Department of English

I specialize in Asian American literature and studies. My dissertation, “The Slash Between: Inauthenticating Burmese American Literature,” explores contemporary American literature authored by the diaspora of Burma/Myanmar; within Asian American literary studies, some of this literature has been analyzed as “Burmese American Literature.” In this project, I deconstruct “Burmese American Literature” as a literary formation, along with the term “Burmese American” itself. I critically orient select texts and questions of ethnicity-specific to Burma/Myanmar and its diaspora within broader frameworks of Asian American literary study. I argue that these texts interrogate certain corporeal terms of ethnic identity, or “Burmese-ness,” confronting biological and cultural essentialisms that are relevant in, and ultimately beyond, a Burmese/Myanmar and Burmese/Myanmar diasporic context. These texts highlight the dominating pressures of representation, which manifest themselves through scenes of the constricted body. They challenge a fixation with ethnicity characterized by an authoritarian impulse to fortify parameters of stable and “authentic” Burmese-ness–an impulse found in the nationalist rhetoric of the Burmese/Myanmar military as well as anti-military resistance. This project also engages larger debates about aesthetics and identitarian categorization in which Asian American literary studies has long been embroiled.