Samuels Center for Community Partnerships and Civic Transformation (COMPACT)

Creative expression and contemporary arts making among young Cambodians 

Amanda Rogers, Reaksmey Yean et al, Cronfa/Swansea University, 2021
“This project analysed the creative practices and concerns of young adult artists (18-35 years old) in contemporary Cambodia. It examined the extent to which the arts are being used to open up new ways of enacting Cambodian identity that encompass, but also move beyond, a preoccupation with the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979).”

In the Shadow of Angkor: Contemporary Writing From Cambodia, Special issue of MANOA: A Pacific Journal of International Writing

Edited by Frank Stewart, University of Hawaii Press, 2004
“Published twenty-five years after the defeat of the Khmer Rouge regime, In the Shadow of Angkor captures the resurgence of the Cambodian arts community and its efforts to restore a rich literary heritage. In many of the works, the artists defy the decimation of their brothers and sisters by the Khmer Rouge, as well the attempt to erase Cambodia’s memory of its history. The range of expression is impressive: the volume includes poetry, short story, film, rap lyrics, and essays, plus interviews with authors and a portfolio of photographs of Cambodia.”

Early Theravadin Cambodia: Perspectives from Art and Archaeology

Edited by Ashley Thompson, National University of Singapore Press, 2022
“One of the outstanding questions of Southeast Asian history is the nature and timing of major cultural and political shifts in the territory that was to become Cambodia, starting in the 13th century. What explains the shift in religious doctrine, different language uses (Pāli over Sanskrit, Khmer as a literary language), the radical transformation in architecture and sculptural production? How was the spread of Theravāda Buddhism related to regional political reconfigurations? What exactly was it we rather blindly label ‘Theravāda Buddhism’? … And how is 'Theravāda Buddhism' entangled with the identity shifts that over the next four hundred years gave rise to the Buddhist state now called Cambodia? Editor Ashley Thompson has brought together the foremost scholars of premodern Cambodian art and archaeology to reflect on the relevant material evidence to probe these questions - and to push them further in exploring larger issues of Buddhist history, regional exchange networks and ethno-political identities across mainland Southeast Asia.”

On periodically potent places: The theatre stage as temporarily empowered space for ritual performances in Cambodia

Stephanie Khoury, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 2017
“In this paper, I aim to discuss the notion of potency as attributed or inherent to a place through the study of the performance space in which the Khmer ritual classical theatre is staged. Here, the potency of the place results from a complex and cumulative process that strengthens the rite. Through a deliberately identified topography, a space is delimited, constructed and periodically activated so a community can safely transit from one yearly
cycle to the next. In so doing, the ritual performance highlights nuanced qualities as well as social and religious considerations of space, and its relation to power. Considering the location’s contribution to the rite helps not only to discuss the relation of people to space but also brings greater understanding to performance as a religious expression.”

The magic of Khmer classical dance

Prumsodun Ok, TED Talk, 2017
“For more than 1,000 years, Khmer dancers in Cambodia have been seen as living bridges between heaven and earth. In this graceful dance-talk hybrid, artist Prumsodun Ok -- founder of Cambodia's first all-male and gay-identified dance company -- details the rich history of Khmer classical dance and its current revival, playing the ancient and ageless role of artist as messenger.”

Dancing in Cambodia

Toni Shapiro, Southeast Asia Program Bulletin/Cornell University, Spring 1993
“Upon regrouping in 1979, Cambodia's artists estimated that 90 percent of their professional colleagues - dancers, musicians, actors, sculptors, and others - had perished [under the Khmer Rouge]. Along with the loss of people, the group also suffered the complete destruction of all written and photographic documents of its dance traditions. In order to bring their country and their culture out of the nightmare, those few artists who survived pooled their collective memories and skills and immediately resumed performing and teaching. If they didn't do so, they feared, their rich cultural heritage might disappear forever.”

