Gerwani Archive
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GA-02943 2013 rel A

Truth Will Out: Indonesian Accounts of the 1965 Mass Violence (Baskara T. Wardaya, ed., 2013)

Truth Will Out: Indonesian Accounts of the 1965 Mass Violence (Wardaya, ed., 2013)

Wardaya's 2013 English edition of oral histories gathered 2008-11 by Sanata Dharma University's PUSdEP: witnesses from military, Muhammadiyah, Kejawen and Catholic backgrounds and survivors including women detained as alleged Gerwani; foreword summarises the Gerwani mutilation narrative and autopsy. Oral history source

GA-02974 2013 rel A licensed

The Dance That Makes You Vanish: Cultural Reconstruction in Post-Genocide Indonesia (Larasati, introduction and ch. 2, 2013)

The Dance That Makes You Vanish: Cultural Reconstruction in Post-Genocide Indonesia (Larasati, 2013)

Rachmi Larasati's 2013 introduction and chapter on how the New Order erased the dancing bodies of women labelled 'Gerwani' after 1965 and replaced them with state-trained 'clean' dancers performing the same traditions as national heritage. Autoethnographic study of dance and genocide.

GA-03054 2014 rel C licensed

The Cold War in the City of Heroes: U.S.-Indonesian Relations and Anti-Communist Operations in Surabaya, 1963-1965

The Cold War in the City of Heroes: US-Indonesian Relations and Anti-Communist Operations in Surabaya (Setiyawan, 2014)

PhD dissertation in History (UCLA, 2014) by Dahlia Gratia Setiyawan on U.S. anti-communist operations and the 1965-66 purge in Surabaya. Gerwani appears in context: as the PKI's women's affiliate (ch. 1), through the Surabaya women's coalition GOWS in the 27 September 1965 Grahadi demonstration (ch. 4), and in the Army

GA-02920 2015 rel A

Women, Sexual Violence and the Indonesian Killings of 1965-1966 (Annie Pohlman, 2015)

Women, Sexual Violence and the Indonesian Killings of 1965-1966 (Pohlman, 2015)

Annie Pohlman's 2015 monograph, the first book-length study of gendered violence in 1965-66, based on about 150 women survivors: patterns of arrest, torture, rape, sexualised mutilation, strip searches for the 'Gerwani mark', sexual slavery and 'wife-taking'. Key scholarly source.

GA-03058 2015 rel C licensed

Ripples, Echoes, and Reverberations: 1965 and Now in Indonesia (PhD Berkeley, 2015)

Ripples, Echoes, and Reverberations: 1965 and Now in Indonesia (Stroud, 2015)

Martha Stroud's 2015 UC Berkeley/UCSF medical-anthropology dissertation, based on fieldwork in Yogyakarta (2010-12), examines how the 1965-66 killings shape daily life through propaganda, surveillance, stigma, silence and justice. Gerwani appears mainly as the object of New Order propaganda: the Lubang Buaya mutilation

GA-02902 2016 rel B

Das Stigma der wilden Weiber in Indonesien (Anett Keller, 2016)

The stigma of the 'wild women' in Indonesia (Anett Keller, 2016)

Anett Keller's German briefing (March 2016, Stiftung Asienhaus) on the neglected gender dimension of 1965: Lubang Buaya slander, the film and monument, tattoo hunts, sexual torture, forced marriages of widows, Plantungan and 'State Ibuism'. Written after the IPT 1965.

GA-02941 2019 rel B

Purifying Indonesia, Purifying Women: Komnas Perempuan and the 1965-1968 Anti-Communist Violence (van Doorn-Harder, 2019)

Purifying Indonesia, Purifying Women: Komnas Perempuan and the 1965-1968 Violence (van Doorn-Harder, 2019)

Nelly van Doorn-Harder's 2019 article on how Komnas Perempuan took up 1965 women survivors (2006 delegation, 2007 report), arguing the violence and stigma were justified as 'purification' and Gerwani women were cast as 'the most impure of all'. Gender and religious logic of impurity.

