Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific,
Issue 19, February 2009

Contributors to Intersections
Issue 19


Pam Allen is Head of the School of Asian Languages and Studies at the University of Tasmania. Her research interests include contemporary Indonesian literature, and popular culture, with a particular interest in postcolonial studies, gender issues and minority ethnic voices. Her publications include articles on contemporary literature as well as translations into English of Indonesian fiction. She is currently researching the impact of regional autonomy in Indonesia on literature and the arts, particularly in Bali and West Sumatra.

Barbara Baird is head of the Department of Women's Studies at Flinders University in South Australia. The department hosts a continuing flow of both coursework and research postgraduate students from overseas, mostly from Indonesia, and recently also from Bangladesh as well as other Southeast Asian locations, and works closely with the Flinders Asia Centre in the supervision of students and the organisation of events. Barbara's own research interests focus on the history and cultural politics of sexuality and reproduction in Australia, and their mutual constitution with discourses of race and national identity. She has recently guest edited a special issue of Australian Feminist Studies (volume 23, number 57, 2008) about 'the child.' The collection The Racial Politics of Bodies, Nations and Knowledges, which she has co-edited with Damien W. Riggs, to be published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, will appear in 2009.
Rossi von der Borch is a lecturer in the School of Political and International Studies at Flinders University. In 2006 she completed a doctoral thesis that explored relationships between expatriate employers and live-in migrant domestic workers in Singapore, where she resided from 2000–2006. Her interest in the complex micro-level stories of migration dates back to the late 1980s, when she was employed by the Bangkok-based Jesuit Refugee Service Asia-Pacific. A recent publication is 'Straddling Worlds: Indonesian migrant domestic workers in Singapore,' in Michele Ford and Lyn Parker (eds) Women and Work in Indonesia (Routledge, London and New York 2008). Rossi's current research explores the experiences of returned Indonesian migrant domestic workers in Java.

Vibeke Børdahl Ph.D., Dr.Phil., is senior researcher at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS), Copenhagen. She has taught Chinese language and literature at the University of Aarhus, the University of Oslo and the University of Copenhagen. Her book-length studies in English include: Along the Broad Road of Realism – Qin Zhaoyang's World of Fiction (Curzon Press, London 1990); The Oral Tradition of Yangzhou Storytelling (Curzon Press, Richmond 1996); The Eternal Storyteller – Oral Literature in Modern China (Curzon Press, Richmond 1999, with photos by Jette Ross); and Vibeke Børdahl and Jette Ross, Chinese Storytellers – Life and Art in the Yangzhou Tradition (Cheng & Tsui, Boston 2002). Recent books include: Vibeke Børdahl, Fei Li and Huang Ying (eds), Four Masters of Chinese Storytelling—Full-length Repertoires of Yangzhou Storytelling on Video, Yangzhou pinghua sijia yiren-quan shu biaoyan luxiang mulu, bilingual edition English and Chinese, DVD with film and performances included (NIAS Press, Copenhagen 2004); Vibeke Børdahl, Tiger, tiger. Wu Song og Tigeren i kinesisk historiefortælling (text in Danish, with photos by Jette Ross, Vandkunsten Forlag, Copenhagen 2004); Lucie Olivová and Vibeke Børdahl (eds), Lifestyle and Entertainment in Yangzhou (NIAS Press, Copenhagen 2009). More information can be found on Vibeke's Chinese Storytelling website.

Lauren DeCarvalho is a second-year Master's student, majoring in Media Studies with a minor in Women's Studies, at The Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pennsylvania. She is currently working on her thesis, which focuses on a cross-cultural comparative study of Italy, Japan and the United States in relation to issues of national versus global cinema. Aside from her interest in the sociocultural dynamics of communication, some of her other research interests include feminist film theory and critical cultural theory. Her most recent works explore how a film remains feminist despite the absence of a strong female lead and how Irigaray's work may be applied to cinema.