A Cambodian dancer in a displaced persons camp

Toni Shapiro-Phim, Music and Minorities, 2021
“The more than a quarter of a million Cambodians in camps on the Thai side of the Cambodia-Thailand border in the late 20th century are referred to, in Khmer, as chun pies khluon. This translates into English as ‘refugees,’ but means, literally, ‘those who are escaping’ or ‘people on the run.’ Existing between a then-recent past of devastating loss and a future as yet unknown, they remained in an unsettled situation of physical precarity for more than a decade as many of the camps along that border were in an active war zone. Focusing mainly on one dancer in Site 2 camp, this essay explores ways in which dancers and musicians were bringing into being an aesthetic and spiritual potency that transcended the surrounding reality, not only as momentary escape (though that can be powerful in its own right), but also as fortification against dehumanization. The combination of an embodied passing on of cultural knowledge with formal documentation of the arts and associated rituals reveal an eye to and imagination of a future back inside Cambodia, something at odds with the reality of the camp inhabitants’ prolonged exile.”

Cambodia tracking down thousands of priceless looted antiquities

Anderson Cooper, 60 Minutes/CBS News, December 17, 2023
“Looters stole thousands of priceless artifacts from religious sites across Cambodia. An American lawyer is working with the country to bring them home.”

Met Museum kicked me out for praying to my ancestral gods

Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, Hyperallergic, March 21, 2023
“For Cambodians, including myself, the idea that spirits can inhabit objects is commonplace. They can be found in religious statues or in nature – a tree, a mountain, or the intersection of rivers.”

Art and Human Rights: a multicultural approach to contemporary issues

Edited by Fiana Gantharet, Nolwenn Guibert, and Sofia Stolk, Elgar Publishing, 2023
“This timely book builds bridges between the notions of art and aesthetics, human rights, universality, and dignity. It explores a world in which art and justice enter a discussion to answer questions such as: can art translate the human experience? How does humanity link individuality and community building? How do human beings define and look for their identity? The fields of human rights and art are brought together in order to open the discussion and contribute to the promotion and protection of human rights.”

The Routledge companion to applied performance (Volumes one and two) 

Edited by Tim Prentki and Ananda Breed, Routledge/Taylor and Francis, 2022
“These volumes offer insights from within and beyond the sphere of English-speaking scholarship, curated by regional experts in applied performance. The reader will gain an understanding of some of the dominant preoccupations of performance in specified regions, enhanced by contextual framing. From the dis(h)arming of the human body through dance in Colombia to clowning with dementia in Australia, via challenges to violent nationalism in the Balkans, transgender performance in Pakistan and resistance rap in Kashmir, the essays, interviews and scripts are eloquent testimony to the courage and hope of people who believe in the power of art to renew the human spirit.”

Research in drama education: the journal of applied theatre and performance -- Special issue on oral history performance, listening, and transitional justice

Guest edited by Luis Sotelo Castro and Toni Shapiro-Phim, March 2023
“In response to our call for papers for this special issue of Research in Drama Education, we received a range of proposals that point to a field of practice and scholarship within theatre and performance that has been emerging worldwide. …[W]ith this collection of articles, we characterise this emergent field as resting at the intersection of oral history performance, listening, and transitional justice.”

International journal of transitional justice -- Special issue on arts and transitional justice

Guest edited by Cynthia Cohen, March 2020
“By focusing on the contributions of arts and culture to transitional justice, this Special Issue of the journal enters a debate about whether transitional justice processes should be assessed at least as much by consideration of the quality of lives of ordinary people, especially those who have borne the brunt of violence, as by the number the number of prosecutions or convictions of criminals.”

The Choreography of Resolution: conflict, movement, and neuroscience edited by Michelle LeBaron,

Carrie MacLeod and Andrew Floyer, American Bar Association, 2013
“Learning how neuroscience is proving what dancers have known for centuries - this book explores the links between the physical, mental, and psychological factors that affect conflict. Examining the autobiographical and practice experiences with diverse cultural, historical and social realities highlights both challenges and breakthroughs in this burgeoning area.”

