Office Hours:

Office hours by appointment.

Research Interests

• Southeast Asia
• Nationalism
• Imperialism
• Oral history
• Human rights

Books

J. Roosa, Buried Histories: The Anticommunist Massacres of 1965-66 in Indonesia. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2020. Co-winner of the George Kahin Prize, Association of Asian Studies, 2023: https://www.asianstudies.org/grants-awards/book-prizes/kahin-prize/

J. Roosa. Pretext for Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement and Suharto’s Coup D’Etat in Indonesia. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. In Indonesian translation: Dalih Pembunuhan Massal: Gerakan 30 September dan Kudeta Suharto. Jakarta: ISSI dan Hasta Mitra, 2008.

J. Roosa; A. Ratih; H. Farid. Tahun yang tak pernah berakhir: memahami pengalaman korban ’65: esai-esai sejarah lisan. Jakarta: Lembaga Studi dan Advokasi Masyarakat (ELSAM) , 2004.

Articles/Book Chapters

J. Roosa, “Indonesian Communism: The Perils of the Parliamentary Path,” in The Cambridge History of Communism, vol. 2. Edited by N. Naimark, S. Pons, S. Quinn-Judge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

J. Roosa, “The State of Knowledge about an Open Secret: Indonesia’s Mass Disappearances of 1965-66,” Journal of Asian Studies 75:2 (May 2016), pp. 281-297.

J. Roosa, “Conflicts within nations: separatism, civil war, and genocide”, Routledge Handbook of Southeast Asian History. Routledge, London, pp. 108-118, 2013.

J. Roosa, “Who Knows? Oral History Methods in the Study of the Massacres of 1965-66 in Indonesia”, Oral History Forum/d’histoire orale, vol. 33, pp. 1-28, 2013.

J. Roosa, “The September 30th Movement: The Aporias of the Official Narratives”, in The Contours of Mass Violence in Indonesia, 1965-68, D. Kammen and McGregor, K. Singapore: NUS Press and Asian Studies Association of Australia, 2012.

J. Roosa, “The Truths of Torture: Victims’ Memories and State Histories in Indonesia”, Indonesia, pp. 31-49, 2008.

J. Roosa, “President Sukarno and the September 30th Movement,” Critical Asian Studies, vol. 40, pp. 143-159, 2008.

J. Roosa, “Suharto (June 8, 1921 – January 27, 2008)”, Indonesia, no. 85 (April 2008), pp. 137-144, 2008.

J. Roosa, “How Does a Truth Commission Find out What the Truth Is? The Case of East Timor’s CAVR”, Pacific Affairs, vol. 80, pp. 569-580, 2007.

J. Roosa, “Violence and the Suharto Regime’s Wonderland,” Critical Asian Studies, vol. 35, pp. 315-323, 2003.

J. Roosa, “Passive revolution meets peasant revolution: Indian nationalism and the Telangana revolt”, Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 28, pp. 57-94, 2001.

J. Roosa, “Solipsism or Solidarity: The Nation, Pramoedya Ananta Toer and Salman Rushdie”, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 36, pp. 2681-2688, 2001.

S. Moore, “The Indonesian Military’s Last Years in East Timor: An Analysis of Its Secret Documents”, Indonesia, pp. 9-44, 2001.

“The Port of Tuban, a chapter from Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s historical novel Arus Balik,” translated with an introduction, Emergences, vol. 10, no. no. 2 (2000), 2000.

Non-referreed

“The Fantasy World of the US Empire,” Catalyst, vol. 3, no. 1, 2019. Also posted on the website Jacobin: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/12/vietnam-war-john-roosa-max-boot-brian-vandemark

“Sukarno’s Two Bodies,” New Mandala, May 26, 2014; https://www.newmandala.org/sukarnos-two-bodies/

“Book Banning in Indonesia: A Blast from the Past,” Jakarta Post, January 13, 2010. This op-ed was a response to the banning of the Indonesian translation of my book Pretext for Mass Murder.  https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/01/13/book-banning-indonesia-a-blast-past.html