2.5 - Empire & Education in the Philippines with Funie Hsu and Malini Johar Schueller

History of Education Society UK Podcast

In today's episode, I was lucky enough to speak with not one but two researchers! Both Funie Hsu and Malini Johar Schueller look at the role of race and racialisation in shaping education policy during the American occupation of the Philippines. Our discussion focuses on the introduction of compulsory, English-language education, the role that conceptions of race played in developing that system, and how their professional identity shapes the ways they approach their research.
Funie Hsu is an Associate Professor at San Jose State University who studies US empire and knowledge construction. She writes regularly on language in education policy, mindfulness and Buddhism in education, and colonialism. Her current research and forthcoming book, Instructions for (Erasing) Empire: English, Domestication, and the US Colonization of the Philippines, looks at how notions of race and species difference undergirded colonial education policy in the Philippines. Prior to her academic career, she was an elementary school teacher with the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Malini Johar Schueller is Professor of English at the University of Florida. Her research focuses on, among other things, US empire studies, postcolonial theory, and postcolonial women of color. She has written widely on the construction of “the Orient” in American culture and her most recent book, Campaigns of Knowledge: U.S. Pedagogies of Colonialism and Occupation in the Philippines and Japan, examines how American ideas of the Asian “other” were instrumental in shaping colonial American educational policy.

A transcript of the episode is available at the History of Education Society website, along with more information about our events, publications and conferences. You can follow the History of Education Society UK on Twitter and keep up-to-date with the latest research in The History of Education journal.