The first part of the book contains documentation of a groundbreaking exhibition held in 2007 on student activities and societal engagements during post-war Singapore 1945-1965 and transcripts of forums held in conjunction with it. The second half centres on oral history accounts of mostly former Chinese school students who shared about their social, cultural and political activities in complex but exciting times.Education-at-large broadens our understanding of Singapore's educational history in the transitional period between the end of the Second World War and the country's independence; examines the ways in which student activities and activism resonated with, and contributed to, the country's wider social, political and cultural life, as well as the decolonisation process; and stimulates debates about Chinese education and student activism in Singapore.

Identity politics can impede Chinese identification in southeast Asia because the migrant population, particularly the intellectual aspect of that population, have to consider the political effects of their intellectual and social activities on the survival of Chinese communities. Similarly, these communities have to deal with the necessity of nation-building in the aftermath of the Second World War, which required integration rather than the exaggeration of differences. Consequently, restriction on self-understanding as well as self-representation has become more than apparent in Chinese migrant communities in southeast Asia. With this in mind, identity politics can inspire self-understanding among the migrant communities, as intellectuals rediscover how humanism can enable a claim of ‘Chineseness’ that can be registered differently and creatively in a variety of national conditions. Migrant communities generally understand the importance of political accuracy, and this being accurate involves subscribing to pragmatism, something which is apparent in the scholarship and creative outputs of these communities. Humanism and pragmatism together are the epistemological parameters of self-representation, whereas civilizational and ethnic studies are their methodological parameters. This book was originally published as a special issue of Asian Ethnicity.

Nationalism and Decolonisation in Singapore analyses Singapore’s decolonisation movement between 1953 and 1963 and provides a framework to understand the deepest and most important unresolved conflicts in Singaporean society. This book demonstrates how these conflicts stem from four unresolved schisms dating from the decolonisation period: race, class, language, and the meaning of self-determination. The author argues that these schisms drove the events of decolonisation, the creation of Malaysia, and Singapore’s separation and continue to actively shape Singapore today. Using contemporary English- and Chinese-language sources from a wide array of perspectives, as well as numerous declassified official documents, this book provides a new approach to the most formative period of Singapore history. It explains in detail the different ideologies, institutions, and conflicts which shaped Singaporean politics and society during decolonisation. In particular, the book focuses on the leaders of the main groups which most heavily influenced Singapore’s anti-colonial nationalism – the Chinesespeaking, the working class, and left-wing intellectuals. It looks at Singapore in the context of global movements of nationalism, socialism, and decolonisation and provides a framework which can offer insight into similar attempts by postcolonial governments to construct new nation-states from plural societies. A novel study of Singapore’s independence struggle that incorporates and analyses multiple linguistic, socioeconomic, and political viewpoints, the book will be of interest to researchers of Southeast Asian history and politics and those interested in decolonisation, nationalism, identity, and the politics of race, class, and language.

This edited volume examines the historical development of Chinese-medium schools from the British colonial era to recent decades of divergent development after the 1965 separation of Singapore and Malaysia. Educational institutions have been a crucial state apparatus in shaping the cultural identity and ideology of ethnic Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia. This volume applies various perspectives from education theory to heritage studies in dealing with the cultural legacy and memory of such schools as situated in larger contexts of society. The book offers comprehensive practice-based analysis and reflection about the complex relationships between language acquisition, identity construction, and state formation from socio-political-cultural perspectives. It covers a broad range of aspects from identities of culture, gender, and religion, to the roles played by the state and the community in various aspects of education such as textbooks, cultural activities, and adult education, as well as the representation of culture in Chinese schools through cultural memory and literature. The readership includes academics, students and members of the public interested in the history and society of the Chinese diaspora, especially in South East Asia. This also appeals to scholars interested in a bilingual or multilingual outlook in education as well as diasporic studies.

Featuring new translations of previously untranslated Chinese short stories, Memorandum maps out seven decades of Sinophone Singaporean Literature. From bargirls to student activists, from trishaw men to tea merchants, this collection provides a glimpse into a world that has been previously invisible to Anglophone readers. Paired with critical essays, these stories showcase the richness and diversity of Singapore’s Chinese community, but also its inherent interconnectedness with other cultures within Singapore. “Memorandum is a pathbreaking anthology that refracts over half a century of Singapore’s history through its lens. The translated stories do much more than simply bridge Sinophone and Anglophone worlds: they actively cross geographical, cultural, linguistic and class boundaries, causing us to think more deeply about the nature of social power, and the transformative interventions literary texts can make.” -Philip Holden, scholar of Singapore &Southeast Asian literatures

A detailed account of the cultural history of the Chinese diaspora, with a focus on the performers and audiences who were involved in the making of Chinese performing cultures in Southeast Asia. Focusing on five different kinds of theatre troupes from China and their respective travels in Singapore, Bangkok, Malaya and Hong Kong, Zhang examines their different travelling experiences and divergent cultural practices. She thus sheds light on how transnational mobility was embodied, practised and circumscribed in the course of troupes’ travelling, sojourning and interacting with diasporic communities. These troupes communicated diverse discourses and ideologies influenced by different social political movements in China, and these meanings were further altered by transmission. By unpacking multiple ways of performing Chineseness that was determined by changing time-space constructions, this volume provides valuable insight for scholars of the Chinese Diaspora, Transnational History and Performing Arts in Asia.

A constellation of thoughts by 25 established and emerging scholars who plot the indices of modernity and locate new coordinates within the shifting landscape of art. These newly commissioned essays are accompanied by close to 200 full-colour image plates.