The Land without the Canon Wars: Language, Literature, and New Freedoms in Myanmar

Abstract

The 1980s saw the "canon wars" in US university English departments as some scholars challenged the dominance of traditional texts and recommended teaching more works by women and minorities. In Myanmar, changes to the curriculum focusing on literature in English came to a virtual halt when the country was closed to the West at the end of the decade. This article describes the author's experiences when teaching a graduate level class on US female and multicultural writing in the spring of 2013, just a few months after Obama's historic visit to the nation. What she found challenged her to develop new pedagogical strategies and offered students an exciting window on other cultures.