Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University

Visiting Fellow, Southeast Asia Centre Email: Wendy.Mukherjee@anu.edu.au Phone: + 61 2 6125 8958 Fax: + 61 2 6125 8326 Room: e409 Baldessin Precinct Building

Contents 1 Research interests 2 Publications 3 Literary translations 4 Other activities

Research interests

The construction of the Muslim feminine in the pre-modern manuscript literatures of Indonesia and Malaysia. I have consulted texts in Malay, Sundanese and Javanese.

Islam’s traditional circumscription of women assigns to them the role of wife and mother and prescribes the associated virtues. The epitome of these is found in representations of Fatimah, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, wife of his cousin and heir, Ali bin Abi Talib and mother of the key figures of Shi’ite Islam, Hasan and Husein. I have collected a number of manuscript texts dealing with Fatimah’s life, presenting her as the feminine ideal and even as a cultic persona.

In contrast, themes of local gender independence discovered so far are women’s agency in finding love partners, the making and use of herbal medicines for health and erotic enjoyment and in a very few cases, female authorship of texts dealing with these dimensions.

Publications

• 1997 The Book of Love Magic of Khatijah Terong, Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs 31, 2: 29-46. ISSN 0815-7251

• 2005 Nabi Wadon, A Book of Women from Java's North Coast, in Zaiton Ajamain & Nurasian Ahmad (eds) Kesusasteraan Tradisional Asia Tenggara. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka: 289-305. ISBN 983-62-9051-6

• 2005 Fatimah in Nusantara, SARI, Journal of the Academy of Malay Civilisation, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 23: 237-251. ISSN 0127-2721

Literary translations

Short stories and articles from Sundanese, the language of West Java, and a novella of plantation life in the colonial Dutch East Indies

• 2004 Moh. Sanoesi’s Siti Rayati, with an Introduction. Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, 38, 1, 1-85. ISSN 0815-7251

A new bilingual Sundanese-English edition of Siti Rayati, which first appeared in 1923-5, is near publication through the firm of Giri Mukti, Bandung. The book had been lost in West Java since the end of colonial times and I supplied the full version from copies held in the Library of the University of Leiden, with my English translation and a new introduction of interest to general readers.

Other activities

I continue as a referee and committee member of the academic journal, Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs (RIMA), The Association for the Publication of Indonesian and Malaysian Studies Inc., Canberra.