On 10 March 2018, Ateneo de Manila University History Professor Stephanie Marie R. Coo, PhD served as one of the lecturers in the symposium on the “Politics of Dress in Premodern Southeast Asia” at Yale-NUS College.
Ms. Coo’s lecture drew the attention of the audience as she examined the influences and meanings of Philippine Ilustrado Clothing for the period 1850-1896, or the period prior to the declaration of Philippine Independence.
Ms. Coo holds the distinction of being one of the only few Filipino experts who had a formal education on cultural history. She also published a study on Clothing and the Colonial Culture of Appearances in Nineteenth Century Spanish Philippines (1820-1896) while she was taking her PhD in Universite de Nice – Sophia Antipolis.
Aside from Ms. Coo, the symposium also featured Singapore-based Filipino academic, poet and writer, Lawrence Lacambra Ypil, who enthralled the participants when he delivered “There”, a poem he specifically wrote for the event.
Other notable speakers included Barbara Watson Andaya and Peranakan scholar Peter Lee.