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Cosmopolitanism and the Modern Girl: A Cross-Cultural Discourse in 1930s Penang1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2008

SU LIN LEWIS
SU LIN LEWIS*
Affiliation:
Faculty of History, Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
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Abstract

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Modern Girl emerged in advertisements, cinema and public discourse all over the globe. While she was implicated in nationalist projects of social reform in post-war Britain and Japan, in multicultural, port-city environments such as Penang, the Modern Girl was central to a discourse of ‘cosmopolitanism’. Lively debates about the Modern Girl in Penang's English press wrestled with the tensions between cultural authenticity, diversity and modernity. Male and female readers of the Straits Echo, from different ethnic backgrounds, engaged with each other in a shared public space about issues ranging from education and politics to women's liberality and fashion. The Modern Girl thus represents a new way of looking at the history of colonial Malaysia in the interwar period: one not focused on ethnic nationalism and communalism, but on a shared, multi-ethnic mode of belonging rooted in the globalist environment of the late colonial port-city.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 6 , November 2009 , pp. 1385 - 1419
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

References

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Mcclintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context (New York: Routledge, 1994).Google Scholar
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Robbins, Bruce and Cheah, Pheng. Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).Google Scholar
Roff, William. The Origins of Malay Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).Google Scholar
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Sandhu, Kernial Singh. Indians in Malaya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).Google Scholar
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Sato, Barbara. The New Japanese Woman: Modernity, Media, and Women in Interwar Japan (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Scott, Joan. “Multiculturalism and the Politics of Identity” October, Vol. 61 [The Identity in Question] (Summer 1992), pp. 12–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sopiee, Mohamed Noordin. From Malayan Union to Singapore Separation: Political Unification in the Malaysia Region 1945–56 (Kuala Lumpur: Penerbit Universiti Malaya, 1974).Google Scholar
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Vertovec, Stephen and Robin, Cohen (Eds). Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wade, Geoff. “New Ways of Knowing: The Prince of Wales Island Government Gazette—Penang's First Newspaper” in The Penang Story: International Conference 2002 (Penang: Star Publications, 2002).Google Scholar
Yong, C.F. “British Colonial Rule and the Chinese Press in Singapore, 1900–1941” in Chinese Leadership and Power in Colonial Singapore (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1992).Google Scholar
The Straits Echo (Georgetown: Cathay Press, June 1903; January 1931; July 1935; March–April 1936; July–December 1937; January–March 1938; January–April 1939).Google Scholar
The Straits Echo and Times of Malaya (Georgetown: Cathay Press, April 1939; August 1946).Google Scholar
Andaya, Barbara and Andaya, Leonard. History of Malaysia (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001).Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1991).Google Scholar
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. “Cosmopolitan Patriots” in Cheah, Pheng and, Robbins, Bruce (Eds), Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).Google Scholar
Barlow, TaniDong, Madeleine Yue, Poiger, Uta G., Ramamurthy, Priti, Thomas, Lynn M. and Weinbaum, Alys Eve. “The Modern Girl Around the World: A Research Agenda and Preliminary Findings” in Gender and History (Oxford: Blackwell, Vol. 17:2, August 2005).Google Scholar
Bhaumik, Kaushik. “Sulochana: Clothes, Stardom and Gender in Early Indian Cinema” in Moseley, Rachel (Ed.), Sulochana: Clothes, Stardom, and Gender in Early Indian Cinema (London: British Film Institute, 2005).Google Scholar
Bilainkin, George. Hail Penang!: Being the Narrative of Comedies and Tragedies in a Tropical Outpost, Among Europeans, Chinese, Malays, and Indians (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 1932).Google Scholar
Bingham, Adrian. Gender, Modernity, and the Popular Press in Interwar Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blythe, Wilfred. The Impact of Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya: A Historical Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969).Google Scholar
Bose, Sugata. A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Breckenridge, Carol A.Pollack, Sheldon, Bhabha, Homi K. and Chakrabarty, Dipesh (Eds). Cosmopolitanism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brownfoot, Janice N. “Sisters Under the Skin: Imperialism and the Emancipation of Women in Malaya, c. 1891–1941” in Mangan, James A. (Ed.) Making Imperial Mentalities: Socialisation and British Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990).Google Scholar
Burton, Antoinette (Ed.): Gender, Sexuality, and Colonial Modernities (London: Routledge, 1999).Google Scholar
