COTCA seminar series - Professor Lynn Hollen Lees

Cultural Production in a Polyglot Society: British Malaya, 1900-1940

Professor Lynn Hollen Lees, University of Pennsylvania, US

In British Malaya in the early twentieth century, individuals were exposed to multiple languages, scripts, and cuisines; they had access to a transnational array of newspapers, radio broadcasts, and films. Colonial institutions and settings fostered heteroglossia, and transnational entertainments brought a wider cultural world to those with a few coins to spare. In this multi-ethnic, relatively urbanised colony, cultural production became deeply hybridised, both at the level of individuals and of institutions. Moreover, language worlds interpenetrated one another, while still communicating differences and divisions. I explore the problem of culture creation in a modernising society, where empires lowered barriers to the flow of information but recognised categories of racial and religious separation, which themselves were deeply undercut by social practices.

Download a copy of the seminar poster here.