This week’s New Pubs features Chiu on Burmese students and waiting as a form of resistance; Abbas’s discourse analysis of media representations of the Rohingya crisis; and Brenner’s assessment of revolution in Myanmar in 2023

As ever, see our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks, and if anyone wants a PDF but is excluded by pay wall, please email us and we will help if we can.

photo source: SCMP

see the note from current co-chair Ko Htet Min Lwin, as follows:

This year we have great candidates running for the positions of BSG co-chair and treasurer (running unopposed). Below is a brief introduction to each candidate.

All “ordinary members” of the BSG are encouraged to vote for the Executive Committee. Ordinary Members are those persons who are considered active members of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), registered by the BSG Secretary, and who are in “good standing” as defined by the AAS constitution.

Please submit your vote by April 30, 2024 at this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSemSt2imjEjNBdeQUAmF8xMVV4Gj84NbijD21sfZ6uX6BWBhg/viewform?usp=sharing

We also invite you to consider donating your dues to the BSG here: https://tinyurl.com/yckphy76

Candidates for BSG co-chair

Mu-Lung Hsu (PhD, Arizona State University)

“Mu-Lung Hsu has a track record of contributing to the development and success of the Burma Studies Group these last three-plus years. He has served as Secretary and contributed significantly to the expansion of BSG’s public profile in his capacity as the group’s webmaster. He has successfully organised at least two Myanmar related panels at the AAS in recent years, which serves as a strong indicator of his commitment to both the field and to the function of the BSG. His connections to NIU’s CBS and to the AAS make him an ideal person to bridge the activities of the BSG with stakeholders connected to the Center of Burma Studies.”

Naw Moo Moo Paw (PhD student in Global Studies UMass Lowell)

“I would like to nominate Naw Moo Moo Paw who is a PhD student in Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Moo Moo Paw is a member of Karen ethnic group, and grew up in conflict affected areas. She has extensive and impressive administrative and management skills (as administrative assistant at the British Council in Myanmar in the 2010s), research skills (producing various reports by CSOs and NGOs on Myanmar), language fluency in Karen, Burmese, and English, trained in advanced quantitative research methods, excelled in graduate course works, and amassed a long list of volunteering works in many areas. Her research areas are on disability and civil war.  She is one of the most generous, engaged rising scholars I have seen, and will make significant contributions to the Burma Studies Groups. Most importantly, she has attended AAS and Burma studies group meeting at AAS conference every year for the past three years since she was admitted into a PhD program at UMass Lowell.”

Dr. Ma Thida (Visiting Fellow, ISEAS Myanmar Studies Programme)

“Considered one of Myanmar’s leading public intellectuals, Ma Thida is a surgeon, writer, human rights activist and former prisoner of conscience. She founded PEN Myanmar and served as its president until 2016. In 2016, she was awarded the Disturbing the Peace Award by the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation and elected as member of board of PEN International. Ma Thida was elected as chair of the Writer in Prison Committee of PEN International in 2021 and was a research scholar at Yale University’s Council on South East Asia Studies in 2021–22. She is currently a visiting research fellow at ISEAS Myanmar Studies Programme. I have complete confidence in Ma Thida that her acclaimed, unwavering commitment and dedication in justice, integrity, and pursuit of public knowledge as a public intellectual will bring a rich and refreshing leadership to Burma Studies Group.”

Candidate for Treasurer (acclaimed)

Beiyin Deng (Incoming Assistant Professor, University of Missouri)

“Beiyin Deng received her doctoral degree in Religious Studies at Arizona State University in Spring 2024 and is currently a Visiting Instructor at Grinnell College. Her research focuses on contemporary Buddhist material culture, Buddhism in Myanmar, and transnational Buddhist exchanges between China and Southeast Asia. Her dissertation, “Seeking Magnificence: Material Enchantment and the Trade of Marble Buddhist Images across the Myanmar-China border,” examines contemporary Buddhist craftsmanship in the Myanmar-China marble Buddhist image trade since the 1980s, a previously unexamined religious-economic entanglement that transcends conventional academic boundaries between Myanmar and China, Southeast and East Asia, and Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism. She has conducted archival and ethnographic research in Myanmar and China since 2018. She will take up the position of Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Missouri, Columbia, in Fall 2024.”

