H-SEASIA: CFP - Women Warriors in SEA: Past and Present, ICAS 5
----- Original Message -----
From: "Valerie Yeo" <hseasia@GMAIL.COM>
To: <H-SEASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 12:02 AM
Subject: H-SEASIA: CFP - Women Warriors in SEA: Past and Present, ICAS 5
> From: Tobias Rettig <magic_rettig@hotmail.com>
> Date: Nov 29, 2006 2:27 AM
> Subject: CFP - Women Warriors in SEA: Past and Present, ICAS 5, Kuala
> Lumpur, 2-5/8/07
>
> Call for Papers
> Women Warriors in Southeast Asia
> Conference: ICAS 5 (International Convention of Asia Scholars),
> 2-5 August 2007, Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre (KLCC), Kuala Lumpur,
> Malaysia
>
> Background
>
> Female warriors in Southeast Asia come from a historical and legendary
> tradition of women leaders in their respective societies. Women who
> fought in the Vietnamese struggles against the French and the
> Americans looked to the Trung sisters (d. 41 C.E.), Lady Trieu An (d.
> 248 CE) and Thi Xuan when they heeded Ho Chi Minh's call for all
> Vietnamese-men and women-to work together. In the Philippines, female
> revolutionaries are frequently seduced by the idea of following in the
> footsteps of Gabriela Silang (1731-1763), who became a female
> "general" after taking over the revolutionary army led by her slain
> husband against the Spanish. Mainland Southeast Asian states such as
> Cambodia, Laos and Thailand have their own legends of warrior queens
> riding on elephants during battles.
>
> In more contemporary times, women have been active participants in
> independence struggles, civil wars, and/or communist insurgencies in
> the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia.
>
> And yet, despite such common histories, no systematic or comparative
> study has been undertaken that examines these warrior women across the
> region. This is all the more surprising since Southeast Asia has the
> reputation of having relatively egalitarian male-female relations
> (Andaya 2006), with female training in the martial arts and
> participation in war - as leaders, combat troops, palatial body
> guards, or in supporting roles - appears well supported by recent
> scholarship.
>
> Comparisons across time and space (see also Andaya 2004) would be a
> good test for the relative male-female equality thesis.
>
> Most recent publications - most of them on Vietnam - have focused on a
> single country (e.g. Gottschang Turner and Phanh Thanh Hao 1998;
> Taylor 1999), army (e.g. Khoo 2004) or particular female leaders
> (Quinn-Judge 2000). With a few exceptions (Andaya 2004; Hong 2006),
> the focus has been on the 20th rather than earlier centuries. The
> predominance of close-up studies contrasts with several ambitious
> comparative attempts of a truly global study of the phenomenon from
> the perspectives of history (Fraser 1994), ethnology (Jones 1997) or
> international relations (Goldstein 2001), accounting for the
> recurrence of women in combat and/or their participation in war in a
> wide range of different social, cultural, regional, or historical
> settings. These truly global studies, however, often suffer from a
> lack of knowledge of the most up-to-date secondary literature and are
> sometimes factually inaccurate.
>
> Aims and Scope of the Conference Panel
>
> The conference panel (and related book project) on 'Women Warriors in
> Southeast Asia, Past and Present', aims to fill the perceived gap, the
> lack of a broader regional perspective, in the literature. It aims to
> break down barriers between country-specific studies, different eras,
> and academic disciplines to provide the first multidisciplinary,
> comparative, and longitudinal study of women warriors in SEA. The
> assembled contributions would therefore bring together studies from a
> wide range of societies/polities and eras (pre-modern, early modern,
> modern), and a wide range of disciplinary approaches (e.g.
> archaeology, philology, history, ethnology, psychology, gender
> studies).
>
> In addition to encouraging a better understanding of women warriors
> across time and space, the goal of the conference panel is to publish
> selected papers in an edited volume. The ultimate aim would be for
> different Southeast Asian scholars to learn from each other, and to
> raise academic and public awareness of this 'amazing amazon'
> phenomenon in Southeast Asia.
