Nicole Yow Wei 

Third-year PhD Student in History and Early Modern Studies at Yale University

Email: nicole (dot) yow (at) yale (dot) edu

Above: A person smiles innocuously at the camera.

I am a Ph.D. student in History and Early Modern Studies interested primarily in the intellectual history of Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean; defined more pointedly as the historical inquiry of ideas, and of the epistemological and social orientations of thinking. These broad conceptual interests have led me to bring methods in book history and social history to bear on the study of Malay and Islamicate world texts. I grew up in Singapore, and subsequently earned an A.B. in History from Brown University, as well as an M.A. in Southeast Asian Studies from Chulalongkorn University. I split my time between New Haven, CT, and Cambridge, MA.

Refereed Publications: 

1. Yow, Nicole. “Unreading the Literary: The Hikayat Anggun Cik Tunggal and Malay Historical Tradition in an Age of Print.” (forthcoming in the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies) 

2. De Langis, Theresa, Nicole Yow Wei, Tara Tran, and Cindy Anh Nguyen. "Feminist Trouble in Southeast Asia: An Invitation." Verge: Studies in Global Asias 11, no. 1 (2025): 105-130. [link here]

Non-Refereed Publications / Public-Facing Writing

1. Yow, Nicole. “Pasts Without History: Ambiguous Politics in Patani Historical Thought (อดีตปราศจากประวัติศาสตร์: การเมืองคลุมเครือทางความคิด ประวัติศาสตร์ปตานี). ” In Weaving Diversities in Southeast Asia: Political, Social, and Cultural Perspectives (Proceedings from the Fifteenth Southeast Asian Studies Symposium). Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University, 2022.

2. Review of Ronit Ricci, Banishment and Belonging: Exile and Diaspora in Sarandib, Lanka and Ceylon [link here]

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You can see my CV here.

My Yale History department website is accessible here.

The following things currently occupy my waking mind:

• Malay poetry and their manuscript forms
• Histories of experience in Southeast Asia
• The social lives of texts in the Malay and Islamicate worlds – how are texts themselves participants in their social and material worlds, rather than simply being mirrors unto them?
• A conference I’m co-organising on the theme of “Form and Formlessness”. Administration is an art unto itself…

Translations (PDF uploads in progress)

• Hikayat Anggun Cik Tunggal [accessible via appendix here]
• Syair Sunur (PDF link forthcoming)
• Hikayat Nakhoda Muda (PDF link forthcoming)

Translations-in-progress

• Syair Schouw Santvoort

If any of the above resonates with the interests that you have, please do not hesitate to email me!

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Miscellaneous and FAQ

• I like to run. But I am not very good at it. Ditto about my painting.
• I am currently reading Alison Bechdel's newest graphic novel, "Spent".