Greg Dvorak (MA, University of Hawai'i, 2004; PhD, Australian National University, 2008) is currently a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Research Fellow at the University of Tokyo. Having spent his life and career between Micronesia, Japan, the US, and Australia, his work deals with Pacific histories, the study of Japanese and American Empires in Oceania, and gender/sexuality (particularly queer studies and masculinities studies). He is currently in the process of revising a book manuscript about the convergence of Japanese and American military empires around his childhood home of Kwajalein Atoll, which is based on both his doctoral research and a recent Wenner–Gren Foundation fieldwork fellowship. He also is in the final stages of producing a feature-length film about memories of Japanese colonialism in the Marshall Islands and is adviser to the Japan Marshall Islands Area War-Bereaved Families Association.
Sri Kusumo Habsari graduated with Honours from the English department, Faculty of Letters, at the Sebelas Maret University. Her honours thesis was titled 'Feminist Issues on Elizabeth Bennet' (the main character of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice). She completed her Masters degree in the American Studies Department of Gajah Mada University where she wrote a thesis titled 'Women's Roles in Transforming the West as Reflected in Willa Cather's My Antonia'. In 1998 she got an award for young researchers from the Indonesian government to research Indonesian sinetron. This project then led her to PhD study at the Department of Women's Studies at Flinders University in Adelaide. She completed her thesis titled 'The portrayal of Indonesian women from the new order to reformation era in Misteri Gunung Merapi,' in 2007. She has also researched other aspects of Indonesian media and has had work published in Indonesian journals. She is a currently a lecturer in the English Department, Faculty of Letters and Fine Art, Sebelas Maret University.
Nurul Ilmi Idrus is a a columnist and a feminist anthropologist whose concerns focus on the issues of violence, gender, sexuality, law, politics and migrant workers. She is a lecturer at the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Social and Political Science, Hasanuddin University, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. She completed her Ph.D. in Anthropology at the Australian National University in 2003 with the thesis entitled: '"To Take Each Other": Bugis Practices of Gender, Sexuality and Marriage.' Her most recent publication is '"Makkunrai Passimokolo": Bugis Migrant Women Workers in Malaysia,' in Women and Work in Indonesia, ed. Michele Ford and Lyn Parker, Routledge, London, 2008, pp. 155–72.

Elena Jeffreys is President of Scarlet Alliance, Australian Sex Workers Association, and was a delegate to the Regional Security and Global Prosperity stream of the 2020 Summit. Elena writes regularly on the topic of sex work and trafficking in Australia, and is currently a member of the Commonwealth Attorney Generals' Roundtable on People Trafficking. In the photograph, Elena wears a Del, traditional Mongolian Dress, made for her by the Khusvgul sex worker community in Mongolia, and is accompanied by Chan Kumjing, the alter ego of a Burmese sex worker. Chan Kumjing was born from an Empower Foundation art project in Northern Thailand. Burmese sex workers do not have the opportunity to travel themselves to do advocacy for their rights; because they are illegal migrants they do not have the necessary identity papers. A group of these sex workers made paper maché likenesses of themselves so that they could be taken to AIDS Conferences to highlight the issues of migrant sex workers. Chan Kumjing was adopted by the Scarlet Alliances' International Spokesperson Rachel Wotton at the Toronto AIDS Conference in 2006, and continues to travel to all important sex worker events in Australia. Link to more information about Chan Kumjing.
Novi Kurnia is a lecturer of The Communication Department of Social and Political Sciences Faculty at Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. She finished her masters degree in Women's Studies at Flinders University, South Australia in 2007 and her masters degree in Communication Studies at the University of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia in 2005. By focusing the study on gender and media studies (especially film), she has published several articles and book chapters in Indonesian and Australian journals, magazine and books. With a passionate interest in Indonesian cinema, she initiated and organised Indonesian Film Festival (IF!fest) in Adelaide in 2006 and 2008. She is also one programmer in Jogja-Asia Netpac Film Festival 2008. Besides being active in film festivals, she has also become a consultant for the Indonesian government, formulating film policy in Indonesia.
An expert in Balinese mask performance, Carmencita Palermo has been exploring the life of the mask in dance tradition for over 20 years. She has a Master's degree in Performing Arts from the University of Bologna, Italy, and an Advanced Master's degree in Cultural Studies from Leiden University, the Netherlands. Her Ph.D. in Indonesian Studies, specialising in Balinese performance, is from the University of Tasmania. The thesis is on the embodiment of the Balinese mask, its cosmological implications and its cultural context. Lately she has been teaching and tutoring at the University of Tasmania, University of Melbourne and Monash University. To know more about Carmencita's work and video documentaries visit her blog.
Gwénola.Ricordeau received her Ph.D. in Social Sciences at the University of Paris-IV (Sorbonne, France). She is currently an associate professor at the University of Santo Tomas (Manila, Philippines) and associate researcher at the University of Lille-III (France). She has published a book and several articles on gender identities and sexualities in French prisons, Les détenus et leurs proches, solidarités et sentiments à l'ombre des murs. She has presented papers at national and international conferences and seminars in France, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland and Canada. She is working on a post-doctoral project on intermarriages, gender and race stereotypes in the Philippines.


Main
Published with the support of the Gender Relations Centre, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University.
HTML last modified by Carolyn Brewer,
10 March 2009 1148
Copyright
URL: http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue19/cont_issue19.htm