Journals: Biography International Year in Review, Journal of Burma Studies Contribution to Pyu Studies + more 


Here was Once the Sea: An Anthology of Southeast Asian Ecowriting

Mānoa

Here was Once the Sea: An Anthology of Southeast Asian Writing

Volume 35 Number 2 (2023)

Guest Editors Rina Garcia Chua, Esther Vincent Xueming, and Ann Ang discussion their vision with this unique collection of writing:

This anthology represents a chorus of offerings, first and foremost to the land and the sea, and second to you, our readers, as an invitation to attend to the urgencies and travails of our homes. On the one hand, while the anthology is comprised mostly of anglophone texts, which reflect the aspirations of regional writers to speak across borders and to the globe at large, the English of these pages is inhabited by meanings and associations that make the language our own. This can be seen in the use of indigenous names of plants and places in the works of Annisa Hidayat, Diana Rahim, and Mohamed Shaker, or through rhymes and sounds in the poems of Natalie Foo Mei-Yi and Teresa Mei Chuc. At other times, the native language emerges like weeds, surprising and demanding to be noticed, as in Enbah Nilah’s use of Tamil, which persists as linguistic, cultural, and historical memory in a legacy of erasure.

Find this editorial note, poems, statements, art, and more at Project MUSE.

Journals: New Research in Burma Studies, World History + Pacific Science

JBS 27-2 cover

The Journal of Burma Studies

Volume 27, Number 2 (2023)

The new issue focuses on military dictatorship and migrationin 2021 in Myanmar. In this introduction Editor Jane S. Ferguson explains:

 This issue offers a blend of research articles which are based on nuanced research and social analysis of everyday survival, law and development, and politics in the years leading up to the 2021 coup d’etat. These include issues of migration, whether to overseas work destinations or within Myanmar, the situation for education and its relationship with international donor organizations, the creation of work conditions within Myanmar’s Special Economic Zones, the organization of intensive banana agriculture for export in geographically contested areas, and finally an analysis of the political lead-up to the military coup.

Read more articles at Project MUSE.

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Pacific Science 76-4 cover

Pacific Science

Volume 76, Number 4 (2022)

Population Size and Habitat Occupancy by the Endangered Mariana Crow
Robert J. Craig

Low Genetic Diversity in the Highly Morphologically Diverse Sida fallax Walp. (Malvaceae) Throughout the Pacific
Mersedeh Pejhanmehr, Mitsuko Yorkston, and Clifford W. Morden

Ingestion of Plastics in a Wild Population of the Pacific Fat Sleeper (Dormitator latifrons)
Fernando Isea-Leeón, Juan Diego Quispe, Alexandra Bermúudez-Medranda, Vanessa Acosta, Ana María Santana-Piñeros, Yanis Cruz-Quintana, Luz Marina Soto, Luciana Gomes-Barbosa, Luis Domínguez-Granda, and Carlos López

Evaluation of Reproductive Success of the Olive Ridley Turtle Lepidochelys olivacea (Testudinata: Cheloniidae) Using Different Incubation Treatments
J.L. Sandoval-Ramírez,  and E. Solana-Arellano

Continuous Reproduction Causes Stable Population Structure of Antipatharian-Associated Shrimp Sandyella tricornuta (Decapoda: Palaemonidae)
Ariadna Ávilā-García, Carlos Sánchez, Leonardo Huato-Soberanis, Elizabeth Borda, and Jaime Gómez-Gutiérrez

A Survey of Terrestrial Vertebrates of Tetepare Island, Solomon Islands, Including Six New Island Records
Jenna M. McCullough, Lucas H. DeCicco, Mark W. Herr, Piokera Holland, Douglas Pikacha, Tyrone H. Lavery, Karen V. Olson, Devon A. DeRaad, Ikuo G. Tigulu, Xena M. Mapel, Lukas B. Klicka, Roy Famoo, Jonathan Hobete, Lazarus Runi, Gloria Rusa, Alan Tippet, David Boseto, Rafe M. Brown, Robert G. Moyle, and Michael J. Andersen

Find more articles at Project MUSE.