Acting Together on the world stage: performance and the creative transformation of conflict edited by

Cynthia Cohen, Polly Walker, and Roberto Varea, New Village Press, 2011
“Acting Together on the World Stage is a multi-media educational initiative intended to document and strengthen the contributions of performance and ritual to social justice and conflict transformation.”

Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion

Edited by Naomi Jackson and Toni Shapiro-Phim, Scarecrow Press, 2008
“Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion presents a wide-ranging compilation of essays, spanning more than 15 countries. Organized in four parts, the articles examine the regulation and exploitation of dancers and dance activity by government and authoritative groups, including abusive treatment of dancers within the dance profession; choreography involving human rights as a central theme; the engagement of dance as a means of healing victims of human rights abuses; and national and local social/political movements in which dance plays a powerful role in helping people fight oppression.”

Cambodia positioned to fully integrate LGBT people into society, UN expert says

UN News, January 20, 2023
“Cambodia is poised to make strides towards the full social integration of gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, protecting them from violence and discrimination, a UN-appointed independent human rights expert said on Friday.”

Summary result of the roundtable dialogue on advancing legal protection for LGBT+ couples in Cambodia – I Accept campaign launching

Rainbow Community Kampuchea Organization, December 2021
“LGBT+ community members presented again their clear call for the creation of a multi-stakeholder working group in charge of studying and reviewing the proposed legal amendments to enable legal marriage equality for LGBT+ couples, including the proposed amendment to Article 45 of the Cambodian Constitution.” 

Promoting gender equality and improving access to justice for female survivors and victims of GBV under the Khmer Rouge Regime

TPO (Transcultural Psychosocial Organization) Cambodia
“Cambodia experienced genocide from 1975 to 1979, which killed app.1.7 million people. Since then, discussions of the executions, tortures, forced labour, starvation, diseases and other forms of violence during this period, referred to as the Khmer Rouge Regime (KRR), have been raised within the Khmer community. However, the various forms of gender-based violence (GBV) including systematic forced marriage, rape in prisons and re-education camps, rape amongst Khmer Rouge soldiers and rape of male victims that also existed during KRR has had very low attention; this leads to the lack of provision or limitations of the needs, services and support for victims.”

Happy 112nd International Women’s Day!

Gender and Development for Cambodia, October 2023
“On the occasion of the 112nd International Women’s Day, 8 March, Gender and Development for Cambodia (#GADC) conducted a campaign in the form of a group discussion and reflection with the theme of ‘unpaid care work is work for all of us: from awareness to practice…’”

Gender challenges of women human rights defenders at the forefront

Cambodian Center for Human Rights, July 7, 2023
“To Participate in the 16 Days Campaign to End Gender-Based Violence and Human Rights Defenders Day 2023 CCHR Releases Leaflet entitled ‘Gender-Based Challenges of Women Human Rights Defenders at the Frontline.’ This pamphlet outlines the gender-related challenges of women human rights defenders in Cambodia, the root of the problem, and the relevant legal framework.”

Mother Nature Cambodia, 2023 Right Livelihood Laureate

Right Livelihood, 2023
The Right Livelihood Award (Sweden) goes to Mother Nature Cambodia for “their fearless and engaging activism to preserve Cambodia’s natural environment in the context of a highly restricted democratic space… Mother Nature Cambodia is the country’s pre-eminent youth-led environmental rights movement, working on the frontlines with local communities to preserve nature and livelihoods even in the face of a growing government crackdown on civil society activism.”

Cambodia bars green activists from traveling to accept international award

Gerald Flynn, Mongabay, October 6, 2023
“A court in Cambodia has denied the requests of three activists from environmental group Mother Nature Cambodia to travel to Sweden to accept an international award.”

