[Tlc] TLC-Roxanna Brown

[justinm at ucr.edu]

Forwarded from the VSG list:

Barbara Gaerlan at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UCLA  
organized a memorial sevice honoring Roxanna Brown's contributions to  
the field yesterday.

Caverlee Cary (UC Berkeley) presented an overview of Roxanna's work,  
her unique vision for the Bangkok Ceramics Museum, and how she  
disseminated important findings about Southeast Asian ceramics through  
her newsletter. She also spoke about Roxanna's eagerness to draw upon  
GIS technology very early on to map her findings (spatially and  
temporally) and recreate early modern Southeast Asian trade routes.

Robert Brown, Roxanna's dissertation advisor, spoke about her  
dissertation and read from a paper Roxanna had written for a  
conference in Sydney.  In the paper, Roxanna provided arguments for  
the founding of Angkor (and its devaraja cult) and Ayutthaya's  
invasion of Angkor based on a massive amount of ceramic evidence that  
spanned 500 years.  Bob Brown has made arrangements for this paper to  
be published.  Brown repeatedly emphasized upon the unique knowledge  
had of Southeast Asian ceramics and that she was only able to make  
such important theories after having amassed decades of experience  
with the materials.

I presented  ideas from the paper she was going to present at Viet Nam  
Studies 3 in a few weeks in Hanoi, a draft of which she emailed  
friends about a month before her death.  In the paper, "Cham Prisoners  
as Chu Dau Potters?," Roxanna argues that Cham ceramic technology (and  
potters) were brought to Chu Dau following the invasion of Vijaya in  
1471 and were immensely important in the emergence of vibrant ceramic  
production (for export) from 1471-1500.   John Whitmore has written a  
paper that draws on the findings to explain the disappearance of Van  
Don as an important entrepot.  I believe these findings will be  
published in a forthcoming volume edited by Li Tana.

Roxanna's close cousin, Karen Linder, who organized her memorial  
service in Seattle, and her many admirers in the LA area were also  
present.

I believe that Barbara Gaerlan has plans to publish the papers  
presented electronically.

Nhung


*****************
Nhung Tuyet Tran (on leave 2008-09)
Canada Research Chair in Southeast Asian History
Assistant Professor
Department of History
University of Toronto

Faculty Research Fellow (2008-09)
Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research
Stanford University


______________
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Dept. of Religious Studies
3046 INTN
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
951-827-4530
justinm at ucr.edu