Journals: Shanghai Fever, Divinatory Practices in Burma, Peculiar Molting Behavior of Hermit Crabs + more

China Review International

Volume 27, Number 2 (2020)

The new issue includes the following feature, “Shanghai between Modernity and Postmodernity.” Author Lei Ping explains in the introduction:

Shanghai, an unequivocally distinctive cosmopolitan city, has been a critical subject of scholarly studies and popular interest since the nineteenth century. “Shanghai fever” (Shanghaire), coupled with Shanghai nostalgia, became a sensational literary, cinematic, and cultural phenomenon in the 1990s and has continued throughout the turn of the twenty-first century as the post-Mao era unfolds. After a few temporarily dormant years following the culmination of the fervor, Shanghai has reemerged in recent global scholarship as a path to understand Chinese modernity and China’s rise to the world’s second largest economy. The question as to what kind of pivotal role Shanghai plays in conjuring the so-called China’s lost modernity causes a resurfacing of intellectual debates about Shanghai—“the other China.”

Find more reviews at Project MUSE.

Journal of Burma Studies

Special Issue: Astrological and Divinatory Practices in Burma

Volume 26, Number 2 (2022)

The new special issue is introduced by editors Aurore Candier and Jane M. Ferguson stating:

This special issue of The Journal of Burma Studies is part of a collective and multidisciplinary project which explores astrological and divinatory knowledge and practices in Burma. These practices include fortune telling, divinatory, and therapeutic techniques, and they serve a broader system for the interpretation of past, present, and future events. In Burma, as elsewhere in South and Southeast Asia, astrology and divination rationales are part of social thinking and are also embedded in religious fields (Vernant 1974:10; Guenzi 2021:9). The collective aim of these four articles is to investigate the articulation between astrology, divination, religion, power, and discourse in Burma.

Find this special section and more at Project MUSE.

Journal of Korean Religions

Special Section: Korean Religions and COVID Restrictions

Volume 13, Number 2 (2022)

The new issue includes a special section, “Korean Religions and COVID Restrictions.” Editor Don Baker introduces the section:

In this issue, we have three articles delving into how Korea’s Christian communities—Catholic and Protestant—have dealt with a problem of the present: the COVID-19 pandemic. Christians place a lot of importance on regular weekly meetings for worship. The South Korean government, on the other hand, was concerned about those religious gatherings serving as venues for the spread of the deadly COVID-19 virus. Different Christian organizations in Korea responded in different ways to their government’s demand that they prioritize concern for public health and temporarily change the way their congregations gather for ritual expressions of their faith.

Find this special section and more at Project MUSE.

jwh 33-3
Pacific Science Cover volume 76 number 2 2022 April

Pacific Science

Volume 76, Number 2 (2022)

The new issue includes the following articles and reviews:

Spatial Ecology of Humpback Whales (Megaptera novaeangliae, Cetacea-Balaenopteridae) from the Mexican Central Pacific
Christian D. Ortega-Ortiz, Andrea B. Cuevas-Soltero,
Reyna Xóchitl García-Valencia, Astrid Frisch-Jordán, Katherina Audley, Aramis Olivos-Ortiz, and Marco A. Liñán-Cabello

Pacific Hibiscus (Malvaceae) in Sect. Lilibiscus. 1. Hibiscus kokio and Related Species from the Hawaiian Archipelago
Lex A.J. Thomson and Brock Mashburn

Peculiar Molting Behavior of Large Hermit Crabs
Rise Ohashi and Naoki Kamezaki

Efficiency and Efficacy of DOC-200 Versus Tomahawk Traps for Controlling Small Indian Mongoose, Herpestes auropunctatus (Carnivora: Herpestidae) in Wetland Wildlife Sanctuaries
Lisa S. Roerk, Lindsey Nietmann, and Aaron J. Works

Status of Forest Birds on Tinian Island, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, with an Emphasis on the Tinian Monarch (Monarcha takatsukasae) (Passeriformes; Monarchidae)
R. L. Spaulding, Richard J. Camp, Paul C. Banko, Nathan C. Johnson, and Angela D. Anders

Find more research articles at Project MUSE.

