Dorothy Kim

Adeline Koh

Alternative Historiographies of the Digital Humanities

Yu-Mei Balasingamchow

Singapore and Malaysia are rapidly modernising, globalising Asian states which, although being distinct nations since 1965, share common elements in the on-going struggle over the meaning of gender and sexuality in their societies. This is the first book to discuss a range of discourses around gender in these two countries. Women and the Politics of Representation in Southeast Asia: Engendering Discourse in Singapore and Malaysia seeks to give an overview of how gender and representation come together in various configurations in the history and contemporary culture of both nations. It examines the discursive construction of gender, sexuality and representation in a variety of areas, including the politics of everyday life, education, popular culture, literature, film, theatre and photography. Chapters examine a range of tropes such as the Orientalist "Sarong Party Girl," the iconic "Singapore Girl" of Singapore Airlines, and the figure of pious Muslim femininity celebrated by Malaysian NGO IMAN, all of which play important roles in delineating limitations for gender roles. The collection also draws attention to resistance to these gender boundaries in theatre, film, blogs and social media, and pedagogy. Bringing together research from a variety of humanistic and social science fields, such as film, material culture, semiotics, literature and pedagogy, the book is a comprehensive feminist survey that will be of use for students and scholars of Women’s Studies and Asian Studies, as well as on courses on gender, media and popular culture in Asia.

Engendering discourse in Singapore and Malaysia

Women and the Politics of Representation in Southeast Asia

Frieda Ekotto

In 1968, Argentinean Filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino first articulated the theory of a "Third Cinema" - a revolutionary genre of cinema that would counter oppression on a global scale. Intended to be a "guerilla cinema" geared at contesting the overwhelming dominance of Western cinema, Solana and Getino distinguished "Third Cinema" from other forms of cinema, classifying these other types as First Cinema (commercial cinema epitomized by Hollywood) and Second Cinema. "Third Cinema" was supposed to be a liberationary tool - particularly for the bulk of the world that was subject to European imperialism, such as Latin America, Africa and Asia. Spanning a wide geographical spread of cinemas ranging from Latin America, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and Asia, this book addresses the following questions: how can we rethink the concept of "Third Cinema" for today? How do new national cinemas - and their accompanying media industries - reflect the concerns of societies that are struggling with the implications of accelerated modernization - and how are these concerns configured in new genres of aesthetics? Is there still a "Third Cinema" component in contemporary cinemas, and if so, how can it be understood?

Adeline Koh

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