UN independent expert proposes action plan to boost human rights in Cambodia

UN News, August 26, 2022
“An expert on the human rights situation in Cambodia has issued a 10-point agenda for the authorities which calls for opening up political space and paving the way for democratic reform.”

The landmark Genocide Convention has had mixed results since the UN approved it 75 years ago

Alexander Hinton, The Conversation, December 8, 2023
“Seventy-five years ago, in the wake of Nazi atrocities, the world made a vow. Countries pledged to liberate humanity from the ‘odious scourge’ of genocide when, at the United Nations, they established a new convention on preventing and punishing genocide on Dec. 9, 1948. Has the international community lived up to this promise? Amid genocide accusations and mass violence in the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen, Ethiopia, China and elsewhere, the answer would seem to be obvious: ‘No!’ But the reality is more complicated. It also offers a glimmer of light at a very dark moment.”

6 new books on genocide

Kaitlin Smith, Facing History and Ourselves,  April 11, 2022
“Facing History identifies six books that elevate understudied aspects of multiple historical genocides and the connections between them to aid efforts of genocide prevention within a global climate of rising hate.”

“A Problem from Hell” America and the age of genocide

Samantha Power, Basic Books, 2013
"A Problem from Hell shows how decent Americans inside and outside government refused to get involved despite chilling warnings, and tells the stories of the courageous Americans who risked their careers and lives in an effort to get the United States to act.”

Annihilating Difference: the anthropology of genocide

Edited by Alexander Hinton, University of California Press, 2002
“Genocide is one of the most pressing issues that confronts us today. Its death toll is staggering: over one hundred million dead. Because of their intimate experience in the communities where genocide takes place, anthopologists are uniquely positioned to explain how and why this mass annihilation occurs and the types of devastation genocide causes. This ground breaking book, the first collection of original essays on genocide to be published in anthropology, explores a wide range of cases, including Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Guatemala, Rwanda, and Bosnia.”

Documentation Center of Cambodia

“The core objectives of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) are memory and justice, and documentation is a crucial component. Documentation helps hold leaders accountable for their decisions while ensuring that the past is not forgotten. It is a resource for research and understanding and a starting point for education, justice, and national reconciliation. It is therefore a necessary foundation for a just society and lasting peace. Documenting and disseminating records of past atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime has been the core activity of DC-Cam since 1995.”

Anthropological Witness: lessons from the Khmer Rouge tribunal

Alexander Hinton, Cornell University Press, 2022
“Anthropological Witness tells the story of Alexander Laban Hinton's encounter with an accused architect of genocide and, more broadly, Hinton's attempt to navigate the promises and perils of expert testimony. In March 2016, Hinton served as an expert witness at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, an international tribunal established to try senior Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes committed during the 1975–79 Cambodian genocide. His testimony culminated in a direct exchange with Pol Pot's notorious right-hand man, Nuon Chea, who was engaged in genocide denial.”

Extraordinary Justice: law, politics and the Khmer Rouge tribunals

Craig Etcheson, Columbia University Press, 2019
“Extraordinary Justice offers a definitive account of the quest for justice in Cambodia that uses [Cambodia’s] history to develop a theoretical framework for understanding the interaction between law and politics in war crimes tribunals.”

Embodying the pain and cruelty of others

Toni Shapiro-Phim, International Journal of Transitional Justice, March 2020
“A ground-breaking performing arts-centered reparations project of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia – also known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal – is entitled Phka Sla. The Phka Sla initiative was proposed by survivors of the practice of forced marriage under the Khmer Rouge. While organizations collaborating on Phka Sla are assessing the impact of its innovative dance drama, exhibition and other activities on audiences and survivors, this article offers initial observations regarding the impact of embodying survivor testimony on the artists themselves.”