USJWJ62

U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal

Special Issue: Girls and Literature

Volume 62 (2022)

Guest Editors Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase and Wakako Suzuki present the special issue stating:

We are pleased to present this special issue of the U.S.–Japan Women’s Journal (no. 62) on “Girls and Literature.” This issue evolved from a panel titled “The Shōjo Genre and Gendered Discursive Practices: The Rise and Decline of Girls’ Novels in Japan” at the Association for Japanese Literary Studies (AJLS) annual conference held at Emory University in January 2020. Our goal was to discuss issues of genre categorization in literature, particularly as they pertain to shōjo shōsetsu, or girls’ fiction (short stories, novellas, and novels).

Find more articles, discussions, and reviews at Project MUSE.

New Journal Issues: Aloha Shirt Aesthetics, Patterns of Mortuary Practice in Vanuatu, Taiwan Sugar in the 1600s + More

Asian Perspectives

Volume 61, Number 1 (2022)

The new issue includes the following articles and reviews:

Lakheen-Jo-Daro, an Indus Civilization Settlement at Sukkur
in Upper Sindh (Pakistan): A Scrap Copper Hoard and
Human Figurine from a Dated Context

Paolo Biagi and Massimo Vidale

The Hamin Mangha Site: Mass Deaths and Abandonment
of a Late Neolithic Settlement in Northeastern China

Yawei Zhou, Xiaohui Niu, Ping Ji, Yonggang Zhu, Hong Zhu, and
Meng Zhang

Early Metal Age Settlement at the Site of Palemba, Kalumpang,
Karama Valley, West Sulawesi

Anggrreani

Patterns of Mortuary Practice over Millennia in Southern Vanuatu,
South Melanesia

Frédérique Valentin, Wanda Zinger, Alison Fenwick, Stuart Bedford,
James Flexner, Edson Willie, and Takaronga Kuautonga

Find more research articles and reviews at Project MUSE.

Biography

Volume 44, Issues 2 & 3 (2021)

Special Double Issue: Graphic Medicine

Graphic Medicine’s Possible Futures: Reconsidering Poetics and Reading
Erin La Cour and Anna Poletti

Conflict or Compromise?: An Imagined Conversation
with John Hicklenton and Lindsay Cooper about
Living with Multiple Sclerosis

John Miers

Out of Sync: Chronic Illness, Time, and Comics Memoir
Jared Gardner

Face as Landscape: Refiguring Illness, Disability,
and Disorders in David B.’s Epileptic

Erin La Cour

Graphic Confessions and the Vulnerability Hangover
from Hell

Safdar Ahmed

Drawn to History: Healing, Dementia, and the Armenian
Genocide in the Intertextual Collage of Aliceheimer’s

Crystal Yin Lie

Find more at Project MUSE.

Biography

Volume 44, Issue 4 (2021)

Open Forum Articles
Reviews

Editor Craig Howes embraces this volume as he explains:
“The latest issue of Biography qualifies as special because of its ordinariness. After a four-installment run featuring two special issues, an inaugural Forum, and the Annual Bibliography and International Year in Review, we now return to our regularly scheduled programming. Articles and book reviews—that’s all!
But the table of contents for this issue speaks to what has distinguished Biography for decades as a quarterly. First, the articles. Their geographic, historic, linguistic, and generic range is in keeping with our international and interdisciplinary profile. American celebrity biographies and philosophy, twentieth-century Indian regional autobiography, modernist Austrian psychoanalytic biography, post-WWII German-Romanian autofiction, contemporary Palestinian auto/biographical texts—our pages map out and tell the stories of the field.”

Find more articles and reviews at Project MUSE.

The Contemporary Pacific

Volume 34, Issue 1 (2022)

The new issue includes the following articles, dialogues, political, media, and book reviews.

