Su Lin Lewis
Su Lin Lewis is a Mellon Visiting Assistant Professor in the Humanities, appointed for 2011-2013 in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies. Her research interests are in modern Southeast Asian and World History, particularly the comparative and connected histories of cities and civil society in the twentieth century. She recently completed her Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge and is revising a manuscript on cosmopolitanism in Southeast Asian port cities. Focusing on Bangkok, Penang, and Rangoon, her thesis examines intersecting themes of urban space, sociability, education, the press, and popular culture in the 1920s and 1930s and the making of a multi-ethnic Asian middle class. Dr. Lewis’s current research explores transnational activist networks and cultural internationalism in 1950s Burma, Malaysia, and Indonesia. While at Berkeley she will teach classes on gender and modernity in Southeast Asia, South and Southeast Asian cities, and civil society in the non-Western world.