Quentin (Trais) Pearson

Quentin (Trais) Pearson received a PhD in History from Cornell University in 2014. His current project, “Politics of Dismemberment: Siam and Its Subjects,” is a study of law, medicine, and sovereignty in semi-colonial Siam (Thailand). Based on neglected documents from the National Archives of Thailand, the project examines transnational and cross-cultural debates over the value of human lives and limbs. When Siamese subjects were injured or killed by new technologies or foreign residents in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Bangkok, demands for restitution and justice were channeled through legal institutions and the bodies were subjected to legal and medico-legal scrutiny. Such interventions transformed the bodies of Siamese subjects into fertile grounds for asserting Siamese sovereignty. Prior to arriving at the Mahindra Humanities Center, Trais taught in the History Department at Wheaton College (MA) as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian History. His research has been supported by the Institute of International Education (IIE) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as the National Science Foundation. His work has appeared in the Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, and an article is forthcoming in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine.