#IAS_NUQ Global Fellow Colloquium
Northwestern University in Qatar
Education City, Qatar +974 4454 5100
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This talk examines Cold War cultural politics and the imperialist strategy of inviting and training Indonesian writers. Asri will discuss Indonesia's role in the global Cold War, the cultural initiatives for Global South writers in the United States, and the literary aesthetics that respond to the Cold War's vision of a neoliberal global capitalism. By applying literary and archival analysis through the lens of border studies in the humanities, the talk reveals the ambivalence of the literary program in this highly contentious era and the literary aesthetics of renowned Indonesian writer Budi Darma, which respond to ideas of borders conceived by the Global North.
Asri Saraswati is an assistant professor in the English Studies Program at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Indonesia. She is also an affiliate lecturer in the American Studies Program and a research fellow at the Asia Research Centre at UI. Her work focuses on postcoloniality and transnationality in literature and culture, with particular attention to race, gender, and cultural politics in Indonesia.
Saraswati’s research examines knowledge production, class and gender, mobility, and the politics of representation in postcolonial contexts. Her recent publication, “Fraught Relations: Indonesian Modest Fashion, New York Catwalks, and the Spectacle of Travel,” appears in Gender, Islam and Sexuality in Contemporary Indonesia (2024). In addition to academic work, she writes for public platforms such as Kompas, Warscapes, Indonesia at Melbourne, Anotasi, and THE Campus.
As part of her fellowship at #IAS_NUQ, Saraswati will work on her book manuscript Navigating Cold War Cultural Politics: Literary Aesthetics of Indonesian Sojourn Writers, which explores how Cold War-era transnational literary networks shaped knowledge production and aesthetics in Indonesia.
DATE
Tuesday, November 18, 2025
TIME
1:00 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.
LOCATION
Room: 1-300