Dr. Ang Chouléang
Year I, Semester II
This course introduces students to the ‘Ethno-historical approach’ of linguistic research. This is an ethnological view that integrates knowledge drawn from other branches of human sciences, including linguistics, ethnology and epigraphy. This approach works particularly well in studying Khmer culture, which holds a rich set of texts and other documents which enable us to cast a diachronic view on cultural facts. Topics covered include the supernatural and eschatological world, including the concept of ‘divinity’ as an abstraction, supernatural beings and Indian deities including Buddha; the representation of death including the concept of cyclic time, death and rebirth, and allegorical representations of death in ancient and modern Khmer art; and other topics including the cult of the ‘Holy Bull’, gender and witchcraft, the Festival of the Dead as a Brahmanic ritual, and the cultures of Mon-Khmer and Austronesian minorities in Cambodia, including the Phuong and Stieng of Mondulkiri, the Kreung, the Tampuon, the Jorai and the Brou of Ratanakiri.