On behalf of BSG executive,

Htet Min Lwin

co-chair

Burma Studies Group, Association for Asian Studies

This week’s New Pubs features Shohel et al on Rohingya relocation to Bhasan island in Bangladesh; Verma on BJP policies against Rohingya in India; and Kyed and Ah Lynn on soldier defection in Burma.

As ever, see our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks, and if anyone wants a PDF but is excluded by pay wall, please email us and we will help if we can.

Bhasan Char [source: Lacuna magazine]

This week’s New Pubs features Tuwanont on the evolution of the digital fight against authoritarianism in Myanmar; a book symposium on Campbell’s Along the Integral Margin; and Aung Soe Htet, et al write in the Lancet about the decline of public health in post-coup Myanmar; special bonus: Beyer’s Rethinking Community in Myanmar is now OA: https://manifold.uhpress.hawaii.edu/projects/rethinking-community-in-myanmar

As ever, see our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks, and if anyone wants a PDF but is excluded by pay wall, please email us and we will help if we can.

The Burma Studies Group is pleased to announce its second John Okell Burma Essay Prize, which will be awarded to the strongest essay on a Burma/Myanmar related topic submitted by a graduate student or post-doctoral researcher (if you have a tenure track or stable research position you are ineligible). The awardee will be granted a $300 prize. 

Application specifications: 

• Length: no more than 10,000 words, inclusive of footnotes
• It must be as yet unpublished 
• Submit an electronic document (word, pdf, pages) to burmastudiesgroup@gmail.com

Timeline: 

• Due date: 1 June 2024
• Award date: 1 August 2024

This week’s New Pubs features Kakati on the development of “blank spaces” in Asian borderlands after WWII; Samet et al on how Facebook did *not* cause genocide in Myanmar; and Boutry et al on seeing SEA through a sea-nomadic lens.

As ever, see our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks, and if anyone wants a PDF but is excluded by pay wall, please email us and we will help if we can.

This week’s New Pubs features Wells and Pyae Phyo Maung on the role of international aid during the revolution; Fiskesjö on Wa; and … actually, that’s all. We only have two pubs this week, for the first time in 3 years. So do send yours on / tweet @TheNotoriusBSG [yes, it’s spelled incorrectly]

As ever, see our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks, and if anyone wants a PDF but is excluded by pay wall, please email us and we will help if we can.

photo: AFP

We are seeking nominations for co-chair and treasurer!

Due date: April 8.

Requirements: To apply, please fill out this form. You are requested to include a 200-word narrative that we will send out to constituents, who will vote by electronic ballot by April 22.

Duties:

Chair

• The Chair/Co-Chair will plan and conduct the meetings. The Chair(s) shall be the chief executive officer of BSG, shall preside at all meetings of the members and of the BSG Board; she/he shall have general active management of BSG and shall see that all orders and resolutions of the Executive Committee are carried into effect. The Chair(s) shall issue notices of all meetings of the membership and of the BSG EC and shall provide forms for voting when they are required. The Chair(s) shall perform such other duties as may be prescribed by the BSG executive committee.
  
• The Chair shall execute all bonds, mortgages and other contracts.
  
• The Chair shall be ex-officio a member of all standing committees and shall have the general powers and duties of supervision and management usually vested in the office of Chair. The Chair will be the BSG annual representative at the SEAC board meeting.

Treasurer

• The treasurer shall maintain and manage financial records of the BSG, including soliciting up-to-date budgets from the AAS financial department, allocating travel and award funding, and processing BSG dues. 

This week’s New Pubs features Hedström on the intimate and insurgent politics of marriage in Kachin; Shohel et al on the relocation of Rohingya refugees to Bhasan Char (island); and Matelski on activism in Myanmar three years on from the coup.

As ever, see our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks, and if anyone wants a PDF but is excluded by pay wall, please email us and we will help if we can.