GA-02874 2020 rel A

Feminismus als Klassenfrage, Teil II (Ita Fatia Nadia, südostasien 2020)

Feminism as a Class Question, Part II (Ita Fatia Nadia, 2020)

Part II of Nadia's essay (südostasien 3/2020): how the army and paramilitaries used sexualised violence to destroy Gerwani after Oct 1965, the Lubang Buaya slander and film, 1966 tattoo 'searches', and New Order redefinition of women's roles. In German.

GA-02984 2020 rel B

The Treachery on YouTube: The Politics of Memory on New Media in Indonesia

The Treachery on YouTube: Politics of Memory on New Media in Indonesia (Parahita and Yulianto, 2020)

Journal article by Gilang Desti Parahita and Vissia Ita Yulianto (Archipel 99, 2020, pp. 47-73) on how YouTube reproduces the New Order's 'Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI' as monumental memory while alternative 1965 films circulate far less. Gerwani appears on p. 63: filmmaker Lexy Rambadetta, after meeting former Gerwani membe

GA-03062 2020 rel A licensed

Years of Dressing Dangerously: Modern Women, National Identity and Moral Crisis in Sukarno's Indonesia, 1945-1966

Years of Dressing Dangerously: Modern Women, National Identity and Moral Crisis in Sukarno's Indonesia (Sullivan, 2020)

Charles P. Sullivan's PhD dissertation (History, University of Michigan, 2020) reads Indonesian women's magazines (Wanita, Puspa Wanita, Varia) from 1945-66 to argue that the Lubang Buaya narrative about Gerwani worked as a 'post-text' of long-running anxieties over modernity, moral crisis and the 'Mother of the Nation

GA-02875 2022 rel A

Gerwani Mazhab Politik Islam Era Soekarno (Rahmanudin, 2022)

Gerwani as a political school of Islam in the Sukarno era (Rahmanudin, 2022)

Deden Rahmanudin, 'Gerwani Mazhab Politik Islam Era Soekarno' (Jurnal Kewarganegaraan 6:2, 2022), a literature-based article presenting Gerwani as a feminist movement and discussing it from an Islamic viewpoint (Sukarno's Sarinah, Hamka). Drawing on Wieringa and Lestariningsih, it recounts Gerwani's 1950 founding, MPs

GA-03051 2023 rel B licensed

The Butterfly Effect: Stealth Politics by the Reformist Women's Movement in Indonesia in the Struggle for Gender Equality (1945-Present)

The Butterfly Effect: Stealth Politics by the Reformist Women's Movement (Puspita, 2023)

PhD dissertation (Northwestern, June 2023) by Sabina Satriyani Puspita in political science on how the 'reformist' women's movement wins policy change through 'stealth politics', using the 2021 Regulation 30 on campus sexual violence. Gerwani appears in historical chapters: the 1965 stigmatisation and the sexual-dance/

GA-02859 2025 rel A

Transformasi Gerwani: Keterlibatan dalam Perjuangan Gender hingga Stigmatisasi Pasca 1965 (Aisyah, 2025)

Transformation of Gerwani: gender struggle to post-1965 stigmatisation (Aisyah, 2025)

Rania Dhiyaulhaq Aisyah, 'Transformasi Gerwani' (Jurnal Sejarah Indonesia 8:2, 2025), a literature-based article on Gerwani's pre-1965 gender activism (education, health, anti-polygamy, 1955 elections, PKI ties, congresses) and its post-1965 stigmatisation. It repeats Wieringa's finding that the Lubang Buaya sexual-vio

GA-03032 2026 rel C licensed

Counter-Monuments: Art and Memory in Post-1965 Indonesia

Counter-Monuments: Art and Memory in Post-1965 Indonesia (Bontrager, 2026)

MA thesis (University of Georgia, 2026) by Alyx L. Bontrager on how Indonesian artists Rangga Purbaya, Dadang Christanto and Leyla Stevens use testimony, embodiment and place as memory activism against the silencing of the 1965-66 genocide, theorised as 'counter-monuments'. Gerwani appears only in passing: ch. 2 (p. 7)