View source for Vicente L. Rafael

{{short description|Filipino Author}}
{{use mdy dates|date=December 2015}}
{{Infobox academic
|name              = Vicente L. Rafael
|caption           =
|birth_name=
|birth_date        =Feb. 16, 1956
|birth_place       = [[Manila]], [[Philippines]]
|death_date        =
|death_place       =
|citizenship       = Dual, Filipino/American
|discipline        = [[Southeast Asian Studies]], [[History]]
|workplaces        = [[University of Washington, Seattle]]
|alma_mater        = [[Ateneo de Manila]] ([[Bachelor of Arts|B.A.]])<br>[[Cornell University]] ([[Ph.D.]])
|doctoral_advisor  =David Wyatt; James T. Siegel; Dominick LaCapra; Benedict Anderson
|academic_advisors =
|doctoral_students =
|notable_students  =
|known_for         = ''Contracting Colonialism''; "White Love"; The Promise of the Foreign"; "Motherless Tongues"; "The Sovereign Trickster"
|influences        =
|influenced        =
|awards            = Guggenheim Fellowship; Grant Goodman Award; Rockefeller Fellowship, Bellagio;  Humanities Research Institute, UCI; Philippine National Book Award (1988, 2000), Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas (2017) among others.
|religion          =
|signature         = <!--(filename only)-->
|footnotes         =
}}
'''Vicente L. Rafael''' is a professor of [[Southeast Asian history]] at the [[University of Washington, Seattle]]. He received his B.A. in history and [[philosophy]] from [[Ateneo de Manila University]] in 1977 and his Ph.D. in history at [[Cornell University]] in 1984. Prior to teaching at the University of Washington, Rafael taught at the [[University of California, San Diego]] and the [[University of Hawaii at Manoa]]. Currently, he sits on advisory boards of [http://www.culanth.org/ Cultural Anthropology], [[Public Culture]], and [http://depts.washington.edu/position/homepage.htm positions].

==Research==
Rafael has researched and taught on [[Southeast Asia]], particularly the Philippines, comparative colonialism, particularly of Spain and the United States, and comparative nationalism. Though a historian, he has also focused on the related fields of [[cultural anthropology]] and [[literary studies]] and pursued topics ranging from language and power, translation and religious conversion, technology and humanity, and the politics and poetics of representation.

==Publications==
In 1993, [[Duke University Press]] published ''Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society Under Early Spanish Rule'', in which Rafael examined the role of language and translation in the religious conversion of [[Tagalogs]] to [[Catholicism]] during the early period of Spanish rule of the Philippines. In 1995, [[Temple University Press]] published a collection he edited entitled ''Discrepant Histories: Translocal Essays on Filipino Cultures'' that studied a number of issues in the formation of the [[Philippine]] nation-state and translocal Filipino cultures.<ref>[http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1231_reg.html ''Discrepant Histories'' from Temple University Press'']</ref> In 1999, [[Cornell University Press]] published ''Figures of Criminality in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Colonial Vietnam'', a collection of essays on the relationships between criminality and colonial state formation.<ref>[http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/SoutheastAsia/publications/item.asp?id=891 ''Figures of Criminality in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Colonial Vietnam'' from Cornell University Press]</ref> In 2000, Duke University Press published his ''White Love and Other Events in Filipino History'', a challenging of traditional, epic narratives of Filipino history and especially the emergence of revolutionary nationalism.<ref>[http://www.dukeupress.edu/cgibin/forwardsql/search.cgi?template0=nomatch.htm&template2=books/book_detail_page.htm&user_id=23525&Bmain.Btitle_option=1&Bmain.Btitle_=&Bmain.Btitle_option=1&Bmain.Btitle=White+Love+and+Other+Events+in+Filipino+History&Bmain.Subtitle_option=1&Bmain.Subtitle_=&Bmain.Subtitle_option=1&Bmain.Subtitle=&distinct=Bmain.subject_BIP1&Bmain.subject_BIP1=&distinct=Bmain.subject_BIP2&Bmain.subject_BIP2=&distinct=Bmain.subject_BIP3&Bmain.subject_BIP3=  ''White Love and Other Events in Filipino History'' from Duke University Press]</ref> ''The Promise of the Foreign: Nationalism and the Technics of Translation in the Spanish Philippines'', also published by Duke University Press, appeared in 2005 and is the second volume of Contracting Colonialism. Its main argument is that translation was crucial to the emergence of Filipino nationalism, a mechanism from which was issued the promise of nationhood.<ref>[http://www.dukeupress.edu/cgibin/forwardsql/search.cgi?template0=nomatch.htm&template2=books/book_detail_page.htm&user_id=23525&Bmain.Btitle_option=1&Bmain.Btitle_=&Bmain.Btitle_option=1&Bmain.Btitle=The+Promise+of+the+Foreign&Bmain.Subtitle_option=1&Bmain.Subtitle_=&Bmain.Subtitle_option=1&Bmain.Subtitle=%3A+Nationalism+and+the+Technics+of+Translation+in+the+Spanish+Philippines&distinct=Bmain.subject_BIP1&Bmain.subject_BIP1=&distinct=Bmain.subject_BIP2&Bmain.subject_BIP2=&distinct=Bmain.subject_BIP3&Bmain.subject_BIP3= ''The Promise of the Foreign'' at Duke University Press]</ref> This book was followed by "Motherless Tongues: The Insurgency of Language Amid Wars of Translation", also published by Duke UP in 2016 which delved into topics ranging from the colonial introduction of English in the Philippines to the fate of interpreters in Iraq during wartime. Rafael also wrote the introduction to a volume of the works by Nick Joaquin, "The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic" which came out in 2017 from Penguin Classics. Most recently in 2022, he published "The Sovereign Trickster: Death and Laughter in the Age of Duterte" which offers what he calls a "prismatic history" of the social conditions and historical contexts for understanding the regime of Rodrigo Duterte, also published by Duke UP.

==External links==
* [https://history.washington.edu/people/vicente-l-rafael Vicente L. Rafael's Website]
* [http://depts.washington.edu/history/faculty/rafael.html Faculty profile from University of Washington Department of History]

==Notes==
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{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rafael, Vincente L.}}
[[Category:Cornell University alumni]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:University of Washington faculty]]
[[Category:Historians of Southeast Asia]]
[[Category:Ateneo de Manila University alumni]]
[[Category:Place of birth missing (living people)]]
[[Category:20th-century Filipino historians]]
[[Category:Filipino educators]]
[[Category:1956 births]]
[[Category:21st-century Filipino historians]]