This week’s New Pubs features an economic analysis of the gender wage gap in Myanmar; Pachau and van Schendel on human-animal-plant interactions in the greater Himalayan region; and for you international relations lovers, Dossi and Gabusi on China-Myanmar relations.

As always, see our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks.

Call for applications: AAS is now accepting proposals for 2022-2023 Cultivating the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Grants, available to scholars from South & Southeast Asia. See details at website and submit applications by September 30, 2022. https://buff.ly/3zp2X5l

This week we feature a mostly Burmese language journal, devoted in this issue to study of village social life. See articles by Myat Thein, Mya Than, Maung Aung, Aung Ni Oo, Aung Aung Hlaing, and others.

See here for the PDFs.

ICIRD7 hosted by Chiang Mai University under the theme “Disruption, Challenges and Resilience in Contemporary Southeast Asia” will run from 22-23 July 2022.

see here for the schedule of the events, many of which are hybrid.

This week’s New Pubs focus on humanitarian conditions, with IFPRI focusing on post-coup Myanmar and Chowdhury et al on Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh camps. Third, Anwary writes on the agency of female Rohingya genocide survivors;

As always, see our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks.

Geoff Aung’s searching essay on the anti-coup rebellion from last year included a discussion of the ah-zah-ni, perhaps best translated as “martyr,” and a critical figure in Burma’s long history of resistance to authoritarianism, colonial or afterwards.

This week we feature some texts that sketch the contours of the ah-zah-ni. Nick Cheesman’s Master’s Thesis that covered school textbooks in Myanmar (featured in DC recently) discusses the ah-zah-ni (pp 215-18).

Houtman’s work, featured recently on DC for its treatment of Myanma-fication, is worth mentioning again, as it contains a discussion of the ah-zah-ni on pp 241-42.

The anthem kaba ma’ chay bu: (“The world is not fulfilled”), written by Naing Myanmar after the 1988 anti-government uprising, contains the line ah-zah-ni dway nay de’ dain: pyi – “The country where the martyrs live.” We include Min Zin’s essay; see pp 225-26 for a discussion of the song.

This week in New Pubs we feature several reflections on civil society and activism. Wells writes about the way the NLD depoliticized urban issues; Curley and McCarthy on the way civil society is governed; and Garnett on environmental activism in Myanmar.

As always, see our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks.

The Inya Institute is pleased to announce its inaugural language course series on three prominent languages spoken in Myanmar: (1) Kachin – Jinghpaw; (2) Karen – S’gaw; and (3) Shan – Tai long.

The two-week language course will equip participants with the essential skills needed to communicate confidently and effectively in one of the three languages in a broad range of situations. Our three teams of language teachers were trained by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s SEASSI current Burmese language instructor. No prior knowledge of these languages is required. The language course is open to undergraduate, graduate, postgraduate students, professionals, researchers, and NGO workers of any nationality, wherever they are based in Myanmar, Southeast Asia or the U.S. The language of instruction will be English.

see here for more details.

I’m particularly proud of this one, as it comes from a now-defunct but much-loved weekly journal published by our hard working friends at Pansodan Art Gallery between 2013 and 2014 (or thereabouts). Called Pansodan Arts and Culture Friday Journal, it featured ruminations on Myanmar society in both Burmese and English. We feature a dispatch by anthropologist Felix Girke on the much-maligned National Races Village in Thaketa. He finds, pace the conventional foreigner wisdom that the place is full of only lies and stereotypes, “more than meets the eye.”

See here for the PDFs.

This year’s AAS will be held March 16-19, 2023 in Boston, Massachusetts at the Hynes Convention Center and the Boston Sheraton Hotel. see here for more details.

Editor’s notes:

• Keep in mind that AAS almost never accepts individual paper proposals, so you need to organize a panel.
• The BSG has appointed an ad-hoc committee to choose a representative panel for the BSG. Stay tuned for details from BSG on how / when to submit your proposals.