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.

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.

Journal of World History Special Issue: Transnational Approaches to the History of Race and Racism – Free!

The World History Association will be hosting its annual meeting at the University of Pittsburgh’s World History Center from June 22 to 24, on the theme “ENERGIES.” The Journal of World History offers this accompanying special collection, “Transnational Approaches to the History of Race of Racism,” free on the Project MUSE platform through September 30. Select World History titles will also be 30% off from July 1 through Sept 30, 2023.

The special issue “Transnational Approaches to the History of Race and Racism” draws together some of the journal’s most frequently cited and downloaded material alongside some less well-known contributions. Together, these articles compare historic roles, debates, and struggles in relation to today’s trials and tribulations with race consciousness.


Bricktop with patrons and fellow singer Mabel Mercer in Bricktop’s club, featured in “Jazz and the Evolution of Black American Cosmopolitanism in Interwar Paris” by Rachel Gillett in this special collection.

Editor Matthew P. Romaniello talks about this Special Issue in excerpts of his introduction, “Race and Racism beyond National Borders”:

Assembling a special collection of previously published articles has created an opportunity to engage with the legacy of Journal of World History. As with the first of these issues four years ago, I took the opportunity to review our “most downloaded” articles list from Project Muse. It has changed more than I expected – not only from the arrival of newly-published articles but also from articles published decades ago that have gained new prominence. One of those served as the launching point for this collection, Matthew Pratt Guterl’s “The New Race Consciousness: Race, Nation, and Empire in American Culture, 1910-1925,” a “top 10” article for 2022, though it was first published in 1999.

The renewed interest in race and racism is hardly unique to Journal of World History, much less global audiences in this particular historical moment. However, looking to JWH for an article on racism in America may not be the first stop on anyone’s pursuit of more information on the topic. For much of its history, JWH only published a few articles with American content.

Research on race and racism, settler colonialism and anticolonial rhetoric, cosmopolitanism and “Orientalism,” involving global empires and modern nations, has regularly appeared throughout the journal’s history. The benefits of pursuing these topics through a transnational lens broadens our discussions and hopefully encourages more thoughtful engagement with their presence in our daily lives. The articles included in this collection highlight these themes in a variety of regions, offering original perspectives on the entangled debates of race and racism globally.

It should not come as any surprise to a reader of Journal of World History that the history of colonialism is fully entangled with racial hierarchies, much less that colonial and neocolonial policies imposed racialized systems, whether it imposed segregation or achieved assimilation. Neither supported equality. Nor did cosmopolitan lives, those people who crossed borders and interacted with foreign cultures, necessarily demonstrate greater understanding or compassion for diversity. This special collection does highlight that these challenges are not unique or specific to the United States, and, perhaps, we might inform our ongoing discussions of diversity, equality, and inclusion by considering other viewpoints and histories beyond our own borders.  


The World History Association will host its annual meeting in person, from June 22 to 24, on the theme “ENERGIES.” The Journal of World History offers this digital special issue “Transnational Approaches to the History of Race and Racisms” free on the Project MUSE platform through the end of September 2023. Select World History titles in will also be 30% off July 1 through September 30 with coupon code WHA2023.

Journals: Founders of Asian Theatre, a Comparative Study of Empire + More

ATJ 40-1

Asian Theatre Journal

Volume 40, Number 1 (2023)

This new issue commemorates key individuals in Asian theatre. Editor Siyuan Liu explains:

This issue starts with two long-planned articles in ATJ’s ‘founders of the field’ series that started with two clusters of articles in 2011 (28.2) and 2013 (30.2), followed by a number of ‘founding mothers’ articles between 2014 and 2017 (31.1, 32.2, 33.2, 34.1), continuing in this issue with Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei’s profile of Betty Bernhard and Julie Iezzi’s article on Jonah Salz. Sorgenfrei focuses on Bernard’s extraordinary capacity in discovering and promoting aspects of Indian performance to the world through fundraising and sponsoring international engagements by India artists, students training and productions of India plays with Indian artists at Pomona College, as well as several research based films and videos, all of which made Bernard, as Sorgenfrei puts it, ‘an important influencer well before that concept became a social media meme.’

