Imagining the Nation: Dr Aguilar’s Rizal book and PSHEV’s Bicol–Peñafrancia issue launched

Why do we call the Philippines home, and how is it that we can share this bond with over a hundred million strangers? 

This question is at the heart of José Rizal, Nationhood, and the Anticolonial Imagination, a new Ateneo de Manila University Press title by historian Filomeno “Jun” Aguilar Jr. The book was launched on 14 November 2025 at the Ben Chan ArtSuite, Ateneo Art Gallery, Areté, in a program that also highlighted the “Bicol and Peñafrancia” issue of Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints (PSHEV), Volume 73, Number 3.

In his book, Dr Aguilar revisited the late nineteenth century to ask how a “slice of earth and sea” acquired the character of a nation for which people would be willing to lay down their lives. He traced how José Rizal and fellow ilustrados—young, propertied, and foreign-educated—channeled anticolonial anger at Spanish injustice into a quest for collective dignity through the dream of an independent Philippines. The book examined their debates on territory, people, history, and emotions. Dr Aguilar underscored that these ideas of shared Filipino nationhood are not fixed—and, indeed, continue to evolve and transform.

The PSHEV issue on Bicol and Peñafrancia, meanwhile, gathered essays on the devotion to the Virgin of Peñafrancia and its role in overcoming regional “peripherality” and shaping Bicol as a modern region, alongside studies on the Sulu world, contemporary activism, and recent works in Philippine Studies.

The launch was organized by the Ateneo University Press and PSHEV, with scholars Caroline Hau, Lisandro Claudio, and Patricio Abinales offering commentaries on the book before an open forum. Aguilar, Professor of History and Assistant Vice President for Research, Creative Work, and Innovation at the Ateneo, received the 2025 Grant Goodman Prize in Philippine Historical Studies. The book (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2025) retails at PHP 695 and is available at the Ateneo University Press Bookshop as well as in the Press’s Lazada and Shopee stores.