This presentation by Barbara Watson Andaya, Professor in Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, focuses on some of the issues that confront a historian of Southeast Asia when dealing with a topic - Muslim women - for which there is a dearth of sources. This is particularly the case for the “early modern” period, that is, from around the 15th to the mid-19th century. Beginning with the early years of Islam in Southeast Asia, the talk will focus on six areas that the speaker, a non-Muslim and born outside the region, feels deserves special attention because the nature of evidence opens up possibilities for exploration but also imposes limitations. The first is the often fraught connection between legend and documented evidence; the second is the way in which religious change affected women; the third is gender relations and the Muslim family; the fourth concerns Islam’s appeal to women and how female piety was expressed; the fifth is the privileging of the elite and our relative ignorance of village life; the sixth is the problem of generalization across such a diverse region.

The presentation serves as a reminder that “writing women into Southeast Asia history” is a laudable goal, but one that is only partially achievable.

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