Marriage is the union of two consenting adults in love. Right? Many would argue “yes” and view arranged marriage and polygamy as backward. Yet, the idea of marrying for love is a relatively recent one and the conjugal couple is not so traditional at all. So when did love conquer marriage, and why? Are romantic love and freedom to marry viewed everywhere as normal ways to organize intimate lives and relations? Why are some forms of intimacy outlawed or stigmatized, while others are deemed legitimate and normative? Is same-sex marriage challenging “compulsory heterosexuality” or consolidating a regime of “compulsory matrimony”?
This seminar addresses these and other questions about matters of intimacy from a multi-century, comparative, and global perspective. Using a wide array of archival, literary, and visual sources that include records of civil court cases, investigative news reports, paintings, and films, it explores how ideas and practices, and laws and customs surrounding love, sex, and marriage have been formed and transformed in a variety of contexts, from ancient Rome to present-day India. It examines the world’s most resilient matrilineal society of the Minangkabau in Indonesia as well as the world’s largest mail-order bride industry in East Asia. It considers past and present scandals and controversies, such as anti-miscegenation laws in 19th and 20th century US, and the emergence of international “polygamy clubs” in the 21st century. In so doing, the seminar will ask students to think critically about the role of love, sex, and marriage in the production and reproduction of political power, economic wealth, labor systems, and social difference.
About Professor Ikeya
I am a historian of Southeast Asia with interests in the related fields of Asian history/studies, women’s and gender history, race, gender and sexuality studies, and postcolonial studies. Before joining Rutgers University, I taught in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore.
My first book examined colonial politics, gender and race relations, social reforms, anticolonialism, media, and consumerismin colonial Burma. I am currently completing my second book project, Transcultural Intimacies in Colonial Burma, Southeast Asia, and Beyond. It traces the history and legacy of intimate encounters that have been largely neglected despite their overwhelming prevalence in colonial Southeast Asia: inter-Asian marriages, companionships, and collaborations. Spanning the late 19th to the mid-20th century, the book explores the varying experiences and meanings of transcultural intimacy during a period in global history characterized, on the one hand, by inclusionary (and often utopian) pan-Asian civilizational discourses and solidarity movements and, on the other, by anti-Asian racism and exclusionary movements that targeted Chinese, Indian, and other “unassimilable” foreign and mixed Asian populations.