Tony and Yohanni Johns Lecture 2025

Jesus, Mary and the Occasional Tiger: Muslim Retellings for the Malay World

The Tony and Yohanni Johns Lecture 2025 will be delivered by Professor Michael Laffan - Director, Fung Global Fellows Program; Director of the Center for Collaborative History; Paula Chow Professor of International and Regional Studies; and Professor of History. 

This lecture will unpack elements of a text that seems to have enjoyed popularity in parts of Southeast Asia in the nineteenth century. Written in Arabic script Malay, the Hikayat Maryam wa Isa offers an account of the miracles surrounding Mary, Jesus and their kin, though perhaps not the miracles that modern Christians or even many modern Muslims would recognise today. From stories of miraculous conception to dyeing fabrics, flattening mountains, and reviving the dead to prove a point, this Jesus clears a space for Muhammad and inhabits a world that would have sounded far more familiar to listeners in Java than Jerusalem, where the action begins.

Professor Michael Laffan earned his BA Asian Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra (1995) and his PhD in Southeast Asian History from the University of Sydney (2001). He joined Princeton University in 2005. Professor Laffan’s most recent book, Under Empire (Columbia, 2022), looks at two centuries of interactions between Muslim subjects of empires and nation states. The book won the General History Prize in the 2023 New South Wales Premier's History Awards. 

This lecture honours both Tony and Yohanni Johns's enduring legacies on Indonesian teaching in ANU and all across Australia, which started when Tony was made inaugural professor Indonesian languages and literature at ANU in 1963. It is made possible by the generosity of the late Emeritus Professor Anthony Reid, as well as Tony and Yohanni's friends and family.

Agenda 

• Reception 5.30-6pm

• Lecture 6-7pm 

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