William Cummings

I am Professor of Humanities & Cultural Studies at the University of South Florida. I was trained in Southeast Asian history and culture, about which I published three books and numerous articles. My first book won the Harry J. Benda Prize from the Association for Asian Studies for its exploration of how the advent of literacy changed perceptions of the past in seventeenth-century Indonesia. After that I focused on cross-cultural encounters, translation, non-Western conceptions of history, and the spread of Islam. Most recently I have begun writing about how Vietnam Wars films express historical visions and interpretations of the past.