One Salt Water: The Storied Work of Trans-Indigenous Decolonial Imagining with West Papua
Bonnie Etherington

Making Sartorial Sense of Empire: Contested Meanings
of Aloha Shirt Aesthetics

Christen T Sasaki

The Compensation Page: News Narratives of Public Kinship in Papua New Guinea Print Journalism
Ryan Schram

“We Are So Happy EPF Came”: Transformations of Gender in Port Moresby Schools
Ceridwen Spark and Martha Macintyre

Pacific People Navigating the Sacred Vā to Frame Relational Care: A Conversation between Friends across Space and Time
Silia Pa‘usisi Finau, Mele Katea Paea, and Martyn Reynolds

Find more articles, dialogues, political, media, and book reviews at Project MUSE.

The Journal of Burma Studies

Volume 26, Number 1 (2022)

Ritual and Play in Buddhist Nun-Making: Girlhood,
Nunhood, and the Shaping of the “Little Teacher” in
Today’s Myanmar

Rachelle Saruya

From Archenemy of the Nation to the Intimate
Other: Prince Damrong Rajanubhab’s
Journey
through Burma
and the Colonial Ecumene
Thanapas Dejpawuttikul


Military Rule with a Weak Army: Myanmar’s
Late Expansion

Marie-Eve Reny


Grassroots Roles and Leadership Aspirations:
The Experiences of Young Ethnic Women in
Myanmar Civil Society Organizations
Maaike Matelski and Nang Muay Noan

Find more captivating articles at Project MUSE.

Journal of World History

Volume 33, Number 2 (June 2022)

The “Material Turn” in World and Global History
Giorgio Riello

The Christian Seas of Kyushu: How Local Maritime Networks Facilitated the Introduction of Catholicism to Japan in the Mid-Sixteenth Century
Erik Glowark

From the Atlantic to the Manchu: Taiwan Sugar and the Early Modern World, 1630s–1720s
Guanmian Xu

The Myth of Immobility: Women and Travel in the British Imperial Indian Ocean
Scott Reese

Religion and the Contemporary Phase of Globalization: Insights from a Study of John Paul II’s World Youth Days
Charles Mercier

Find more research articles and reviews at Project MUSE.

 

 

New Journal Special Features: Gender Trouble in Korean Literature, Unsettling Korean Migration + Biography forum on Behrouz Boochani

Azalea 14 (2021)

Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature & Culture

Volume 14 (2021)

Special Feature: Korean Genre Fiction; O Chang-hwan; and Gender Trouble In Korean Literature

From the Editor Young Jung-Lee:

One of the most important recent shifts in Korean literature is found in gender conflict. This “Special Feature: Gender Trouble in Korean Literature and Society,” guest-edited by Hye-Ryoung Lee, shows a fundamentally new perspective through six scholars reading Korean Literature and Society. Over the past decade, the #MeToo Movement has shaken the world, and Korean society has been no exception, as can be seen in Choi Young-mi’s poem “En,”  introduced here with six critical essays. Even before its publication, “En” was the focus of media attention, and it remained a hot topic in Korean society for years due to Choi’s high-profile court battles.

biography

Volume 43, Number 4 (2020)

Special Feature: A Forum on Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains


From Coeditor Anna Poletti:

With this forum, we, the editors of Biography, inaugurate a new feature of the journal that aims to respond to and amplify specific examples of the power of life writing as a cultural, political, and social practice, and which document key moments in the evolution of that practice. In this forum, No Friend but the Mountains is discussed as both a profoundly localized text responding to, making knowledge about, and exposing a highly specific and complex set of conditions, and as a uniquely transnational text that speaks to and about a global phenomenon. Its highly innovative use of life writing as a narrative technique and epistemological practice warranted, in our minds, a concentrated response from the journal. Commissioning and editing this response has renewed my appreciation for the primary concerns of lifewriting scholarship: tracking the mercurial power of personal storytelling to crystalize the contemporary moment in such a way that new knowledge emerges from the entanglements it depicts, and the entanglements it drags its readers into.

