Translating Colonialisms

Translating Colonialisms is a series of intiatives in Winter Quarter 2027 that explores the contributions, challenges, and provocations of Vicente Rafael’s scholarship. Rafael was a key figure in the fields of Colonial and Postcolonial Studies as well as Southeast Asian and Philippine Studies. He passed away suddenly on 21 February 2026. For decades, his intellectual home had been the UW Department of History and the Center for Southeast Asia & its Diasporas (CSEAD). A two-day public conference, a special issue of an interdisciplinary journal, and a microseminar for UW graduate students are fitting ways to honor his contributions as a scholar and mentor.

Translating Colonialisms addresses resonances and influences of Rafael’s scholarship across major arcs of his career: translation/early colonialism; comparative colonialism and empire; and authoritarian biopolitics. The conference keynote will speak to Rafael’s oeuvre, and panelists will present their own scholarship, tracing the ways it is in conversation with arguments and provocations in Rafael’s work. A graduate microseminar will center the bookends of Rafael's career: Contracting Colonialism (1992) and The Sovereign Trickster (2022). An exhibit of US documents from the colonial period in the Philippines will accompany the conference.