Research Bio

The search for human connection (artistic, cultural, emotional, intellectual and spiritual) across geopolitical borders and natural divides (mountains, oceans) is a driving force of my research. I am especially curious about the interplay of memory and story in sustaining individual and community aspirations for the future, and by the power of belief, hope and imagination to effect political and spiritual transformation in the face of dehumanizing and repressive conditions, such as forced exile and political incarceration.  

I explore these questions through a range of sources in my book  Kingdoms of the Mind: Burma’s fugitive prince and the fracturing of empire (Columbia University Press, forthcoming).  A cultural history of rebellion, exile and resistance, Kingdoms follows Prince Myngun of Burma (1841-1921) through penal colonies and stowaway cabins from Mandalay through Banaras and Chandernagore to Saigon, tracing the networks of adventure capital, spiritual belief and political kinship that sustained him on his failed quest to gain Burma's throne. Kingdoms draws upon a range of sources across multiple archives to unsettle area studies frameworks and conventional national and colonial frameworks of analysis.  I discuss this approach in the podcast https://myanmarmusings.com/princely-possibilities-myingun-in-exile 

Like many historians, I am interested in connections between the past and the present.  For example, “transnational repression operation” is a new buzzword, but these operations have existed for centuries. Imperial prisoner exchange schemes sought to break resistance through offshore exile, severing an individual’s connection to their home country and incarcerating them in an unfamiliar cultural and language environment: Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s imprisonment in Mandalay, Bahadur Shah Zafur II’s incarceration in Yangon, and the Prince Myngun’s imprisonment in Fort Chunar are famous examples. 

PUBLICATIONS 2022 - 2023

Penny Edwards is guest editor, with Alok Bhalla, ko ko thett and Kenneth Wong, of "In the Silence: International Fiction, Poetry, Prose and Performance"  a special issue of Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing (34-1)   https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/49702   My review of Aurore Candier’s La réforme politique en Birmanie pendant le premier moment colonial (1819-1878), Paris, EFEO appeared in the Journal of Burma Studies, Volume 27, No. 1,  2023 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/889927/pdf.  My chapter “Inarguably Angkor” in The Angkorian World edited by Damien Evans, Miriam Stark and Mitch Hendrickson (Routledge)   2023 https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781351128940-42/ and the reflection essay Beyond Words: Going Off Script in Theravada Southeast Asia,  in the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 53 (1-2), 344-348. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-southeast-asian-studies/article/beyond-words-going-off-script-in-theravada-southeast-asia/36B5F06608D913E4C789157429EBAC02 and her translation of Soth Polin's novel  L'anarchiste (Paris: Table Ronde, 2011) in  Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing "From The Anarchist." Manoa, vol. 34 no. 1, 2022, p. 168-175. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/man.2021.0056.

 

The Anarchist, Penny's translation of Soth Polin's novel L'anarchiste, is forthcoming with Gazebo Books, Sydney, Australia.

Her first book Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation (University of Hawai’i Press, 2008) is a cultural history that argued for a role and space for Cambodian intellectuals, monks and journalists in the making of the Cambodian nation under colonial rule. Awarded the 2009 Harry J. Benda Prize by the Association of Asian Studies for its bold intervention in Southeast Asian studies, Cambodge has had wide-ranging traction beyond the field  as a study of nationalism and colonalism   https://uhpress.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/cambodge-wins-major-sea-studies-book-award/ 

 

Research Expertise and Interest

political and cultural history of Southeast Asia, French colonialism, British imperialism, French India, British India, comparative colonialism, Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, Chinese diaspora, China - Southeast Asia relations, cinema and theatre, material and visual culture, travel and translation, gender, nationalism, Buddhism, economic history, global history