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.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
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: Women's 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
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