia. It detailed the forced incorporation of Malay Muslim areas into Siam, and revealed the gendered core of Thailand's modern legal system. It is among the first historical works to integrate thoroughly both the Malay Muslim south and gender into Thai history. Her articles include studies of sex and politics, transnational sexualities, comparative law, sodomy, the family, suffrage, intimate violence, rape and notions of liberty in Thailand.
Courses
| Fall 2009: | On Leave | |
|---|---|---|
| Spring 2010: | On Leave |
Other Courses Taught at Cornell
History 1910: Modern Asian History. Team-taught undergraduate lecture course. Taught every fall.
History 3960/6960 Southeast Asian History from the 18th Century. Graduate and undergraduate lecture course and graduate seminar. Taught every spring.
History 2070/5070 The Occidental Tourist: Travel Writing & Orientalism in Southeast Asia. Graduate and undergraduate seminar. Taught alternate years.
History 2170 Subversion as Foreign Policy. Sophomore Seminar. Taught alternate years.
History 4000 Honors Proseminar. Seminar for undergraduate history majors who plan to write a thesis.
History 4160/6160 Seminar on Gender and Sexuality in Southeast Asia. Graduate and undergraduate seminars. Taught alternate years.
History 4870/6870 Seminar on Modern Thailand. Graduate seminar. Taught once every 3 or 4 years.
History 8004 Supervised Graduate Reading. As needed.
Education
Ph.D Cornell University, 1999
M.A. Cornell University, 1994
B.A. Pomona College, 1989
Recent Publications and Awards
Books and Book Chapters
Subject Siam: Family, Law, and Colonial Modernity in Thailand (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). A book-length social and legal history of nineteenth and early twentieth century Siam that focuses on gender, justice, modernity, and national identity through the lenses of family law, the Malay Muslim south, and polygyny.
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4401
“Introduction,” Cocktail: A Play about the Life and HIV Drug Development Work of Dr. Krisana Kraisintu by Ping Chong and Vince LiCata (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2009), vii-xxv. Translated into Thai.
“Competitive Colonialisms: Siam and Britain on the Malay Muslim Border,” The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand, edited by Rachel Harrison and Peter Jackson (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009).
“Stranger Bedfellows: Sodomy, Sex and Politics in Siam.” In Other Pleasures: Sodomy and Diverse Sexual Acts in Asia, ca. 400 -1940, edited by Raquel Reyes, et. al. Submitted (2009) to Palgrave Macmillan.
“The Politics of Women’s Suffrage in Thailand,” in Women’s Suffrage in Asia: Gender, Nationalism and Democracy, edited by Mina Roces and Louise Edwards. London and NY: RoutledgeCurzon Press, 2004: 170-194.
Critical Introduction, Five Years in Siam: From 1891-1896, Vols. 1-2, by H. Warington Smyth (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1898, rep. 1994). Also published on the web in December 2002 by Lewis P. Orans at http://www.pinetreeweb.com/hw-smyth-five-years-00.htm
Current Book Projects
Biography of Dr. Krisana Kraisintu. I will spend the 2009-2010 academic year traveling with and writing about the life and work of Dr. Krisana Kraisintu, a Thai female pharmaceutical doctor who has saved thousands of lives in Thailand, Africa, and other countries by formulating and manufacturing affordable generic drugs to treat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other maladies that strike the poor in particular. The book will also focus on her audacious and unwavering conviction that “teaching people how to fish is better than giving them fish.” Dr. Krisana transfers technological know-how (provides gratis drug formulas and pharmaceutical training) to the poorest African countries in order to break the cycle of dependency of lesser developed countries on wealthier countries and multinational pharmaceutical companies.
“Violent Intimacies: Affect in Siam.” This book project on affect, intimacy and violence in Thai history is organized around five key court cases selected for their ability to reveal emotional texture and richness in their historical context. It begins with a case of romantic love turned sour between a young Siamese man and a British woman in 1900. The sentimental language of love and shame that saturates the writing about this attempted murder-suicide begins a project that aims to integrate affect and violence among intimates into studies of Thai history. Both emotions and intimate violence are seen as universal, a view that makes these topics intriguing relevant and yet troublingly difficult to write about with the kind of specificity that is necessary to make these categories culturally and historically meaningful. It asks what access historians have to emotions, whether emotions have a place in the writing of history, and if so, what place that is.
Articles
“Transnational, Colonial and National Histories of Sexualities in Asia.” American Historical Review (Dec. 2009) (refereed).
“The Politics of Sexual Violence in Siam.” Jutyun: warasan satriniyom thai [Stance: the Thai Feminist Review], 2 (2008), 21-52.
“A History of Sex and the State in Southeast Asia: Class, Intimacy and Invisibility.” Part of Special Issue on “International Marriage, Rights and the State in Southeast and East Asia,” to Citizenship Studies 12, 1 (Feb. 2008) (refereed).
“In Celebration of Professor David Kent Wyatt.” Southeast Asia Program Bulletin (Fall 2007).
“Invited Commentary” on Michael Peletz, “Where are all the transgendered ritual specialists? Gender pluralism in Southeast Asia since early modern times,” Current Anthropology 47, 2 (April 2006).
“Sex in the Inner City: The Fidelity between Sex and Politics in Siam.” The Journal of Asian Studies 64: 4 (Nov. 2005): 881-909 (refereed).
“Siam’s Subjects: Muslims, Law, and Colonialism in Southern Thailand,” Southeast Asia Program Bulletin (Winter-Spring 2004-2005): 6-11.
“Issaraphap: The Limits of Individual Liberty in Thai Jurisprudence,” Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 12:1 (1998): 35-75 (refereed).
“Balancing the Scales of Justice,” Thailand Times English Daily (Bangkok, 13 February 1996).
Awards
Cornell Society for the Humanities Research Grant, 2009 Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies Seed Grant
Cornell History Department Faculty Research Grant, 2008
LaFeber Research Grant, with Samson Lim, 2007
Cornell History Department Faculty Research Grant, 2006
J.S. Knight Writing Program Sophomore Seminar Grant, 2004.
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship at Harvard, 2002.
Cornell President's Council of Cornell Women Affinito-Stewart Grant, 2002.
Society for the Humanities Faculty Research Grant, Spring 2002.
Cornell History Department Jr. Faculty Research Grant, Spring 2002.
Cornell History Department Jr. Faculty Research Grant, Spring 2001.
Lauriston Sharp Dissertation Prize, 1999.
Messenger-Chalmers Dissertation Prize, 1999.
Women's Studies Dissertation Fellowship, Spring 1999.
Buttrick-Crippen Fellowship, Honorable Mention, 1998.
Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Grant in Women's Studies, 1998.
Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship, Spring 1998.
Beatrice Brown Award, Cornell Women's Studies Program, 1998.
President's Council of Cornell Women Grant, Cornell University, 1997.