
Fields of Interest
Biography

Trained in Southeast Asian history, European intellectual history and anthropology, my research interests include areas such as language and power, the politics of translation, Comparative Colonialisms and nationalism, the social history of media and mediation, critical theory and anthropology, empire, race and gender. Much of my writing has been on the colonial and post-colonial Philippines and the United States.
Awards
Research
Selected Research
- Joaquin, Nick. The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic. New York: Penguin Classics, 2017. (Introduction by Vicente L. Rafael.)
- Rafael, Vicente L. Motherless Tongues: The Insurgency of Language amid Wars of Translation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Print.
- Rafael, Vicente L. The Promise of the Foreign: Nationalism and the Technics of Translation in the Spanish Philippines. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. Print.
- Rafael, Vicente L. White Love and Other Events in Filipino History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000. Print.
- Rafael, Vicente L. Figures of Criminality in Indonesia, the Philippines and Colonial Vietnam. Ithaca, N.Y.: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1999. Print.
- Rafael, Vicente L. Discrepant Histories: Translocal Essays on Filipino Cultures. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. Print.
- Rafael, Vicente L. Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society Under Early Spanish Rule. Hardbound edition, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988. Paperback edition, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993.
Research Advised: Graduate Dissertations
- Lai, Symbol. Decolonizing Okinawa: Social Science, Agriculture, and US Militarism, 1945-1972. Diss. University of Washington, 2017. Chairs: Tani Barlow and Vince Rafael.
- Lumba, Allan. Monetary Authorities: Market Knowledge and Imperial Government in the Colonial Philippines, 1892 - 1942. Diss. University of Washington, 2013. Chair: Vicente Rafael.
- Inherited Destinies, phantom limbs: Empire, settler colonialism, and trauma in the Philippines and Peru, 1920-1928. Seattle. In progress.
- Arthit Jiamrattanyoo. "Empires of Amity: Affective Politics and Poetics of Friendship through the Colonial Philippines." Dissertation, Universty of Washington, ongoing.
Courses Taught
Spring 2019
Summer 2018 A-term
Spring 2018
Winter 2018
Summer 2017 A-term
Spring 2017
Summer 2016 A-term
Spring 2016
Graduate Study Areas
Divisions
Division: Asia--Pre-History to the Present
This field is constructed with an emphasis on island Southeast Asia and the Philippines from 1521 to the present.
Division: United States History
Asian American socio-cultural histories, with an emphasis on Filipino Americans and Filipino overseas workers
Division: Comparative History (Historiography, Comparative Ethnicity & Nationalism, and Comparative Colonialisms)*
A field in Comparative Historiography will include Nationalist and postcolonial conceptions of history, deconstruction, critical theory especially as these relate to the politics of translation, religion, and media technologies. A field in Comparative Colonialisms will carry a focus on United States and Spanish imperialism in Asia and the Pacific. The field in Comparative Nationalism and Ethnicity focuses on the historical and technological conditions for the rise of nationhood, as well as the role of mass media, translation and the languages of power in nationalist discourses.
*Students may not offer a field in the Comparative History division as a first field.
Resources & Related Links
Related News
Related News
- New Book with Introduction by Professor Vicente Rafael Collects Significant Works by Anglophone Filipino Writer Nick Joaquin - June 7, 2017
- Translation: An Interview with Vicente Rafael - January 6, 2014
- Professor Vincente Rafael on rich history of Tacloban - November 14, 2013
- Professor Vincente Rafael's Contracting Colonialism Honored with 25th Anniversary Celebration - November 11, 2013