Edition 157: Jul-Sep 2024 - Inside Indonesia: The peoples and cultures of Indonesia

Interpreting pandemics through history, text and performance

Petruk figures from Ki Purbo Asmoro's collection/Purbo Asmoro Official

Featuring translations and analysis of rare texts, including the revival of an early 20th century Javanese wayang play, this edition illustrates the multi-faceted ways in which pandemics affect us and how a conversation between the science of epidemiology and public health, drama and translation are interwoven in interesting and sometimes surprising ways.

Petruk, Sĕmar and Nala Gareng confer (image from Awas Lĕlara Inpluwensa, adapted by Camille North).

An anonymous Javanese text written in response to the flu epidemic of 1918-19, offers its audiences eerily familiar lessons for surviving a pandemic

Petruk is the central character of Purbo Asmoro's Tamba Tĕka, Lara Lunga

An essay introducing Ki Purbo Asmoro’s original wayang tale Tamba Tĕka, Lara Lunga (Remedy Shows Up, Malady Gives Up)

Pasar Redjowinangoen, Magelang, c1910 / Digital Collections, Leiden University Libraries

Pieter Bastiaan van Steenis’ report on the 1918 influenza pandemic in Java is a rare and detailed account by a colonial health official who experienced its horrors first-hand

Interpreting pandemics through history, text and performance

Beware the disease of influenza

Petruk 1920 confronts Petruk 2020

Reporting on Java’s 1918 influenza pandemic

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