Korean Studies

Volume 45 (2021)

Special Section: Unsettling Korean Migration: Multiple Trajectories and Experiences

From the Editor Cheehyun Harrison Kim:

This analytic potency of migration is superbly demonstrated in this volume’s Special Section Unsettling Korean Migration: Multiple Trajectories and Experiences, guest edited by Sunhee Koo (The University of Auckland) and Jihye Kim (The University of Central Lancashire). Sunhee Koo and Jihye Kim have brought together papers on labor (Yonson Ahn and Jihye Kim), ritual life (Marcus Bell), cultural identity (Sunhee Koo), and artistic production (Hee-seung Irene Lee and Soojin Kim). The six engrossing articles deal with how the Korean diaspora—in Argentina, Germany, Japan, China, and the United States—have shaped and represented their particular situations through negotiation, resilience, and creativity. The authors are highly critical of any national framework, and they see diasporic life as contexts of not only sorrow and sacrifice but also innovation and regeneration. Sunhee Koo and Jihye Kim offer a detailed explanation in their Introduction.

Oceanic Linguistics

Volume 60, Number 1 (2021)

The new issue includes the following articles:

Avaipa, a Language of Central Bougainville
Jason Brown,Melissa Irvine

East Polynesian Subgrouping and Homeland Implications Within the Northern Outlier–East Polynesian Hypothesis
William H. Wilson

Toward a Comparative Typology of ‘Eating’ in Kanak Languages
Anne-Laure Dotte, Claire Moyse-Faurie

Find more research articles and reviews at Project MUSE.

Philosophy East and West

Volume 71, Number 4 (2021)

The new issue included the following articles and translations:

Jian’Ai: Considerations From the “Greater Selection”
Susan Blake

Patterning the Myriad Things: Holism, Harmony, and Anthropogenic Influence in the Huainanzi
Matthew Hamm

Confucianism and Totalitarianism: An Arendtian Reconsideration of Mencius versus Xunzi
Lee Wilson

“America’s National Character” by Watsuji Tetsurō: A Translation
Kyle Michael James Shuttleworth, Sayaka Shuttleworth, Watsuji Tetsurō

Find more research articles, translations, and reviews at Project MUSE.

New Journal Issues: Azalea, Journal of Burma Studies, JSEALS + More (May 2020)

Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature & Culture

Volume 13 (2020)

The special feature of this issue of Azalea carries a feast of research: eight essays on modern Korean poetry, thanks to the endeavors of the two guest editors, Jae Won Chung and Benoit Berthelier. From the beginning period of the 1920s, described by Ku In-mo and David Krolikoski, to the genealogy of modernism, written by Jae Won Edward Chung, to North Korean poetry, covered by Benoit Berthelier and Sonja Haeussler, to twenty-first-century South Korean poetry, examined by Cho Kang-sŏk and Ivanna Sang Een Yi, this feature evinces that the field of modern Korean poetry has gotten in firm stakes.

—Young-Jun Lee, editor

Journal of Burma Studies 24-1

The Journal of Burma Studies

Special Issue: Environment and Resources: Burma/Myanmar and the (Un)Natural

Volume 24, Issue 1 (2020)

[I]n this Special Issue of The Journal of Burma Studies (JBS) we have gathered together an interdisciplinary set of research articles surrounding questions of what nature is and what its resources might be. With the four authors’ varied focus on historical and contemporary Myanmar, this set of papers offers challenging new vistas for the exploration and interrogation of how resources and the environment have been approached and brokered by local and transnational actors.

—Jane M. Ferguson, editor

Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society

Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society

Open Access

Volume 13, Issue 1 (2020)

This issue includes five research articles and one data paper:

  • Reduction in Burmese Compounds by Dan Cameron Burgdorf
  • Situation Types in Thai Sign Language by Cassie Wallace,
  • Variation of Oral and Nasal Stops by English and Japanese Learners of Thai by Sugunya Ruangjaroon
  • Reconsidering the Diachrony of Tone in Rma by Nathaniel A. Sims
  • A Look at Diachronic Phonological Processes in Inthii Oy by Jennifer L. Daniell
  • “Ethnolinguistic Notes on the Language Endangerment Status of Mintil, an Aslian Language” by Teckwyn Lim
JSEALS Special Publication: Studies in the Anthropology of Language in Mainland Southeast Asia

