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Ann Kumar

Portrait of Ann   Kumar

Ann Louise Kumar is an Australian scholar in Indonesian and Javanese studies, a former Dean of the Faculty of Asian Studies at the Australian National University (ANU), Emeritus Professor from 1971 to 2009, who also researched the prehistory of Japan, the impact of genetics on global prehistory and the status of women warriors in Japanese and Javanese cultures. 

After a rather conventional start in ​‘an unrelievedly WASP family, suburb and school’ — as she described late 1950s Melbourne in her autobiography -, Ann Kumar resolved to enroll for Asian Studies in faraway Canberra at a time ANU curriculum was limited to China, Japan and Indonesia — India, to which she was attracted, wasn’t available. Specializing in Indonesia, she learned Bahasa Indonesia, Old Javanese and Modern Javanese, Sundanese, Sanskrit, and some Dutch to peruse colonial records and the many academic papers written in that language. Along with Indonesian professors, she studied with renowned European scholars such as A.L. Basham, Hans Bielenstein, Göran Malmquist, A.H. John, J. de Jong and even the formidable Manning Clark, the ​‘national historian of Australia’. 

With the aim of exploring ​“Indonesian history as written by Indonesians,” she headed to Java at a time not many young Australian women would solo travel around Indonesia, then to the Netherlands in order to peruse the Dutch archives with a challenging eye on colonial sources, ​“thus opening up a treasure-trove of unexplored material illuminating Javanese society, politics and beliefs” (from Ann Kumar’s autobiographical note). The outcome were studies on Javanese histories (Babad) about Surapati, a 17th century warrior — Dutch historians referred to his kind as ​‘rebels’ -, Dipanagara, the leader of the Java War from 1825 – 30 who claimed to have met with Nyai Loro [or Nyi Roro] Kidul, the Javanese sea goddess, the ​‘Queen of the South’, Mangkunegara I [who thanks to her work was recognized as an Indonesian ​‘National Heroes’, and the anonymous prajurit estri, cavalry-women who, ​“clad in gold and armed with firearms, formed a guard on ceremonial occasions”, while being also accomplished musicians and dancers. 

It was at the Australian National University that she met her future husband, Dr. Kailash Kumar (24 Nov. 1933, Uttar Pradesh, India — 30 Aug. 2012, Sydney Australia), a nuclear physicist who was a a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Theoretical Physics, Research School of Physical Science, in 1960, and remained a Senior Fellow until his retirement in 1996. They had two children.

Close to the end of her academic career, Ann Kumar lamented the decision of ANY to dismantle its Faculty of Asian Studies. After retirement, she sat during six years on the panel of experts of the British Library’s Endangered Archives Program, funded by the Arcadia Foundation. 

