VISITOR’S VOICE

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Interview with William Womack


Writing in a Connected World


Please tell us about your research.

During my time in Kyoto I am working on reframing my PhD research project for publication. The initial project focused on the many writing systems that were introduced for Sgaw and Pwo Karen languages in Burma during the colonial period. A lot of writers had noted the importance of the Sgaw Karen script introduced by American Baptist missionaries in the 1830s, and the impact of the Baptist church organization on Karen political identity later on. Others had noted that this helped to harden ethnopolitical and dialect categories. But I was intrigued by the fact that even after Sgaw Karen literature had developed, many other writing systems emerged and that some were in direct competition with each other. So in my thesis I set about recovering the stories of all of these scripts, framing them as overlapping networks of literate practice that drew on larger traditions of writing, all of which were tied to religious identities (English-speaking Baptists, Mon and Burmese and Karen-speaking Buddhists, European Catholics, etc.). Now the academic literature on politics of literacy, on colonial formatons of religion, on Karen history, and on describing social networks have all developed further since I wrote the thesis. So I am trying to integrate these new ideas into my analysis.

How many research themes do you have?

Too many. One reason I am so keen to publish my work on Karen writing is to put it behind me so I can work on other projects. Overall I am interested in historical connections that transcend geographic space or national categories. I’m particularly interested in how people in the 19th century began to experience the world as connected in new ways, and the changes that came about as a result. Maybe that’s just one big theme, but I am interested in many different applications of it. 

Why do you find your research topic interesting?

Well I think most historians are bibliophiles. So choosing to focus on books and written objects reflects that taste. There are strong antiquarian and book-loving cultures in Myanmar, too, which makes it an interesting place for me. But on a deeper level, I think Myanmar is a place where people have a keenly developed sense of history. That has some good aspects and some bad ones as well. Obviously competing versions of history can fuel conflict. The violent displacement of the Rohingya population is just one recent example of that. Of course this is a universal phenomenon, not confined to Myanmar or any particular place. So uncovering the ways that historical narratives shape human decisions, or are used to justify them, is not only interesting, I think it is a profoundly important undertaking. 

How did you get started in your research and how did you come to focus on your current research?

At first I was interested in finding more about the background to armed ethnic conflict in Myanmar. I first became aware of that conflict when I visited the Thai/Myanmar border after graduating from college. I ended up staying there as a volunteer teacher in a Karen refugee camp for an entire school term. I found that not much had been written about Karen communities in Burma in the 19th century. Most of it dealt with their participation in missionary institutions because that was well documented. But often it was the foreign missionaries or colonial interests on center stage and “the Karen” were largely passive participants in the story. So I wanted to find a way to recover a history of that period that focused on Karen people as agents, without minimizing the influences of missionaries, the colonial state, and the local contexts of Konbaung Burma and its frontiers.

Have you had any difficulties in putting together the results of your research into a research paper or book?

Yes. I enjoy research and I like the process of writing. But it is not easy for me to find the motivation to revise and edit. Life keeps me busy with things that seem more urgent, and my research gets pushed aside. So it is helpful to have a dedicated space and period of time to focus on the process. CSEAS is a good place to do that and I am grateful to Prof. Hayami and everyone at the Center for inviting me.

Can you share with us any episodes about any influential people, things, and places you have encountered whilst doing your research?

I was lucky to be able to travel a lot during my doctoral research. Because the networks I was tracing led to different parts of the world, I found myself in libraries and archives from London to Mandalay to Mawlamyine to upstate New York. Some of my most vivid memories are of places where the people I was researching lived—scenes they too might have encountered. I remember a black bear crossing the road in front of me while driving through the Catskill mountains. I was on my way to Hamilton, New York where Burmese and Sgaw Karen languages were first taught in the USA to Baptist missionaries in training in the 1830s. The language teachers there were likely the first people from Myanmar to visit America. They might even qualify as the world’s first visiting scholars in Southeast Asian Studies. Maybe they encountered an ancestor of “my” bear while making the same journey. Who knows? 

Another scene I remember was framed in the window of the overnight train from Yangon to Mandalay. Through the haze of early morning I began to make out the shape of wooden bullock carts piled high with sugar cane coming across the fields. As we rolled along, more and more appeared as the sun rose behind them. At last we stopped at a station where dozens of them were unloading beside the track. Each moment of that looked like a tableau that could have been painted a hundred years ago or more. In Paris I remember looking up from manuscripts at the Missions Étrangères archive. Across from me the windows framed a view of the Eiffel Tower and the golden dome of Les Invalides, above the cloistered garden of the seminary. The Catholic fathers who came to teach in Burma might have recalled the same sight when they encountered the golden domes and hti of Burmese pagodas. These experiences provided me with a real sense of the places behind the documents I was reading.

Which books or people have influenced you?

Many people have shaped my thinking but if I had to pick one it would be Prof. Richard O’Connor. I took his introductory course in Anthropology as an undergraduate, then went back for his Southeast Asia course. That course first opened my eyes to the region and led me to explore it further. He also told me about the SEASSI summer language program, where I began studying Burmese. I remember reading some of his work after finishing my MA thesis. It was an article I had never read before but it seemed oddly familiar. I was surprised to find that some of the ideas that I thought were my own were really ones I had absorbed from his class. One book that influenced my thinking about historiography was William Roff’s The Origins of Malay Nationalism. It drew my attention to the interplay of people, publications, and ideas in global networks of association. I suppose I am still thinking along those lines. 

What is your must-have gear for field research and writing?

Coffee, maps, and a legal pad. Zotero is very useful for me as well. 

 What books can you recommend to younger people?

One of my favorite history books is A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage. It unfolds histories that span the globe in a way that is readable and grounded in everyday things that people can relate to. 

For students looking to improve their academic writing, I recommend Graff and Birkenstien’s They Say / I Say.

What ambitions do you have for the future?

I’d like to find a nifty way to visualize the historical networks that I describe in my writing. More and more digital tools are being developed for this, but none that I have found yet that show enough complexity. I guess my ambition is to hang around long enough for the technology to catch up with my imagination, unless I can figure out a way to do it first.

(August 2022)

References


Roff, William R. 1968. The Origins of Malay Nationalism. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Standage, Tom. 2006. A History of the World in Six Glasses. New York: Walker Publishing Company.

Graff, Gerald and Cathy Birkenstein. 2021. They Say/ I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing, Fifth edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.


William Womack is a Visiting Research Scholar of CSEAS
from July – October 2022