On February 16, a group of Contemporary Asian Studies students will leave Toronto for an International Course Module Program (ICM) course in Bandung, Indonesia. Having learned about different aspects of Indonesian society in CAS400: Interdisciplinary Research in Methods in Contemporary Asian Studies, taught by Dylan Clark, PhD, these students conducted field research for nine days under the supervision of Professor Jacques Bertrand, as well as meet local students and people from different religious communities.

We sat down with two students from the module, Aadil Randeree and Kana Shishikura, to talk about their upcoming ICM trip. The following conversation has been edited for length, clarity, and flow.

What are your research projects?

Aadil: We looked at Indonesia from a historical perspective to see how different groups found their place in decentralized Indonesia. We’re now looking at how Islam has evolved in its role in civil society and political society. This is why we’re meeting different groups: to see how Islam has permeated this society, and to see how it interacts and what it means to people. That’s the overarching theme we’re looking at, but in terms of a research proposal, we’re being given flexibility to come up with something we would like to pursue. We’re in the stage of forming that right now. For example, we’re seeing how Islamic societies have provided for and tried to build the futures’ of underprivileged children.

Kana: We’re also looking at how Islam is performed in different, sophisticated ways, and how it can’t be seen as one entity or one religion. We’re investigating how Islam is performed by different people, different agencies, different stakeholders in various ways. That’s one question we’re exploring. We will present this research at the end of the semester, in the first week of April.

Thoughts on Bandung

Aadil: I didn’t previously know Bandung was such an important city. You don’t hear about it much because in Indonesia you tend to hear about Jakarta, Bali and the resorts. However, Bandung is one of the top hubs of manufacturing in Southeast Asia. It’s apparently called the “Paris of Indonesia”. People from Malaysia travel there just to shop. Through this trip we learn about this place, which is new to us, and we learn there’s a lot of historical significance to Bandung.

Kana: Yeah, the Bandung Conference. When you’re in CAS, you’ll encounter the Bandung Conference at some point in your classes. It’s always been that conference for Asia that deconstructed the idea of Oriental spaces, so Bandung is more of a political/historical place than Jakarta or Bali or the resorts.

Why did you join the ICM and what are you hoping to take away from this?

Kana: It was always my goal before graduating from U of T to go abroad to have a more hands-on education. I want to see how theory comes into practice by actually being with those living bodies we’ve studied in classes. That’s one thing that’s encouraged me to go on the ICM.

Aadil: The reason why the ICM appealed to me was simply the material we’re dealing with. The ICM is a chance to see everything we’ve learned in theory and read about in action. This is a chance to see what Professor Dylan Clark, is talking about. Prof. Clark has extensive experience living in Indonesia, and he shares examples from lived experience. I think it is valuable for us to see and experience the practical consequences of what we have learned in detail, in real life.

Kana: And I feel it’s sometimes important to see it for yourself because we tend to romanticize what we read in academic readings. You can have a fixed idea of what it’s like. You envision it yourself, but you have to see it for yourself.

Aadil: I think it’s very much a kind of cocoon you’re living in, if you don’t see the realities. The ICM gives us a chance to get some hands-on groundwork.

On the class

Kana: We have seven team members in total: six girls, one guy. I think we do get along. We’re a very small group of people. The students who are going for the ICM were selected through the course. I think they’re very engaged students in the class. They’re vocal about what their thoughts are like. It’s really nice to have likeminded students who are curious. In that sense, we’re on the same page about how we feel about going to Indonesia and going on the ICM.

Aadil: I think an important aspect of this ICM is that we’ve studied what we’re going to see in a large amount of detail. We have a foundation on which we’re building. I think it’s important to say that the CAS400 course with Professor Clark was a detailed course which will allows us to appreciate what we’re going to see more than if we went without it.

What do you look forward to seeing or doing the most in Indonesia?

Kana: Let’s go with the fun part first. I would say the food. A close friend from mine—he is from Bandung—tells me about what it’s like there. Indonesia is a mix of different cultures and languages, religions, food, culture... So it’s interesting to see how those different cultures come together in one city and how that’s seeing food in different places. So, food and architecture.

Aadil: In terms of what we’re doing, I think we will also visit the Pondok pesantren Sukasindang Institute outside of Bandung. They do martial arts there as well, and apparently we get a chance to try martial arts ourselves, which I’m really looking forward to. It’s very interesting to see the intersection between martial arts and Islam.

Kana: I also study comparative colonialism in the Asian Institute, so I’d be interested in seeing how Dutch colonialism has played out in terms of city configuration, urbanization, etc.

Aadil: Building up on that point, I was reading up on this South African hero called Jan van Riebeeck. He was one of the first Dutch people to come to South Africa, and he died in Bandung and he was buried there. He was one of the Dutch explorers and because South Africa and Indonesia were Dutch colonies at the time, there was a relationship between them and people were going up and down. Our supposed Afrikaner heroes died in Indonesia, brought back a lot of stuff from there. We have a whole population of Asians who immigrated three or four hundred years ago, so I guess as a South Africa that’s also an interesting intersection for me.

Do you have any tips for other students who might want to do something like this ICM, but they’re on the fence?

Aadil: I didn’t know ICMs were a thing until fourth year in university, so my advice to any students looking at such things is to thoroughly search the opportunities the university provides. I learned a lot about the ICM in general in fourth year. My suggestion to younger students is to see what opportunities different institutions in the university provide. I have a friend who’s going on another one to Greece. She also learned about it in her fourth year. So if you keep your eye out earlier on and you structure your program with certain things in mind, then you’ll have the opportunity to take on something like the ICM and broaden your horizons.

Kana: I came to know the ICM in my second year because students I knew in third and fourth year went to Myanmar for their ICM. I got to know about it because I went to a Hart House Farm retreat with upper years. Last time my best friend went to China for ICM. Anyway, here I am, taking ICM. But what Aadil said about looking out for information: it’s never going to come to you. You’re always need to look out for information. Look up emails, go to office hours. If you know someone who has been on ICMs, ask them a lot of questions and they could refer you to someone else.