Gender – UH Press

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

Posted on April 19, 2023April 20, 2023 by mmyama

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.

Pacific Science, Volume 76, Number 1 (2022) — *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: Kapaemahu, Remembering Miriam Fuchs, Burmese Literature + Visuality and Materiality in Postwar Japan

Posted on March 6, 2023March 6, 2023 by mmyama

The Contemporary Pacific

Volume 34 Number 2

The new issue features the following artwork and articles:

About the Artist: Yuki Kihara

Kapaemahu: Toward Story Sovereignty of a Hawaiian Tradition
of Healing and Gender Diversity
Dean Hamer and Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu

The Kula of the Gospels: Christianity, Magic, and Exchange in
the Trobriand Islands
Sergio Jarillo

Contemporary Moana Mobilities: Settler-Colonial Citizenship,
Upward Mobility, and Transnational Pacific Identities
Patrick Saulmatino Thomsen, Lana Lopesi, and
Kevin Lujan Lee

Toward an Understanding of Patron-Client Politics and
Corruption in Papua New Guinea: A Narrative Review
Teddy Winn

Find more at Project MUSE.

Biography

Volume 45, Number 2 (2022)

The new issue contains the following articles as a remembrance for Miriam Fuchs who was an active contributor to the journal. It also contains the annual bibliography:

Miriam Fuchs, Life Writing, and Life
Craig Howes

A Voyage Beyond the Text as Self: Remembering Miriam Fuchs Holzman
Cynthia G. Franklin

Miriam, The Bookies, and I
Joseph H. O’Mealy

In the Warm Waters of Lanikai: Paddling with Miria
Leinaala Davis

A Tribute to Miriam Fuchs: With Love from Her Student
Amy Calrson

Find more articles at Project MUSE.

Mānoa

Volume 34, Number 2 (2022)
In the Silence

The new Mānoa issue features a special section on the literature of Burma/Myanmar. In the introduction, “To Write a History,” guest editors Penny Edwards, ko ko thett, and Kenneth Wong begin:

“‘How to write history / in a language / that has no past tense’ asks co-editor ko ko thett in his poetry collection The Burden of Being Burmese. How to publish literature under a military regime with no future tense?

“In Myanmar today, the simplest utterance is punishable as the defamation of the state. A song, a poem, a music video, an elegy are all open invitations to a cowardly regime to pursue their authors with impunity.”

Find literature from Burma/Myanmar, South Asia and more at Project MUSE.

Review of Japan Culture and Society

Volume 32 (2020)

The new issue includes the special section, “Visuality and Materiality in Postwar Japan” guest edited by Álex Bueno and Yasutaka Tsuji, and “Japan in Los Angeles” edited by Rika Hiro. Selections include:

Design as Cultural Representation: Visuality and Materiality in Postwar Japan
Yasutaka Tsuji (Translated by Álex Bueno)

Japan’s Postwar Building: Japanese Architecture and the West
Ryuichi Hamaguchi

Nature and Thought in Japanese Design
Teiji Itoh

Yamashiro: Imagined Home and the Aesthetics of Hollywood Japanism
Dianne Lee Shen

Bruce Yonemoto: Made in Occupied Japan
Rika Hiro

Find more articles, an interview with Manika Nagare, and literature in translation at Project MUSE.

Journal of World History, vol. 29, no. 1 (March 2018)

Posted on March 7, 2018April 12, 2018 by uhp-guest

Journal of World History volume 29, number 1 arrives with three articles covering Brazil, China, and India:

Articles

The British Empire and the Suppression of the Slave Trade to Brazil: A Global History Analysis by Tâmis Parron
- Abstract: This essay examines the connections between the British free trade experiment, the reorganizing of the British Empire and the ultimate suppression of the transatlantic slave trade to Brazil in its fully global operative context. While most analyses of the nineteenth-century transatlantic slave trade focus on bilateral diplomatic relations or national decision-making processes, this essay puts forth a broader analytical framework. It places the end of the transatlantic illegal slave trade to Brazil in 1850 within the dynamics of the world-economy. In a broader sense, this essay sheds new light on debates about capitalism and slavery as it reveals nineteenth-century capitalism not as a static background for historical analysis, but rather as a dialectical process moving through a sequence of disruptive commodity market integrations, each of which posed specific economic and political challenges for slaveholders and antislavery actors alike.