The second ‘founder’ article, written by Julie Iezzi, focuses on Jonah Salz, who stands out, in comparison to other founders profiled in this series, as a Western theatre director, producer, teacher, scholar, and translator primarily based in an Asian country, in his case Kyoto, Japan. Among Salz’s wide-ranging accomplishments, Iezzi focuses on his co-founded Noho Theatre Group that has produced hundreds of shows and toured internationally over forty years; his co-established Traditional Theatre Training (TTT) program that since 1984 has trained hundreds of artists in noh, kyōgen, and nihon buyō; and his research and publications, most notably as editor-in-chief of A History of Japanese Theatre, a monumental achievement via international collaboration.

Find more articles at Project MUSE.

China Review International

Volume 27, Numbers 3& 4 (2020)

The new double issue includes the following reviews:

Vincent Goossaert. Making the Gods Speak: The Ritual Production of Revelation in Chinese Religious History.
Reviewed by Gilbert Z. Chen

Susan Greenhalgh and Li Zhang, editors. Can Science and Technology Save China?
Reviewed by Robert Peckham

Li Guo. Writing Gender in Early Modern Chinese Women’s Tanci Fiction.
Reviewed by Jing Zhang

Dongfeng Xu. Friendship and Hospitality: The Jesuit-Confucian Encounter in Late Ming China.
Reviewed by Bin Song

Brook Ziporyn. Zhuangzi: The Complete Writings.
Reviewed by David McCraw

Find more reviews at Project MUSE.

Journal of World History

Special Issue: Global Travel, Exploration, and Comparative Study of Empire

Volume 34, Number 1 (2023)

In this new special issue Guest Editor Scott C. M. Bailey discusses the fascinating study of long-distance travelers during the late nineteenth century in this introduction:

This special issue addresses what can be gained from a comparative examination of long-distance travelers during the age of empire. Questions to address include: to what extent did the individual identities, personalities, and backgrounds of elite travelers relate to their opinions on the state of colonial or imperial affairs which they observed in their travels? Were imperial travelers’ observations representative of the imperial core’s opinions and assumptions about imperial spaces, including peripheral ones? To what degree did individual travelers who were traveling to destinations which were under the control of a rival imperial power provide descriptions or impressions which confirmed or rejected assumptions about the colonial or imperial relationship? Can travelers’ descriptions (those travelers from outside or competing empires) be used to provide an objective view of the nature of competing empires? How did factors like the occupations, educational backgrounds, class identifications, gender, life experiences, race, identity, or cultural backgrounds of individual travelers define or shape their descriptions? How did the purposes of these travels relate to the kinds of observations which were made? The articles in this special edition address these important questions, while also highlighting reasons why this era saw an increase in the volume and frequency of international long-distance travel.

Find more articles, review articles, and book reviews at Project MUSE.

Journal of World History Special Issue: Global Travel, Exploration, and Comparative Study of Empire

A new special issue from the Journal of World History is now available to readers on Project MUSE. 

This new special issue features guest editor Scott C. M. Bailey. Since 2018, Bailey has been fortunate to have support of a research grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). This has allowed him to explore the history of travel and exploration in a global context. He is now focusing on this topic in relation to the area around the Sea of Okhotsk and am preparing a book manuscript now on this topic.

We had the opportunity to speak to Bailey about this special issue:

University of Hawai‘i Press: Tell us how this special issue came together and why is this issue different from what JWH has published in the past?

Scott C. M. Bailey: My idea for this special issue originated in spring 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic. As countries closed borders and international travel was drastically curtailed, it led me to think more about the history of long-distance travel. I wanted to understand better how the international movement of people for business, tourism, research pursuits, and many other reasons today, which has become so routinized (and was also so disrupted during the pandemic), existed in an earlier form in the late nineteenth century world.

