Department of History

Thongchai Winichakul

Position title: Emeritus Professor

Email: twinicha@wisc.edu

Address:
Curriculum Vitae (pdf)

Thongchai Winichakul

Biography

Thongchai Winichakul is Emeritus Professor of History at University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Research Fellow Emeritus at Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-JETRO), Japan, and currently a Visiting Professor at the Pridi Banomyong International College (PBIC), Thammasat University. His book, Siam Mapped (University of Hawaii Press, 1994), was awarded the Harry J Benda Prize from the Association for Asian Studies (AAS, USA) and the Grand Prize from the Asian Affairs Research Council (Japan). It was translated into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Thai. His latest book, Moments of Silence: The Unforgetting of the October 6, 1976, Massacre in Bangkok (University of Hawaii Press, 2020) was awarded the humanities book prize by the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies in 2022. He received the John Simon Guggenheim Award in 1994, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003 and the President of the Association for Asian Studies in 2013/14. His research interests are in the intellectual foundations of modern Siam under colonial conditions (1880s-1930s) including modern geography and sovereignty, historical ideology, and the legal system. He has published eight books and several articles in Thai. He is also a well-known critic of Thai political and social issues.

Education

Ph.D., University of Sydney
M.A., University of Sydney
B.A., Thammasat University (Thailand)

Books

Selected Publications

  • 2003 – “Writing at the Interstices: Southeast Asian Historians and Post-National Histories in Southeast Asia”, leading article in New Terrains in Southeast Asian History, ed. Abu Talib Ahmad and Tan Liok Ee, Athens: Ohio University Press, pp. 3-29.
  • 2002 – “Remembering/ Silencing the Traumatic Past: the Ambivalent Memories of the October 1976 Massacre in Bangkok” in Cultural Crisis and Social Memory: Modernity and Identity in Thailand and Laos, ed. Charles F Keyes and Shigeharu Tanabe, London and New York: Routledge/ Curzon, pp. 243-283.
  • 2000 – “The Others Within: Travel and Ethno-spatial Differentiation of Siamese Subjects, 1885-1910,” lead article in Civility and Savagery: Social Identity in Tai States, ed. Andrew Turton, London: Curzon Press, pp. 38-62.
  • 2000 – “The Quest for ‘Siwilai’: A geographical discourse of Civilizational Thinking in the Late 19th and early 20th Century Siam”, Journal of Asian Studies 59, 3 (Aug 2000): 528-549.

Selected Awards

  • 2004 – Grand Prize for the Asia Pacific Book Award from the Asian Affairs Research Council, Japan
  • 2003 – Elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, class of 2003
  • 1994/95 – The John Simon Guggenheim Award
  • 1995 – The Harry J. Benda Award, Association for Asian Studies, for the book Siam Mapped.

History Courses Taught

  • History 283 – Intermediate Honors Seminar – Topics: “Studies in History”
  • History 438 – Buddhism and Society in Southeast Asian History
  • History 457 – History of Southeat Asia to 1800
  • History 500 – Reading Seminar in History
  • History 600 – Orientalism: The Others in our Knowledge
  • History 703 – Geography at Work in History
  • History 753 – Seminar in Comparative World History
  • History 755 – State and Society in Pre-Colonial Southeast Asia