In 1931 Suzanne Karpelès, founding director of the Royal Library at Phnom-Penh and of the Institute of Buddhist Studies established educational film projections for the Buddhist monks at the Royal Library and in the outdoors for rural populations in Cambodia, Cochinchina and Laos. The project traces the emergence of Karpelès’ film initiative by looking at her interactions with Laura Dreyfus-Barney, a wealthy American living in Paris, who chaired the cinematography sub-committee of the International Council of Women (ICW), the ICW’s peace and disarmament committee and was a key figure in the peace and disarmament committee of women’s international organisations, as well as playing an important liaison role with the United Nations.
Working on this project has raised questions about intersections of internationalism and empire. I am also exploring some of the project’s implications for how the entanglement of spatial scales is conceptualised in the analysis of empire and how this might relate to spatial and temporal imaginaries of internationalism.
Publications Associated with the Project
Goodman, Joyce (2021) Suzanne Karpelès’ 1931 Encounters in Indochina and Europe: Multiple Femininities, Colonial Relations and Educative Sites. ‘Femininity’ and the History of Women’s Education, edited by Tim Allender and Stephanie Spencer (Springer). 63-87 More here
Goodman, Joyce (2018) The Buddhist Institute at Phnom Penh, the International Council of Women and the Rome International Institute for Educational Cinematography: Intersections of Internationalism and Imperialism, 1931-34.” History of Education 47, no. 3: 415-31. More here
Goodman, Joyce (2018) Suzanne Karpelès (1890-1969): Thinking with the Width and Thickness of Time. Suzanne Karpelès (1890-1969) Denken Mit Der Breite Und Tiefe Der Zeit.” IJHE Bildungsgeschichte/International Journal for the Historiography of Education, 8, no. 2 (2018): 231-44, More here
Goodman, Joyce (2018) ‘Shaping the Mentality of Races and Especially of Young People’: The League of Nations and the Educational Cinematography Congress, 1934, in League of Nations: Histories, Leagues and Impact, edited by Joy Damousi and Patricia O’Brien (Melbourne University Press), 197-203 More here
Source of image
Jean Cuisinier, “La Bibliothèque Royale de Pnom-Penh”, Revue des arts asiatiques 44, no 2, 1927, 108
