April 1 & 15, 2023 (Saturdays)
10 AM PHT
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April 1
Queen Makers: Power, Politics, and the Manila Carnival Queen Contest 
Genevieve Clutario, Ph.D.

Queen Makers investigates the development of the Manila Carnival Queen contests that ran from 1908 to 1939.These contests, which started as a showcase of colonial progress, paradoxically became a potent site for Filipino national identity formation. Queens developed into powerful figures of ideal Filipina femininity that continued to shape gendered and sexualized performances of beauty and desirability well beyond the American colonial period.

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Genevieve Clutario is the Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of American Studies at Wellesley College. She is the author of Beauty Regimes: A History of Power and Modern Empire in the Philippines, 1898 – 1941 (Duke University Press, 2023) and is the recipient of the Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University First Book Award. Before arriving at Wellesley, Clutario was an assistant professor in History and History and Literature at Harvard University. She continues to pursue research and teaching interests focused on 

Asian American narratives in global perspectives; Filipino studies; comparative histories of culture and modern empire; transnational feminisms; and gender, race, and the politics of fashion and beauty.

April 15 
Unsung Heroes of Mindanao: The Moro Resistance Fighters of World War II
Thomas McKenna, Ph.D.

Just weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, while Douglas MacArthur’s forces evacuated Manila and withdrew to Bataan, Moro volunteers, armed only with swords and machetes, bested Japanese assault troops in jungle warfare and stopped the invasion of Mindanao. This extraordinary and unheralded accomplishment was just the first in a string of heroic exploits by Moro resistance fighters that continued until the last days of the war.  

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Thomas McKenna is an anthropologist who has lived and worked for years in Bangsamoro communities in the Philippines and has spent decades writing and conducting research on their culture and history. Formerly Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, he has won writing and teaching awards and has been invited to present his work on the Moros at Oxford University, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, among other forums. He is the author of Moro Warrior (from Ateneo University Press), Muslim Rulers and Rebels (from Anvil Press), and a number of other published works. He lives with his wife in San Francisco.