The Justice Façade: trials of transition in Cambodia

Alexander Hinton, Oxford University Press, 2018
“Many contend that tribunals deliver not only justice but truth, reconciliation, peace, democratization, and the rule of law. These are the transitional justice ideals frequently invoked in relation to the international hybrid tribunal in Cambodia that is trying senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime for genocide and crimes against humanity committed during the mid-to-late 1970s. In this ground-breaking book, Alexander Hinton argues these claims are a facade masking what is most critical: the ways in which transitional justice is translated, experienced, and understood in everyday life. Rather than reading the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in the language of global justice and human rights, survivors understand the proceedings in their own terms, including Buddhist beliefs and on-going relationships with the spirits of the dead.”

Hybrid court, hybrid peacebuilding in Cambodia

Laura McGrew, in Transitional Justice, International Assistance, and Civil Society, 2018
“As the ECCC [Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia – the Khmer Rouge Tribunal] became bogged down in problems of funding, political interference, and corruption allegations, support to CSOs [civil society organizations] and TJ [transitional justice] networks correspondingly declined, and the aid-dependent CSOs found difficulties mobilizing new sources of funding (except for some new funding streams from the US).”

First they killed my father (movie)

Angelina Jolie, director, 2017
“A 5-year-old girl embarks on a harrowing quest for survival amid the sudden rise and terrifying reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.” Based on the memoir of the same name by Luong Ung.

Forest of struggle: moralities of remembrance in upland Cambodia

Eve Zucker, University of Hawaii Press, 2013
“Zucker persuasively illustrates how Cambodians employ indigenous means to reconcile their painful memories of loss and devastation. This point is noteworthy given current debates on recovery surrounding the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Forest of Struggle offers a compelling case study that is relevant to anyone interested in post-conflict recovery, social memory, the anthropology of morality and violence, and Cambodia studies.”

The Elimination: A survivor of the Khmer Rouge confronts his past and the commandant of the killing fields

Rithy Panh, Other Press, 2013
“Rithy Panh was only thirteen years old when the Khmer Rouge expelled his family from Phnom Penh in 1975. In the months and years that followed, his entire family was executed, starved, or worked to death. Thirty years later, after having become a respected filmmaker, Rithy Panh decides to question one of the men principally responsible for the genocide, Comrade Duch, who’s neither an ordinary person nor a demon—he’s an educated organizer, a slaughterer who talks, forgets, lies, explains, and works on his legacy. This confrontation unfolds into an exceptional narrative of human history and an examination of the nature of evil.”

The missing picture (documentary film)

Rithy Panh, director, 2013
“Rithy Panh used clay figures, archival footage, and his narration to recreate the atrocities Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge committed between 1975 and 1979.”

In the shadow of the banyan (memoir)

Vaddey Ratner, Simon and Schuster, 2013
“You are about to read an extraordinary story, a PEN Hemingway Award finalist ‘rich with history, mythology, folklore, language and emotion.’ It will take you to the very depths of despair and show you unspeakable horrors. It will reveal a gorgeously rich culture struggling to survive through a furtive bow, a hidden ankle bracelet, fragments of remembered poetry. It will ensure that the world never forgets the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime in the Cambodian killing fields between 1975 and 1979, when an estimated two million people lost their lives. It will give you hope, and it will confirm the power of storytelling to lift us up and help us not only survive but transcend suffering, cruelty, and loss.”

Brother Number One: a political biography of Pol Pot

David Chandler, Westview Press, 1992
“In the tragic recent history of Cambodia—a past scarred by a long occupation by Vietnamese forces and by the preceding three-year reign of terror by the brutal Khmer Rouge—no figure looms larger or more ominously than that of Pol Pot. As secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) since 1962 and as prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea (DK), he has been widely blamed for trying to destroy Cambodian society. By implementing policies whose effects were genocidal, he oversaw the deaths of more than one million of his nation’s people. The political career of Saloth Sar, better known by his nom de guerre Pol Pot, forms a critical but largely inaccessible portion of twentieth-century Cambodian history.”