The Rise of Nationalism in a Cosmopolitan Port City: The Foreign Communities of Shanghai during the First World War by Tobit Vandamme
- Abstract: By the early 1900s, globalization and imperialism had created cosmopolitan cities such as the Chinese treaty port of Shanghai, where foreign minorities lived side by side. The outbreak of the First World War put enormous pressure on these multiethnic urban societies. By exploring how the war altered the cohabitation of Westerners in Shanghai, this article connects with current debates on the mechanisms of longdistance nationalism and cosmopolitanism as well as on the importation of conflict in diaspora communities. The many imperial diasporas of Shanghai mostly lived in the French- and British-controlled territories, where the balance of power was renegotiated during the war. Analyzing local community newspapers and diplomatic archives, this article explains why nationalism superseded the shared feeling of cosmopolitanism that prevailed before the war. The cosmopolitan tradition and political complexity clearly delayed the arrival of the war at Shanghai, but could not prevent the process.

Present at the Creation: India, the Global Economy, and the Bretton Woods Conference by Aditya Balasubramanian and Srinath Raghavan
- Abstract: This article considers India’s participation in the Bretton Woods conference, where the framework for the post-World War II global economic order emerged. Building on the new historiography of Bretton Woods as well as a more specialized literature on the Indian economy, it shows India’s role in Bretton Woods at the confluence of national, imperial, and global historical processes. The article argues that India’s presence in the conference shaped the evolution of the country’s relationship to international economic institutions. The article addresses India’s changing role in the British Empire and world economy, the evolution of a discourse of Indian economic development alongside anti-colonial nationalism, the formulation of Indian objectives for the conference in the aftermath of the economic dislocations of World War II, and the interpretation of the outcomes of the meeting at home that informed India’s subsequent ambiguous relationship with international economic organizations.

Plus 15 book reviews and books received.

Find the full text of the issue at Project MUSE

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About the Journal

The Journal of World History publishes research into historical questions requiring the investigation of evidence on a global, comparative, cross-cultural, or transnational scale. It is devoted to the study of phenomena that transcend the boundaries of single states, regions, or cultures, such as large-scale population movements, long-distance trade, cross-cultural technology transfers, and the transnational spread of ideas.

Subscriptions

Individual subscription is by membership in the World History Association. Institutional subscriptions available through UH Press.

Submissions

The Journal of World History is proud to introduce a new article and peer review submission system, accessible now at at jwh.msubmit.net.

Journal of World History, vol. 28, nos. 3 & 4 (2017)

Posted on January 18, 2018 by bentone

Excerpt from La Vie Indo-Chinoise — Japanese sex workers occupied a special place in the desires and fantasies of French colonial men in Asia as seen in ‘Our Hungarians,’ *La Vie Indo-Chinoise*, November 13, 1897. From “Sex and the Colonial City” in this issue.

Journal of World History volume 28, numbers 3&4 is a special double issue guest edited by Tracey Rizzo on Gender and Empire. It includes more than 400 pages of articles and book reviews from world history scholars.

From the Editor’s Introduction:

Gender and Empire as a subfield of world history goes beyond the study of the men and women who made and unmade empires. Intimacies generated ties that facilitated or impeded the modernization of family and nation, demarcating contact zones. Bodies–adorned, fetishized, public–displayed and negotiated imperial relations. Detritus, the material remains of empire and intimacy, lodged itself in the institutions and discourses of modernity. When world historians talk across boundaries and borders, we situate disjointed ruins in broader trends and patterns, without which they are mere curiosities. Assembled here: a Chinese scalp; a silver buckle from Malaya; a bawdy cartoon from Hanoi; a hybrid recipe from Nigeria; dossiers from Lebanon and El Salvador; government orders promoting or suppressing prostitution… Confined to a national or even imperial history, such fragments do not tell us anything about coloniality. Here they do.