Studies in the Anthropology of Language in Mainland Southeast Asia

Open Access

New JSEALS Special Publication

The papers in this special issue were first written for a workshop held at the University of Sydney in August 2019, titled The Anthropology of Language in Mainland Southeast Asia. Of special interest in the workshop was the fact that only a tiny fraction of the area’s languages have national language status. These national languages are far better researched and understood than the vast majority of languages spoken in the area. New research on minority languages (mostly in descriptive and historical linguistics) is beginning to redress this imbalance, but much work remains if we are going to achieve a full picture of human language in mainland Southeast Asia.

—N. J. Enfield, Jack Sidnell, and Charles H. P. Zuckerman, editors

Korean Studies

Volume 44 (2020)

The new issue includes the following research articles:

  • How Did Buddhists Venerate the Avataṃsaka-sūtra in Late Premodern Korea? Insights from Two Manuscript Ritual Texts by Richard D. McBride II
  • A Population Genetic Perspective on Korean Prehistory by Choongwon Jeong
  • From Catch-up to Convergence? Re-casting the Trajectory of Capitalism in South Korea by Keun Lee, Ho-Chul Shin, Jongho Lee
  • Qing China’s Misguided Foreign Policy and the Struggle to Dominate Korea (According to the Russian Archive) by Larisa Zabrovskaia
  • Mobile North Korean Women and Long-Distance Motherhood: The (Re)Construction of Intimacy and the Ambivalence of Family by Sung Kyung Kim
  • North Korean Migrants in South Korea: “Multicultural” or “Global” Citizens? by Young-a Park
Language Documentation & Conservation

Language Documentation & Conservation

Open Access

Volume 14 (2020)

In May, Language Documentation & Conservation added two new articles:

  • What is “natural” speech? Comparing free narratives and Frog stories in Indonesia
    By Marian Klamer, Francesca R. Moro
  • Contrasting statistical indicators of Māori language revitalization: Conversational ability, speaking proficiency, and first language
    By Chris Lane

Find the 2019 LD&C annual report here.

Philosophy East and West PEW 70-2

Philosophy East & West

Volume 70, Issue 2 (2020)

This issue of Philosophy East & West opens with a remembrance of Gerald James Larson, known more widely as Gerry Larson, who passed away suddenly on April 27, 2019 at the age of 81. His death was unexpected because he was just getting ready to leave for India in connection with a meeting centered on his recently published magnum opus Classical Yoga Philosophy and the Legacy of Sāṁkhya. Sadly, he experienced some sharp abdominal pain and passed away two weeks later.

Read Joseph Prabhu’s reflect on Gerry Larson and the issue’s articles, discussions, and reviews here.

The Journal of Burma Studies, vol. 23 no. 2 (2019)

Figure 2: Front cover of the pirate edition of The Thirty-Seven Nats, from “Counting to 37:Sir Richard Carnac Temple and the Thirty-Eighth Nat” by Sally Bamford, this issue.

The three articles in the new issue of The Journal of Burma Studies offer a compelling picture of accounting: nats, coins, and people.

Editor’s Note
Jane M. Ferguson

Counting to 37: Sir Richard Carnac Temple and the Thirty-Eighth Nat
Sally Bamford

Burma’s nats have formed part of that country’s spiritual and material culture for centuries, and first came to the attention of the West via traveler and colonial memoirs. The most notable of these such accounts is undoubtedly Sir Richard Carnac Temple’s The Thirty-Seven Nats: A Phase of Spirit-Worship Prevailing in Burma, published in 1906 and still cited by scholars today.

This article argues that the reliance by Western (and some Burmese) authors on Temple’s book has led to several misconceptions concerning the nats. These include, for example, that the pantheon known in the West as “The Thirty-Seven Nats” is a royal pantheon constituted by Anawrahta in the 11th century, under the leadership of Thakya Min (Sakka), in order to enfold the nats into Buddhism. Yet primary sources, including Burmese court documents, paint a much fuller picture of the nats, detailing three separate pantheons of 37. Each pantheon contains very different types of nat, each of which played a specific role throughout Burma’s history.

