The Journal of Burma Studies: Q&A with Jane Ferguson on Gender and Social Change in Myanmar Special Issue

Photo of Jane Ferguson
Photograph provided by Jane Ferguson

A new special issue from The Journal of Burma Studies is now available to readers on Project MUSE. “Gender and Social Change in Myanmar” analyzes the role of gender within social activism, everyday practices, identity politics, and religious histories in Myanmar are explored in this volume.

The Journal of Burma Studies was established in 1996, with current editor Jane M. Ferguson coming on board in December 2017.  She is an Associate Professor of Anthropology, Southeast Asian History, and School of Culture, History, and Language at the Australian National University with a PhD in Anthropology and Southeast Asian history from Cornell University.

Ferguson’s publications include Repossessing Shanland: Myanmar, Thailand, and a Nation-State Deferred (University of Wisconsin Press, 2021) and Silver Screens, and Golden Dreams: A Social History of Burmese Cinema (University of Hawai‘i Press, forthcoming).

Below she shares with UH Press what its been like these last five years as the editor for The Journal of Burma Studies:

University of Hawai‘i Press: After half a decade sitting at the editorial desk, what issues or historic events have changed in your field? Additionally, why was this issue important now?

Jane Ferguson: The horrific events and repression following General Min Aung Hlaing’s 2021 military coup in Myanmar — for a country struggling with economic collapse from the COVID pandemic — constitute a large-scale humanitarian crisis, with war enveloping the country even more than in previous decades. JBS’ charter is to support research and education about and within the country; it is a minuscule contribution where civil war and repression are horrendous, but it does represent one forum for discussing issues that matter to Myanmar, from politics to history, art to popular culture and more. It is also worth engaging with Myanmar’s diverse, rich cultures, ecologies, languages, and human creativity. There is a massive humanitarian crisis in Myanmar, but focusing only on suffering risks ignoring the cultural diversity and tremendous vibrance of its people, historically and today.

UHP: JBS recently introduced a new Special Issue, “Gender and Social Change.” How did this come about? 

JF: “Gender and Social Change” is a capacious theme, and remains crucial for any context and study. It is accessible in the sense that despite the articles’ individual topics and particular research in Myanmar, the lessons are relatable to others. This issue deals with topics including gendered activism and transformation, religiosity, global popular culture, sexism, homophobia, and cyber-bullying; subjects of universal concern and relevance.  

The Special Issue on “Gender and Social Change in Myanmar” is part of our plan to reach out to and engage new and emerging scholars. JBS has general issues which gather individually-submitted articles, but the strategy for this Special Issue was to take a general, but pressing theme, and seek out different responses to it. We advertised the Special Issue via a call for abstracts, worked with authors through peer-review and the revision process, and wrote an introduction engaging the papers thematically and historically. 

UHP: What is next for JBS

JF: The Journal of Burma Studies will carry on its research and educational charter, working with new and returning authors to encourage lively debate and discussion about issues relevant to Myanmar, Southeast Asian Studies, or disciplinary themes writ large. Please stay tuned for the next call for papers for a thematic issue, or if you have a research topic you are working on please get in touch!

UHP: Do you have any advice for academics interested in submitting to The Journal of Burma Studies?

JF: Anyone interested in contributing to the Journal simply needs to send us an email and let us know! We have standard research articles, but also sections about research notes and book reviews. To support and encourage new authors, we have short written guides to help them navigate the waves of academic publishing.   

The Journal of Burma Studies
Volume 27, Number 1 (2023)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editor’s Note: Special Issue: Gender and Social Change in Myanmar
Jane M. Ferguson

Deconstructing and Reinforcing Gender Norms and Cultural Taboos in Myanmar’s Spring
Revolution

Aye Lei Tun

Our Htamein, Our Flag, Our Victory: The Role of Young Women in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution
Marlar, Justine Chambers, and Elena

Reconsidering Renunciation: Shifting Subjectivities and Models of Practice in the Biography of a
Buddhist Woman

MK Long

The Gendered Rebel: Challenging Gendered Norms through Punk in Urban Yangon
Carolin Hirsch

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Established in 1996, The Journal of Burma Studies is the premier peer-reviewed academic print journal that focuses exclusively on Burma. The Journal of Burma Studies is jointly sponsored by the Burma Studies Group and the Center for Burma Studies at Northern Illinois University.

It is published twice a year for the Center for Burma Studies. The Journal seeks to publish the best scholarly research focused on Burma/Myanmar, its ethnic nationalities, stateless and diasporic cultures from a variety of disciplines, ranging from art history and religious studies, to economics and law.

Submit your manuscript online.

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.

Portraits of Southeast Asian Modernity

Figures of Southeast Asia ModernityFigures of Southeast Asian Modernity, edited by Joshua Baker, Erik Harms, and Johan Lindquist, brings together the fieldwork of over eighty scholars and covers the nine major countries of the region: Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. An introduction outlines important social transformations in Southeast Asia and key theoretical and methodological innovations that result from ethnographic attention to the study of key figures. Each section begins with an introduction by a country editor followed by short essays offering vivid and intimate portraits set against the background of contemporary Southeast Asia. The result is a volume that combines scholarly rigor with a meaningful, up-to-date portrayal of a region of the world undergoing rapid change. A reference bibliography offers suggestions for further reading.

“The idea of capturing recent transformations of Southeast Asia through vignettes about familiar yet idiosyncratic individuals is brilliant. The everyday experiences and aspirations of people trying to make sense of their lives and dreams convey a complex and often surprising view of contemporary cross-currents, upheavals, anxieties, and struggles in a volatile region. This volume offers a great way for students to understand and empathize with ordinary people and nations in rapid motion.” —Aihwa Ong, co-editor of Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments in the Art of Being Global

January 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3741-9 / $25.00 (PAPER)