Growing up, I never traveled far from my home on the east entrance of Wyoming's Yellowstone Park. So when we lost our sugar beet farm, I put on a backpack and went out to see the world. I had no idea what to expect when I first arrived in Southeast Asia. Thinking back, it's all just a beautiful blur of sights, sounds, people, smells, tastes, all of which were utterly foreign and all of which I fell in love with completely.  I've never had my mind expanded like the first time I witnessed an all night wayang gamelan (epic theatre with shadow puppets set to music). There I sat listening to the most amazing music and art form – rivaling anything from the Western canon – and just a day before it had been wholly unknown to me. For the first time in my life I had that important revelation, 'how many other worlds must there be out there, about which I know nothing?"  I got hungry to find out and have yet to lose my appetite!

You might expect a farm kid to be interested in everyday people, and I am. I am currently finishing a book about the female underclass in Southeast Asia, called, Wives, Slaves and Concubines. In it, I have tried to paint stories about the kind of people who usually don't show up in history books, despite being in the overwhelming majority. My sources are mainly explosive court proceedings from the eighteenth century, and read like true crime tales full of violence, drama, sex and confessions. With these I am also trying to tell a bigger story about the social changes to the lower order accompanying a dramatic shift in the economic structures surrounding them. I recently spent a year as a Fulbright professor in Malaysia and have become very interested in the role of Islam in Southeast Asia.  Future research projects will examine the history of the Islamic dietary code, halal, in the Malay world and possibly the Malaysian Hajj Fund, Tabung Haji.

As a teacher I handle most of the undergraduate and graduate history courses on Southeast Asia. In addition to responsibility for individual undergraduate courses on nearly every country in Southeast Asia, most frequently Indonesia and Burma, I also offer region-wide courses. For graduate course offerings, I've taught a range from Islam in Southeast Asia to Southeast Asia and the US. If you really want to see me get animated, ask me about my Study Abroad Malaysia class, where I annually take students for coursework and travel abroad. The food, the weather, the people, and the history – all warm.