Readings in Philippine History: Course Review, Best Practices, and Challenges among Higher Education Institutions

History is essential in the curriculum. The Readings in Philippine History (RPH) syllabus and instruction should be advanced. However, curricular changes and the pandemic affected the instruction. Thus, this study reviewed the course specification and syllabus of RPH among higher educational institutions in Kabankalan City, Philippines. Anchored on the CHED recommended syllabus in RPH, the study reviewed the course and determined the areas for improvement. Likewise, it identified the best practices and challenges. Using a descriptive design and employing purposive and stratified sampling, 269 external reviewers, teachers, and students reviewed the study. The mean, frequency count, rank, and percentage distribution were employed in data analysis. Generally, the course adheres to the standard. However, the main issue is students' learning readiness and the misalignment of teachers' specialization. Thus, a strong foundation on Philippine History among the students is necessary to ensure quality. Also, the retention of qualified teachers is essential in advancing the instruction.

Atmosfera Rizaliana: Metonymic Journeys of Storm Tropes in José Rizal’s Writing on the Philippines

Stormy weather appears in recurrent instances across the literary and political oeuvre of José Rizal, a nineteenth-century figure who is one of the most significant and well-known personages in Philippine history. This paper analyzes the manner by which he describes storms in a few of his personal and political works, and observes that there is a deployment of metonymic logic that undergirds not only the texts, but a variety of other movements across the nineteenth-century cultural, technological, and political landscape. The metonymic logic of storm tropes are, in this sense, not only a productive literary modality in understanding weather representations during the Philippine fin de siècle, but also become illustrative of political and historical developments during the period. Based on this overarching logic, the paper articulates the possibility of understanding global climate and climate change as a series of interconnected and associated postcolonial and ecocritical experiences that are able to figure the world at large through an alternative expansion. This paper also investigates previous critiques that categorize the Rizaliana’s weather as romantic, and interrogates the assumptions that are deployed in such categorizations – and what they might mean for Philippine postcolonial ecocriticism and its climate imaginaries.

Semi-Civilized

This book offers a concise, revealing, and analytically penetrating view of a critical period in Philippine history. The book examines Moro (Filipino Muslim) contributions to the Philippine exhibit at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, providing insight into this fascinating and previously overlooked historical episode. By reviving and contextualizing Moro participation in the exposition, the book challenges the typical manifestations of empire drawn from the fair and delivers a nuanced and textured vision of the nature of American imperial discourse. The book argues that the Moro display provided a distinctive liminal space in the dialectical relationship between civilization and savagery at the fair. The Moros offered a transcultural bridge. Through their official yet nondescript designation as “semi-civilized,” they undermined and mediated the various binaries structuring the exposition. As the book demonstrates, this mediation represented an unexpectedly welcomed challenge to the binary logic and discomfort of the display. As the book shows, the Moro display was collaborative, and the Moros exercised unexpected agency by negotiating how the display was both structured and interpreted by the public. Fairgoers were actively seeking an extraordinary experience. Exhibit organizers framed it, but ultimately the Moros provided it. And therein lay a tremendous amount of power.

The Carabao and the Encounter of the Law in Nineteenth-Century Philippines

The place of the non-human animal in the legal world has been questioned. Animals’ legal status as property has been probed on how to best protect their welfare. While this is significant for animals who are not on the farm, it might not be effective when considering animals raised for food. The case of the carabao, or the water buffalo, in the Philippines is seen as a hybrid. This article traces the development of the carabao in Philippine history during the nineteenth century. Through historical, archival, and legal research on animals, the carabao is situated as private property. Colonial instruments of control were introduced to protect the carabao from criminals. In its proper historical context, the classification of carabaos as property indeed highlighted the animal’s status as legally owned, which did not necessarily demean the animal’s relationship with the human peasant nor the carabao’s quality as an animal.

Translating Philippine history in America's shadow: Japanese reflections on the past and present during the Vietnam War

In the 1970s, during and right after the end of the Vietnam War, more works by Filipino writers, especially historians, were translated into Japanese than works by any other Southeast Asians. In Southeast Asia, it was in the Philippines that the Japanese and the American forces had fought their fiercest battles during the Second World War. The Japanese translators who translated prominent Filipino nationalist historians such as Gregorio Zaide, Teodoro Agoncillo and Renato Constantino, had personally experienced war, defeat, and postwar life under the US-led Allied occupation of Japan. This article compares the original texts of some of these key Filipino works and their Japanese translations, and examines the ‘noises’ produced in the process of translation. This noise includes strategies such as the deletion and addition of information, opinions, and deliberate misreadings. This article suggests that these strategies reveal the translators’ views on the past as well as their contemporary experience of postwar Japan against the background of the ongoing Vietnam War.

Lived Experiences of Tertiary Students in the Teaching of Philippine History Courses

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