Following a clarification of these pantheons, this paper draws on extant primary sources to suggest a different interpretation of the “Thirty-Seven Nats” and their role vis-à-vis Burma’s kings. The source material available to R.C. Temple is also considered, which reveals significant information which Temple overlooked when writing his book. This led, in turn, to wrongly identified illustrations included in his book, which obscured the identity of a “Thirty-Eighth Nat.” These errors have also had an impact on how one of the most prominent nats is depicted in more recent publications.

King Bodawpaya’s Effort at a Konbaung Coinage
Philip Hauret

In 1797 King Bodawpaya became the first Konbaung king to introduce a national coinage by issuing copper and silver coins minted in both Calcutta and Amarapura. A British envoy, Hiram Cox, delivered the Calcutta coins and additional minting equipment to Amarapura and witnessed first-hand the roll-out of the new monetary system. Deriding the effort as incompetent and avaricious, Cox’s account has served as the basis for all subsequent historical and numismatic treatments. This paper examines this effort in a new light, and with the support of additional evidence uncovered in the 20th century, paints a picture far less negative than British accounts. The kingdom’s efforts, arguably inadequate to the task, nonetheless demonstrated a certain degree of planning and logical action. And despite Cox’s characterizations, the new coinage was apparently based upon an existing system of monetary value, resulting in coinage that continued to circulate throughout most of the 19th century.

Thinking Through Heterogeneity: An Anthropological Look at Contemporary Myanmar
François Robinne

Anchored in an ethnic-state structure since the 1947 Panglong Agreement, ethnic politics and ethnic determinism in Burma have become imprescriptible in the eyes of various actors, especially ethnic and religious elites, the military junta, civilian authorities, civil society, academics and international bodies. Based on years of field surveys devoted to the study of multiethnic crossroads and the de facto landscapes of hybridity in the highlands of Burma, the anthropological perspective of this paper invites us to leave the identity trap. An essentialist notion of ethnicity is not only at the root of the country’s ongoing civil war, but also continues to dictate parliamentary politics in the country. This paper will also consider how the democratic transition is itself caught up in this identity trap.

The Journal of Burma Studies Vol 23, No. 1 (2019)

Featured in Caroline Ha Thuc's "Research as Strategy: Reactivating Mythologies and Building a Collective Memory in Wah Nu and Tun Win Aung's The Name (2008-)" this issue: Wah Nu and Tun Win Aung The Name (2008–). Detail: Portrait of Bo Cho. Multimedia installation. Image courtesy of the artists.
Featured in Caroline Ha Thuc’s “Research as Strategy: Reactivating Mythologies and Building a Collective Memory in Wah Nu and Tun Win Aung’s The Name (2008-)” this issue: Wah Nu and Tun Win Aung The Name (2008–). Detail: Portrait of Bo Cho. Multimedia installation. Image courtesy of the artists.

The new issue of The Journal of Burma Studies (JBS) promises a tour de force of ethnographic, historical, and artistic insight into religious practice and cultural
expression.

This issue marks the first in our new partnership with the Center for Burma Studies at Northern Illinois University. Find top articles from The Journal of Burma Studies‘ archive and enjoy the new issue today on Project MUSE.


Editor’s Note
By Jane M. Ferguson

Making Merit, Making Civil Society: Free Funeral Service Societies and Merit-Making in Contemporary Myanmar
By Mu-Lung Hsu

Thrice-Honored Sangharaja Saramedha (1801-1882): Arakan-Chittagong Buddhism across Colonial and Counter-Colonial Power
By D. Mitra Barua

Research as Strategy: Reactivating Mythologies and Building a Collective Memory in Wah Nu and Tun Win Aung’s The Name (2008-)
By Caroline Ha Thuc

Bottom-Up Explorations: Locating Rule of Law Intermediaries after Transition in Myanmar
By Kristina Simion