>
> Some Definitions
>
> 'Female Warriors': We are adopting two working definitions of a female
> warrior. Broadly defined, a 'female warrior' is someone who has
> directly and indirectly participated in social and revolutionary
> struggles. Such female roles include military commanders and party
> intellectuals, as well as roles played as part of support networks
> such as organizers, educators, couriers, spies, propagandists in the
> headquarters and in village bases. A more narrow definition of
> 'warrior' as someone who is involved in warfare and even combat,
> including a leader or ruler in a time of war, the four-star general
> (whether from the safety of headquarters or in the field), an elite
> commando or spy operating behind enemy lines, the rank-and-file
> corporal ensuring logistics, or the part-time guerilla fighter who is
> a peasant at day and a guerilla at night.
>
> 'Southeast Asia': Our definition of Southeast Asia extends beyond the
> current ASEAN region (incl. East Timor) and would extend into the
> 'wider Southeast Asia', such as the southern parts of China.
>
> Possible Themes
>
> In line with the above scope and definitions of the panel, papers
> might deal with the following, from a more particular focus on certain
> kinds of warriors to more thematic concerns [though this list is far
> from exhaustive]:
>
> * legendary warrior queens such as the Trung sisters in Vietnam
> or Lady Sinn (512-602 C.E.) in southern Guangdong: e.g. the extent to
> which they are real; whether they were (mis-)appropriated by
> nationalists; and their present-day worship;
> * Women and War/Women and Revolution: An exploration on how the
> participation of women in revolutionary movements/military
> organizations shaped the internal dynamics and nature of the
> movement/organization;
> * Limits of Revolutionary Theory and Practice on the lives of
> revolutionary women: A discussion of how official dogma/rules of
> revolutionary organizations - particularly communist movements - limit
> women's roles and control their personal lives;
> * Love and Sex in a Time of revolution: An exploration of how
> women's intimate lives such as courtships, marriages, affairs, and
> pregnancies shape their involvement in revolutionary movements, and
> arguably expose the false dichotomy of the 'public' and 'private';
> * female spiritual warfare in early modern Southeast Asia and in
> headhunting societies,
> * female soldiers, guerillas, fighter pilots, generals and
> leaders in war in recorded history: nationalism, nation-building, and
> women at arms;
> * the mobilization of women in independence struggles, civil
> war, etc.; their motivations, their training and performance as
> warriors; their transformation;
> * women warriors in historical TV dramas, martial arts movies,
> literature, and popular fiction;
> * Gender, group violence, and war: theories in a Southeast Asian
> and possibly global perspective;
> * Relationship between societal and other structures (religion,
> economics, political system) and the kind of female warriors they
> generally '(re)produce';
> * Factors pushing and pulling women into the war system and in
> revolutionary movements.
>
>
> Abstracts
>
> Abstracts of the proposed conference paper should be no longer than
> one-page (Times New Roman, Size 12, double lined) and be submitted by
> email as a MS Word document by December 1, 2006 to the two organizers.
> All presentations will be considered for publication in an edited
> volume
> of essays.
>
> Contacts
> Please email your abstracts to Vina Lanzona and Tobias Rettig at:
>
> Vina A. Lanzona, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor History
> University of Hawai'i-Manoa
> 2530 Dole Street
> Honolulu, HI
> USA
> Tel: 808.956.6769
> email: vlanzona@hawaii.edu
>
> Tobias Rettig, Ph.D.
> Practice Assistant Professor
> School of Economics and Social Sciences
> Singapore Management University
> 90 Stamford Road
> Singapore 178903
> Republic of Singapore
> Tel: +65-68.28-08.66
> e-mail: tobiasrettig@smu.edu.sg
>
>
> For more information on ICAS 5, please view the conference website at
> www.icas5kl.com