I thought that a comparative global analysis of the accounts of travelers from the “age of imperialism” in the late nineteenth century could forward our collective understanding of empires of the time, while also shining light on the degree to which long-distance travel reflected inequalities while also being done to serve commercial and political elites’ interests. I was fortunate that the colleagues who approached me with their ideas for papers each had very interesting examples from their own research backgrounds to work with, and that they were all excited to explore their topics through a new comparative framework.

“‘Mr Dooley’ on Sir Aleck”, New York Times February 3, 1907. Public domain.  Featured in "Passing the Torch? Anglo-American Encounters in the British West Indies and Negotiating White Supremacy, c. 1865–1914" by Alex Goodall.
“‘Mr Dooley’ on Sir Aleck”, New York Times February 3, 1907. Public domain. Featured in “Passing the Torch? Anglo-American Encounters in the British West Indies and Negotiating White Supremacy, c. 1865–1914” by Alex Goodall.

UHP: What were some of the challenges with this issue? Is the pandemic still an issue with the creation of these articles and research?

SB: The pandemic has of course made historical research more difficult in many ways, curtailing travel to some locations and restricting access to materials that need to be accessed in person. But to some degree the technological changes which the pandemic brought have helped make some research easier, since so many rare historical sources that could only be found in specific archives or libraries are becoming available to access online, as many institutions have moved or are moving towards digitization of their collections in the last few years. I think the pandemic has made us all adapt in many ways to the new circumstances, and our research has been in some ways strengthened by that. Regardless, I think most historians are happy that they can get back to in person research again. There’s no replacement for the unique experience of being in libraries and archives.

UHP: Is there anything that is not to miss in this volume?

SB: I think when you read this collection of articles together, you will find that each of them highlights these issues well. This special issue will probably be very interesting for those in more traditional area studies backgrounds, too, since each article has a regional focus of sorts (although always with external/global examples to compare those regional examples with).

 UHP: Is there anything else you would like our readers to know?

SB: I hope that readers will continue the work that our authors in this special edition have done with employing a comparative lens to the study of late nineteenth century travel. As I mention in my introductory piece for the special edition, I think that there is potential for many more studies that take a similar approach, given the high volume of existing travel accounts from that era. I hope some will be inspired by this collection to locate aspects of their own research topics that could benefit from taking this kind of comparative approach. I would be very pleased to read future articles in the Journal of World History which take this comparative approach to exploring the relationships between empire and long-distance travel.

Read the special issue here on Project MUSE.

Journal of World History, vol. 26, no. 4 (2015)

Journal of World History volume 26 number 4 is a special issue edited by Gareth Curless, Stacey Hynd, Temilola Alanamu, and Katherine Roscoe. Titled “The British World as World History: Networks in Imperial and Global History,” this dedicated issue features imperial historians inspired by the “cultural turn” and the rise of global history. Instead of accounts that focus on a metropolitan center and a colonial periphery, scholars now advocate

a decentered approach to the study of empire, which emphasizes the importance of paying close attention to the multiple networks of capital, goods, information, and people that existed within and between empires. While these networked treatments of empire have added much to our understanding of imperialism, the articles in this special issue argue that historians must remain sensitive to the specifics of the imperial experience, the limits of imperialism’s global reach, and the way in which imperialism could lead to new forms of exclusion and inequality.

Articles in the special issue include:

  • The Establishment of the Tongwen Guan and the Fragile Sin-British Peace of the 1860s, by Melissa Mouat
  • “Home Allies”: Female Networks, Tensions, and Conflicted Loyalties in India and Van Diemen’s Land, 1826-1849, by Felicity Berry
  • Settler Historicism and Anticolonial Rebuttal in the British World, 1880-1920, by Andam Behm
  • The “Truth” about Kenya: Connection and Contestation in the 1956 Kamiti Controversy, by Katherine Bruce-Lockhart
  • “Tropical Allsorts”: The Transnational Flavor of British Development Policies in Africa, by Charlotte Lynia Riley
  • Functions and Failures of Transnational Activism: Discourses of Children’s Resistance and Repression in Global Anti-Apartheid Networks, by Emily Bridger
  • Book reviews

Continue reading “Journal of World History, vol. 26, no. 4 (2015)”