Speaker: Jonathan Victor Baldoza (Department of History, Princeton University)

Title: “The Rising Generation”: Filipino Scholars Before the Second World War

Abstract: Drawn from the dissertation-in-progress entitled Making Filipiniana, the talk explores the early generation of Filipino scholars educated and trained under U.S. colonial institutions. Focusing on selected individuals including linguist Cecilio Lopez, anthropologist Marcelo Tangco, sociologist Serafin Macaraig, and historian Nicolas Zafra, it examines the ways in which they deployed their scholarship to analyze Philippine history, culture, and society. At the same time, it looks into how they valued empirical research and scientific analysis, especially in interpreting the Philippine past and in envisioning its independent, national future. Part of what was then referred to as “the rising generation,” these scholars would later become senior figures of the postwar community of anglophone scholars, regarded as academic progenitors not only in their respective fields but also in what would gradually become the social sciences in the Philippines. 

About the speaker: Jonathan Victor Baldoza is a PhD candidate in History at Princeton University. He received his BA from the University of the Philippines, and his MA from the University of California, Berkeley. His research has appeared in Archipel, Philippine Studies: Historic and Ethnographic Viewpoints, and Labor: Studies in Working-Class History.