The Cambodian Diaspora

Khatharya Um, Asia Society
“During the Khmer Rouge reign in Cambodia, many know that one million people died after great suffering. An estimated one million others fled Cambodia, with over 100,000 settling in the United States. This essay starts to explore the difficulties faced by Cambodian refugees in the United States and how communities were established over time.”

Cambodians in the U.S. Fact Sheet

Abby Budiman, Pew Research Center

From the land of shadows: war, revolution and the making of the Cambodian diaspora

Khatharya Um, New York University Press, 2015
“In a century of mass atrocities, the Khmer Rouge regime marked Cambodia with one of the most extreme genocidal instances in human history. What emerged in the aftermath of the regime's collapse in 1979 was a nation fractured by death and dispersal. It is estimated that nearly one-fourth of the country's population perished from hard labor, disease, starvation, and executions. Another half million Cambodians fled their ancestral homeland, with over one hundred thousand finding refuge in America. From the Land of Shadows surveys the Cambodian diaspora and the struggle to understand and make meaning of this historical trauma. Drawing on more than 250 interviews with survivors across the United States as well as in France and Cambodia, Khatharya Um places these accounts in conversation with studies of comparative revolutions, totalitarianism, transnationalism, and memory works to illuminate the pathology of power as well as the impact of auto-genocide on individual and collective healing.”

Khmer American: identity and moral education in a diasporic community

Nancy Heffner, University of California Press, 1999
“In the early 1980s, tens of thousands of Cambodian refugees fled their war-torn country to take up residence in the United States, where they quickly became one of the most troubled and least studied immigrant groups. This book is the story of that passage, and of the efforts of Khmer Americans to recreate the fabric of culture and identity in the aftermath of the Khmer holocaust.”

Two dance companies turn pandemic survival into evolution

Cristela Guerra, WBUR, May 3, 2023
‘“What makes us stand out from other dance organizations is [we go] from one generation to another generation to another generation,’ said Bora Chiemruom, executive director of the [Angkor Dance Troupe]. ‘We are at a third generation now. So the dancers who were dancing when they were like 5 or 6 in the ‘80s have children that are dancing now.’”

Preserving Cambodian classical dance in Long Beach

KCET Weekly Arts, June 30, 2023
“After the Khmer Rouge nearly ended the centuries-old art form of Cambodian classical dance, masters in Cambodia and Southern California have done decades of work to revive and preserve the tradition. Modern Apsara Company aims to keep the art form alive in Southern California by innovating the practice and making it accessible to younger generations. Founder and director Mea Lath discusses her own journey finding Cambodian classical dance as a Cambodian American and the work she and her teachers have done to keep the tradition alive.”

Artist spotlight: Mea Lath/Birds, teachers, and community and culture in the aftermath of genocide

Toni Shapiro-Phim, Peacebuilding and the Arts Now, October 2023
“The centrality of cultural expression in creating meaning and cultivating a renewed sense of community and of possibility, despite the shattering of so much that people hold dear, comes to the fore, both in the production of [the new work], KHMERASPORA, and in the lived experience of Mea Lath.”

Community builders: transmission and legacies of immigrant American artists

Rob Taylor, Dance/USA, 2020
“Assane Konte, Charya Burt, and Naomi Diouf are master artists who are immigrants to the United States. As culture-bearers within their respective communities, they create works of significant artistic and cultural value and have spent decades in their adoptive country creating communities of practice around their culturally specific dance forms — from Cambodia, Liberia and Senegal, respectively. Although their dance communities are now multi-generational and firmly rooted in specific American locales, these three artists — who sustain the art and culture of their homelands — draw a solid line connecting their cultures of origin to the communities they founded in the U.S.”

Organizations in Cambodia

• Rainbow Community Kampuchea 
• Mother Nature Cambodia 
• Sam Veasna Conservation Tours 
• Khmer Women’s Crisis Center 
• Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center

Organizations in the United States

• Cambodian American Literary Association 
• Angkor Dance Troupe (Lowell, Massachusetts) 
• Blossoming Young Khmer Women/Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants