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Pilapa Esara

PhD, Brown University
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology


Office:
C 17, Cooper Hall
Office Phone:
(585) 395-5705
E-mail:
pesara@brockport.edu
Curriculum vitae:
PDF

Courses Taught

  • ANT 100      Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
  • ANT 200      Ethnographic Experience
  • ANT 305      Sex, Gender & Power
  • ANT 315      The Migration Experience: a cultural perspective
  • ANT 321      Culture Change and Globalization
  • ANT 394      Research Methods in Cultural Anthropology
  • ANT 416/516   Exiled to America: Refugee Resettlement Experiences
  • ANT 470      Anthropology as a Profession

Areas of Specialization

Issues of gender inequality and social difference; social practices of marriage and intimacy; displacement and refugee concerns; ethnographic documentary production; processes of migration and identity negotiations; economic development and globalization; Asia and its diasporas

Current Research Projects

In Spring 2011, I completed an ethnographic documentary entitled, "Day In, Day Out: Selling Food in Bangkok" which offers a window into Thailand's urban foodscape. Life for the average laborer in Bangkok can be difficult. Many rent single rooms without kitchen facilities. To meet their everyday nutritional and material needs, working class residents turn to the street, to local food vendors and sidewalk merchants. The documentary explores the mundane complexities and challenges of being a small-time Bangkok entrepreneur based in an urban slum. This film was screened at DocUtah (Sept. 2012) and will have its NY premiere at Brownfish Short Film Festival (Nov. 2012).

Past projects involve examining gender role changes and shifting meanings of marriage for couples residing in a Bangkok “slum” community. The dilemmas of “working mothers” and the constraints of local occupational and marriage markets foster tensions among couples, who seek to be progressive and more “equal”. These changes are analyzed within a larger context of economic development, continuing internal and transnational migration flows, and dramatic social change in Thailand.

Publications

[Forthcoming] (2012, December) Esara, P. Loving Warm Families: Exploring gender equality within Thai marriages. Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, 34.

 Esara, P. (Producer, Director). (2012). Day in, Day Out: Selling food in Bangkok. [Motion Picture]

Adjudicated Screenings:

2012 – DocUtah, St. George, UT

2012 – Brownfish Short Film Festival, New York City, NY

Esara, P. (2012, June) Moral Scrutiny, Marital Inequality: Cohabitation in Bangkok, Thailand. The Asian Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 13:3:211-27. 

Esara, P. (2009) Imagining the Western Husband: Thai women’s desires for matrimony, status and beauty. Ethnos, 74:3:403-426

Esara, P. (2004) Women Will Keep the Household: The Mediation of Work and Family by Female Labor Migrants in Bangkok. Journal of Critical Asian Studies 36:2:199-216.

 

Last Updated 10/4/12

News

Events

April 22 3:30 pm
Marjorie Helen Stewart Speaker Series: Professor Robert J. Foster, Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Rochester, will speak on "Adversaries into Partners? Brand Value, Consumer-Citizens, and the Coca-Cola Company,"  Edwards Hall, Room 103.
 

April 25, 7:30 pm
Robert Marcus Memorial Lecture: Professor Anthony Marcus, Dept. of Anthropology at John Jay College, CUNY, will speak on “Moral Panics: Youth, Sex and Forced Labor, Yesterday and Today,” New York Room, Cooper Hall