Jul 7, 2013
 
A Tale of Three Cemeteries: Cemetery Documentation in the 21st Century

 

Venue: Chui Huay Lim Club, Level 4 Auditorium

 

Description:
The talk will recount and compare the experience of documenting three Chinese cemeteries in Singapore. They are the Kwong Hou Sua Teochew Cemetery, Bukit Brown Municipal Cemetery and Seh Ong (Hokkien) Cemetery. Besides elaborating on the historical and cultural significance of the three cemeteries, the talk will also reflect on changes in the approach to cemetery documentation.
 
Speaker’s bio:
 
Dr Hui Yew-Foong is an anthropologist and Senior Fellow with the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. He first embarked on the documentation of cemeteries in 2008, when he led a team of volunteers to document the now exhumed Kwong Hou Sua Teochew Cemetery. In late 2011, he led another project to document graves of the Bukit Brown and Seh Ong Cemeteries affected by an eight-lane road to be built through the cemeteries. Besides deathscapes and heritage, his research interests include the Chinese minority in Southeast Asia, religion and politics, and regionalism in Indonesia. He is the author of Strangers at Home: History and Subjectivity among the Chinese Communities of West Kalimantan, Indonesia, co-author of Different Under God: A Survey of Church-Going Protestants in Singapore and editor of Encountering Islam: The Politics of Religious Identities in Southeast Asia.