In 1955 Indiana University embarked on developing institutions and opportunities for higher education in Thailand. Then, between 1985 and 1995, IU's international outreach provided thousands of students in Malaysia opportunities to engage in university-level study and pursue degrees. Today, IU's School of Global and International Studies, the College of Arts and Sciences, and its professional schools maintain partnerships and exchange programs with numerous universities throughout Southeast Asia while building new relationships with academic programs and centers in Burma, Bangkok, Singapore, Australia, and Japan. The recent inauguration of Southeast Asian Studies (SEAS) at IU continues the journey along these well-travelled educational routes between the Bloomington campus and the countries of Southeast Asia to further knowledge of their people, languages, and dialogues while celebrating the region's creativity and understanding challenges that may shape its future.
SEAS is developing curricula that capture the vitality and diversity of Southeast Asia in the region's histories, languages, religions, politics, arts, economies, environments, and philosophies. The program also pursues knowledge of unique ways that people of Southeast Asia live within the world, represent it, organize it, and celebrate it. SEAS seeks to enrich scholarly research and dialogue with the knowledge, voices, and lives of the people of Southeast Asia. Our program shares knowledge of Southeast Asia across the classrooms of Indiana and the United States while increasing opportunities for students of Indiana University to study in Southeast Asia and among its people.
We intend to further study of Southeast Asia as a region with international and global locations. SEAS approaches Southeast Asia as a vast array of relationships that traverse diverse sources of identity in Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Laos, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, and Papua New Guinea. SEAS travels the world with the people of Southeast Asia while discovering the world as they see it.