Online: Website & Ann Louise Kumar’s Java Woman Warrior

Publications

  1. ‘Dipanegara (1787−1855)’, Indonesia 13, April 1972: 69 – 118.
  2. ‘Indonesia and Malaysia’, in The Civilizations of Monsoon Asia, A.L. Basham (ed.) Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1974: 135 – 72. [2nd ed.: Delhi, S. Chand & Co., 1974].
  3. Surapati: Man and Legend: A Study of Three Babad Traditions (Oriental Monograph Series), Brill, [ENG/​Javanese], 1976, 421 p. ISBN 9789004043640.
  4. “Javanese Historiography in and of the ​“Colonial Period”: a Case Study”, in Anthony Reid and David Marr (eds.), Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Asia, Asian Studies Association of Australia Southeast Asia Series No. 4, 1979: 187 – 206.
  5. ‘Javanese court society and politics in the late eighteenth century; The record of a lady soldier’, Indonesia 29, April 1980: 1 – 46. | ​‘Part II: Political Developments: the Courts and the Company 1784 – 1791’, Indonesia 30, Oct. 1980: 67 – 111.
  6. ‘The Peasantry and the State on Java: Changes of Relationship, Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries’, in James J. Fox et al., Indonesia: Australian Perspectives, Canberra, Research School of Pacific Studies 1980: 577 – 599.
  7. ‘The ​“Suryengalagan Affair” of 1883 and its Successors: Born Leaders in Changed Times’, Bijdragen tot de Taal‑, Land- en Volkenkunde (BKI) 138−2÷3, 1982: 251 – 284.
  8. ‘On variation in babads’, BKI 140−2÷3, 1984: 223 – 247.
  9. Diary of a Javanese Muslim: Religion, Politics and the Pesantren, 1883 – 1886, Canberra, Austrlalian National University Faculty of Law, 1985, 198 p. ISBN 9780867846034.
  10. ‘Literary Approaches to Slavery and the Indies Enlightenment: van Hogendorp’s Kraspoekol’, Indonesia 43, April 1987: 43 – 65.
  11. ‘Islam, the Chinese and Indonesian Historiography’, Journal of Asian Studies 46/3, Aug. 1987: 603 – 616.
  12. [ed. with John H. McGlynn] Illuminations: The Writing Traditions of Indonesia, The Lontar Foundation, Jakarta and Weatherhill, New York & Tokyo, 1996, 397 p. ISBN: 9780834803497.
  13. Java and modern Europe; Ambiguous encounters, Richmond, VA: Curzon/​ Routledge, 1997, 480 p. ISBN 97807007043301997.
  14. ‘Pancasila Plus, Pancasila Minus’, in Peter G. Riddell and Tony Street eds., Islam: Essays on Scripture, Thought and Society: A Festschrift in Honour of Anthony H. Johns, Leiden, Brill, 1997 [vol. XXVII of the series Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science, ed. by H. Daiber and D. Pingree].
  15. ‘An Indonesian Component in the Yayoi?: The Evidence of Biological Anthropology’, Anthropological Science 106, 1998: 265 – 276.
  16. ‘Encyclopedia-izing and the organization of knowledge; A cross-cultural perspective’, in Encompassing knowledge: Indigenous encyclopedias from ninth-century Java to twentieth-century, Leiden, BKI vol. 155/3, 1999: 470- 488.
  17. [with Phil Rose] ​“Lexical evidence for early contact between Indonesian languages and Japanese”, Oceanic Linguistics 39/2, Dec. 2000: 219 – 255.
  18. ‘Imagining Women in Javanese Religion: Goddesses, Ascetes, Queens, Consorts, Wives’, Barbara Andaya, ed., Other Pasts: Women, Gender and History in Early Modern Southeast Asia, University of Hawai’i, 2000.
  19. ‘A World of Difference: the Case of Java’, Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs 40/2, 2006: 3 – 23.
  20. ‘Sailing up the map: a re-examination of constructs of Javanese-ness in the light of new evidence.’ Indonesia and the Malay World 34/28. March 2006: 23 – 38.
  21. Globalizing the Prehistory of Japan: Language, Genes and Civilisation, Routledge Studies in the Early History of Asia, 2008, 220 p. ISBN 9780710313133.
  22. [tr. to Indonesian by Mikael Johani] Prajurit Perempuan Jawa: Kesaksian Ihwal Istana dan Politik Jawa Akhir Abad ke-18, Jakarta, Komunitas Bambu, 2008, 200 p. ISBN10: 9793731281.
  23. ‘Significant Time, Myths and Power in the Javanese Calendar’ in Jan van der Putte and Mary Kilcline Cody eds., Lost Times and Untold Tales from the Malay World, Singapore, NUS Press, 2008: 1 – 16.
  24. Globalizing the prehistory of Japan; Languages, genes, and civilization, London/​New York: Routledge, 2009.
  25. ’The Single Most Astonishing Fact of Human Geography: Indonesia’s Far West Colony’, Indonesia 92, Oct. 2011: 59 – 95.
  26. ‘Indonesian Historical Writing after Independence’, in Oxford History of Historical Writing, Axel Scheidner and Daniel Woolf (eds.), vol. 5: Historical Writing since 1945, 2011: 575 – 593.
  27. ‘Humble auxiliaries’ in Old Japanese: Javanese derivations, context and significance’ in Cathryn Donohue, Shunichi Ishihara and William Steed eds., Quantitative approaches to problems in linguistics: Studies in honour of Phil Rose, Munich, Lincom Europa, 2012: 241 – 263.
  28. ‘Dominion over Palm and Pine: Early Indonesia’s Maritime Reach’, in Geoff Wade and Li Tana eds., Anthony Reid and the Study of the Southeast Asian Past, Singapore, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012: 101 – 122.
  29. ‘The Wuku calendar’, invited blog written for the British Library in their Javanese Manuscripts series, 2018.
  30. ‘New Paths to the Past: DNA and Linguistics’ [Draft paper on the role of quantitative historical evidence, discussing the contribution of DNA and Linguistics to our understanding of the past (both history and prehistory), pdf from the author’s website], 2018.
  31. ‘Citizenship’ and Java’, invited paper presented at the Leiden University Festschrift Citizenship Symposium, 2018.
  32. ‘Panji in Javanese Court Literature – and Beyond’, Wacana (Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia) 21 – 1, 2020: 135 – 55.
  33. ‘Geisha warriors? The incomparable prajurit estri at the court of Mangkunĕgara I’, in Vina A. Lanzona and Frederik Rettig (eds.) Women Warriors in Southeast Asia, Routledge, 2020.