Cheah, Pheng. Spectral Nationality: Passages of Freedom from Kant to Postcolonial Literatures of Liberation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christie, Clive J. “Stranded by the Tide: The Straits Chinese of Penang” in A Modern History of Southeast Asia: Decolonization, Nationalism and Separation, Ch. 2 (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Collen Ballerina et al. (Eds). Beauty Queens on the Global Stage: Gender, Contests, and Power (New York: Routledge, 1996).Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick. “Modernity” in Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, and History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 113–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, Louise. “Policing the Modern Woman in Republican China” Modern China, Vol. 26, No. 2 (April 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man (New York: Vintage International, 1995).Google Scholar
Fawaz, Leila Tarazi and Bayly, C.A. (Eds). Modernity and Culture: From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).Google Scholar
Finnane, Antonia. “What Should Chinese Women Wear? A National Problem” Modern China, Vol. 22, No. 2 (April 1996).Google Scholar
Hancock, Mary. “Gendering the Modern: Women and Home Science in Modern India” in Burton, Antoinette (Ed.), Gender, Sexuality, and Colonial Modernities (London: Routledge, 1999).Google Scholar
Harper, T.N. “Globalism and the Pursuit of Authenticity: The Making of a Diasporic Public Sphere in Singapore” SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, Vol. 12, No. 2 (1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harper, T.N.The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harper, T.N. “Empire, Diaspora, and the Languages of Globalism, 1850–1914” in Hopkins, A.J. (Ed.), Globalization in World History (London: Pimlico, 2002).Google Scholar
Harper, Tim and Bayly, Christopher. Forgotten Armies: Southeast Asia and the War With Japan (London: Penguin, 2005).Google Scholar
Hynes, Samuel. A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture (London: Bodley Head, 1990).Google Scholar
Kahn, Joel. Other Malays: Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in the Modern Malay World (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Kee, Khor Cheang. My Island in the Sun: A Penang Perspective (Penang: Southbound, 1995).Google Scholar
Keong, Neil Khor Jin. “Economic Change and the Emergence of the Straits-Chinese in Nineteenth-Century Penang” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (JMBRAS) Vol. 79:2, No. 291 (December 2006).Google Scholar
Koeng, Neil Khor Jin and Siew, Khoo Keat. The Penang Po Leung Kuk (Selangor: The Malay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Monograph No. 37 (2004)).Google Scholar
Leith, Sir George. A Short Account of the Settlement, Produce, and Commerce of Prince of Wales Island in the Straits of Malacca (London: Barfield, 1804).Google Scholar
Lent, John A. Newspapers in Asia: Contemporary Trends and Problems (Hong Kong: Heinemann Asia, 1982).Google Scholar
Lewis, Su Lin. “Echoes of Cosmopolitanism: Colonial Penang's ‘Indigenous’ English Press’” in Kaul, Chandrika (Ed.), Media and the Empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).Google Scholar
Mcclintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context (New York: Routledge, 1994).Google Scholar
McPherson, Kenneth. “Port Cities as Nodal Points of Change: The Indian Ocean, 1890s–1920s” in Fawaz, Leila Tarazi and Bayly, C.A. (Eds), Modernity and Culture: From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).Google Scholar
Metcalf, Barbara. Islamic Contestations: Essays on Muslims in India and Pakistan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Milner, Anthony. The Invention of Politics in Colonial Malaya (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Noor, Farish A. The Other Malaysia: Writings on Malaysia's Subaltern History (Kuala Lumpur: Silverfish Books, 2002).Google Scholar
Purcell, Victor. The Chinese in Malaya (London: Oxford University Press, 1967).Google Scholar
Reid, Anthony. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).Google Scholar
Robbins, Bruce and Cheah, Pheng. Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).Google Scholar
Roff, William. The Origins of Malay Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Rudolph, Jurgen. Reconstructing Identities: A Social History of the Babas in Singapore (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998).Google Scholar
Sandhu, Kernial Singh. Indians in Malaya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).Google Scholar
Saravanamuttu, Manicosothy. The Sara Saga, with a Foreword by the Right Honourable Malcolm Macdonald (Penang: Cathay Printers, 1970).Google Scholar
Sato, Barbara. The New Japanese Woman: Modernity, Media, and Women in Interwar Japan (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Scott, Joan. “Multiculturalism and the Politics of Identity” October, Vol. 61 [The Identity in Question] (Summer 1992), pp. 12–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sopiee, Mohamed Noordin. From Malayan Union to Singapore Separation: Political Unification in the Malaysia Region 1945–56 (Kuala Lumpur: Penerbit Universiti Malaya, 1974).Google Scholar
Ee, Tan Liok. “Confluences, Conjunctures, Contestations: A Perspective on the History of Penang” The Penang Story: International Conference 2002 (Penang: Star Publications, 2002).Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).Google Scholar
Turnbull, C.M.Dateline Singapore: 150 Years of the Straits Times (Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings, 1995).Google Scholar
Vertovec, Stephen and Robin, Cohen (Eds). Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wade, Geoff. “New Ways of Knowing: The Prince of Wales Island Government Gazette—Penang's First Newspaper” in The Penang Story: International Conference 2002 (Penang: Star Publications, 2002).Google Scholar
Yong, C.F. “British Colonial Rule and the Chinese Press in Singapore, 1900–1941” in Chinese Leadership and Power in Colonial Singapore (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1992).Google Scholar