This book curates and examines colonial-era photographs from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries sourced from photo-archives of former British and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia, uncovering how femininities in the Malay world are represented through visual imagery and their role in shaping colonial social relations.
This book curates and examines colonial-era photographs from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries sourced from photo-archives of former British and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia, uncovering how femininities in the Malay world are represented through visual imagery and their role in shaping colonial social relations.
Through seven thematic chapters ranging from colonial exhibitions to women's work, fashion, postcard representation, and girls' schooling, the book demonstrates how photographs contain dialogic potential to question colonial power structures. Using visual ethnography and decolonial analysis, it reveals how the intersections of camera, chimera, and colonisation subtly divided people along lines of race, class, and gender. Although many subjects remain nameless, their images reveal layered narratives of colonial social formations and evolving national histories.
This book is perfect for those studying visual ethnography, decolonial methodologies, and the intersection of photography and colonialism in the Malay world, as well as scholars, postgraduate students, and researchers in postcolonial studies, Southeast Asian studies, visual culture, gender studies, and colonial history.
List of figures and table vii
Preface and acknowledgement x
List of abbreviations xii
Glossary of Malay terms used in the text xiii
1 Introduction: The photo-archive and femininities in the Malay world 1
MAZNAH MOHAMAD, BAHAR GÜRSEL, AND SURIANI SURATMAN
2 Re-curating and de-archiving many femininities through a virtual exhibition
on Being and Becoming 23
MAZNAH MOHAMAD
3 Disrupting an imagined everyday life: Womens work and place 52
SURIANI SURATMAN
4 Pursuing the woman in the white dress: Photography and (im)posed female
images in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Malay world 77
BAHAR GÜRSEL
5 Constructing femininities and race through the postcard: What and who is
the Malay woman? 101
MAZNAH MOHAMAD
6 From needlework to needling: Picturing and puncturing the schooling of
girls in colonial Malaya and Singapore 137
MAZNAH MOHAMAD
7 Conclusion: Epilogue to other femininities and summary of themes 170
MAZNAH MOHAMAD, BAHAR GÜRSEL, AND SURIANI SURATMAN
Index 185
BK-
Maznah Mohamad
is currently Honorary Fellow and formerly served as Associate Professor and Head with the Department of Malay Studies at the National University of Singapore. She has taught, researched and published extensively on the themes of gender, Islam, politics, sexuality and Malay manuscript traditions.
Bahar Gürsel
is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Türkiye). Her areas of interest include social and cultural history of the United States and Europe, nineteenth-century childrens literature, ephemera studies, visual culture and the representation of the East in the West.
Suriani Suratman
is Senior Lecturer with the Department of Malay Studies at the National University of Singapore. Her areas of research are ethnic identities, (re)productions of portrayals of Malays and Malay femininities, gender relations and inequalities in Malay families and households.
