Java


Book Description

Reproduction of the original: Java by Augusta de Wit




The American Catalogue


Book Description




Javaphilia


Book Description

Fragrant tropical flowers, opulent batik fabrics, magnificent bronze gamelan orchestras, and, of course, aromatic coffee. Such are the exotic images of Java, Indonesia's most densely populated island, that have hovered at the periphery of North American imaginations for generations. Through close readings of the careers of four "javaphiles"—individuals who embraced Javanese performing arts in their own quests for a sense of belonging—Javaphilia: American Love Affairs with Javanese Music and Dance explores a century of American representations of Javanese performing arts by North Americans. While other Asian cultures made direct impressions on Americans by virtue of firsthand contacts through immigration, trade, and war, the distance between Java and America, and the vagueness of Americans' imagery, enabled a few disenfranchised musicians and dancers to fashion alternative identities through bold and idiosyncratic representations of Javanese music and dance. Javaphilia's main subjects—Canadian-born singer Eva Gauthier (1885–1958), dancer/painter Hubert Stowitts (1892–1953), ethnomusicologist Mantle Hood (1918–2005), and composer Lou Harrison (1917–2003)—all felt marginalized by the mainstream of Western society: Gauthier by her lukewarm reception as an operatic mezzo-soprano in Europe, Stowitts by his homosexuality, Hood by conflicting interests in spirituality and scientific method, and Harrison by his predilection for prettiness in a musical milieu that valued more anxious expressions. All four parlayed their own direct experiences of Java into a defining essence for their own characters. By identifying aspects of Javanese music and dance that were compatible with their own tendencies, these individuals could literally perform unconventional—yet coherent—identities based in Javanese music and dance. Although they purported to represent Java to their fellow North Americans, they were in fact simply representing themselves. In addition to probing the fascinating details of these javaphiles' lives, Javaphilia presents a novel analysis of North America's first significant encounters with Javanese performing arts at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. An account of the First International Gamelan Festival, in Vancouver, BC (at Expo 86), almost a century later, bookends the epoch that is the focus of Javaphilia and sets the stage for a meditation on North Americans' ongoing relationships with the music and dance of Java.




Culture and Commerce in Conrad's Asian Fiction


Book Description

Andrew Francis' Culture and Commerce in Conrad's Asian Fiction is the first book-length critical study of commerce in Conrad's work. It reveals not only the complex connections between culture and commerce in Conrad's Asian fiction, but also how he employed commerce in characterization, moral contexts, and his depiction of relations at a point of advanced European imperialism. Conrad's treatment of commerce - Arab, Chinese and Malay, as well as European - is explored within a historically specific context as intricate and resistant to traditional readings of commerce as simple and homogeneous. Through the analysis of both literary and non-literary sources, this book examines capitalism, colonialism and globalization within the commercial, political and social contexts of colonial Southeast Asia.




Indonesian Women in Focus


Book Description

This volume contains a selection from the papers presented at an interdisciplinary symposium on 'Images and ideas concerning women and the feminine in the Indonesian archipelago', organized in 1984 by the Werkgroep lndonesische Vrouwenstudies (WIVS), a Dutch interdisciplinary study group on Indonesian women. In the present volume, now in its second printing, notions about women in Indonesia in past and present are treated in relation to their actual positions. The articles deal with cultural definitions of sex roles and their social implications, and thus link up with the current academic interest in gender studies. The contributions occupy varying positions on an imaginary scale ranging from an approach primarily concerned with underlying cultural principles to one focused on the social context. Some show a clearly 'culturalist' approach, dealing with female symbols in Balinese offerings, female figures in Indonesian agricultural myths, and Tolaki views on procreation and production. The contributions on the images of women in Indonesian literature, views on the prostitute in colonial society, and the position of women in marriage in Madura and the Minahasa more or less take an intermediate position. The 'sociological' approach may be found in the contributions on the life of the educational pioneer Rahmah EI Yunusiya, on Indonesian-Chinese women, on priyayi women at the Central Javanese courts and in modern Jakarta, and on women's labor in pre-war and present-day Java. Recurring themes, such as sexual dualism, 'ibuism', and the questions of female power and authority, create unity in the diversity of regions and topics represented.







The Food Adventurers


Book Description

A delectable gastronomic expedition into the linked histories of global travel and global cuisine. From mangosteen fruit discovered in a colonial Indonesian marketplace to caviar served on the high seas in a cruise liner’s luxurious dining saloon, The Food Adventurers narrates the history of eating on the most coveted of tourist journeys: the around-the-world adventure. The book looks at what tourists ate on these adventures, as well as what they avoided, and what kinds of meals they described in diaries, photographs, and postcards. Daniel E. Bender shows how circumglobal travel shaped popular fascination with world cuisines while leading readers on a culinary tour from Tahitian roast pig in the 1840s, to the dining saloon of the luxury Cunard steamer Franconia in the 1920s, to InterContinental and Hilton hotel restaurants in the 1960s and ’70s.




Bibliography on the Far East


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The Statesman's Year-Book


Book Description

The classic reference work that provides annually updated information on the countries of the world.