Smoke, No Fire 
By Richard M. Cooler

Imperial Intoxication: Alcohol and the Making of Colonial Indochina by Gerard Sasges (review)
By Luke Corbin

Constitutionalism and Legal Change in Myanmar ed. by Andrew Harding (review)
By Elliot Prasse-Freeman

Saffron Shadows and Salvaged Scripts: Literary Life in Myanmar under Censorship and in Transition by Ellen Wiles (review)
By Kenneth Wong

Journal of Burma Studies 23-1
The Journal of Burma Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2019)

UH Press to publish The Journal of Burma Studies in partnership with the Northern Illinois University, Center for Burma Studies

The University of Hawai‘i Press will publish and distribute The Journal of Burma Studies, one of the only scholarly peer-reviewed journals that focus exclusively on Burma/Myanmar. This new partnership with the Center for Burma Studies at Northern Illinois University begins with volume 23, 2019. The complete content of the journal is available online in Project MUSE.

UH Press Interim Director and Publisher, Joel Cosseboom, said: “We are pleased to partner with the NIU Center for Burma Studies on this important and unique journal.”

Edited by Catherine Raymond from Northern Illinois University, Center for Burma Studies and Jane M. Ferguson from Australian National University, The Journal of Burma Studies seeks to publish the best scholarly research focused on Burma/Myanmar and its minority and diasporic cultures from a variety of disciplines, ranging from art history and religious studies, to economics and law.

Dr. Ferguson looks forward to collaborating with UH Press to launch innovative and engaging issues of The Journal of Burma Studies. “University of Hawai‘i Press has consistently produced some of the most exciting publications on Southeast Asia as well as Burma/Myanmar Studies, so I am delighted that JBS will now work with them,” she said.

The journal is jointly sponsored by the Burma Studies Group and the Center for Burma Studies at Northern Illinois University. Published since 1997, the journal draws together research and critical reflection on Burma/Myanmar from scholars across Asia, North America and Europe.

Content is available on the Project MUSE platform.

Subscribe at: https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/jbs/

Submit your manuscript at: https://jbs.scholasticahq.com/for-authors

The Journal of Burma Studies joins UH Press’s extensive list of Asian and Southeast Asian studies journals including: Asian Perspectives, Korean Studies, Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, Review of Japanese Culture and Society, and others.

About UH Press

 The University of Hawai‘i Press supports the mission of the university through the publication of books and journals of exceptional merit. It strives to advance knowledge through the dissemination of scholarship—new information, interpretations, methods of analysis—with a primary focus on Asian, Hawaiian, Pacific, Asian American and global studies. It also serves the public interest by providing high-quality books and resource materials of educational value on topics related to Hawai‘i’s people, culture, and natural environment. Through its publications the Press seeks to stimulate public debate and educate both within and outside the classroom.

About Northern Illinois University, Center for Burma Studies

 Founded in 1987, the Center collects and preserves information and artifacts of all kinds concerning the study of the peoples and cultures of Burma/Myanmar, and makes these materials broadly available for research and study.

The Center enjoys a unique relationship with the Burma Studies Foundation, which assures that all Burma/Myanmar-related items donated to the foundation will be offered to the center for inclusion and conservation within the university’s collections. Oversight by the foundation combines strong support of the center with lasting responsibility to the field of Burma/Myanmar studies.

The Center for Burma Studies is a non-political, non-degree granting, administrative and academic unit within Northern Illinois University. The Center has the following goals:

  • The maintenance and expansion of a comprehensive research library to sustain the field of Burma studies
  • The collection, care, and exhibition of the arts of Burma
  • The support and promotion of undergraduate and graduate teaching concerning Burma
  • The organization and hosting of self-supporting national and international conferences on Burma studies
  • The publication of relevant scholarship on Burma
  • The care and enhancement of archival resources such as photographs, music records, oral histories, personal papers, and field notes
  • The promotion of outreach activities to schools and communities
  • Encouraging the performance of Burmese arts
  • The securing of educational opportunities through scholarships, internships, and fellowships