BIOGRAPHY

Ashley Aye Aye Dun is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Office of Access and Institutional Excellence at Rice University. She holds a PhD in English from Brown University and specializes in Asian American literature. Her book project, "Forging Burma in American Culture: Authenticity, Authoritarianism, and the Cold War Exception," analyzes how literature by the diaspora of Burma (Myanmar) uses the autobiographical register in a way that challenges the American gaze desiring “authentic Burmese-ness,” emphasizing how the burden of authenticity falls heavier on feminized and queer bodies. Her project tracks this gaze across U.S. academia, journalism, and politics—arguing that it manifests at the intersections of two Cold War legacies: the ethnonationalism of Burma’s military regime and the multicultural nationalism of U.S. liberal democracy. Considering this gaze as part of a unique, gendered relation between Burma and U.S. empire, her project repositions Burma as being central to critical discourses on the Cold War and attends to the dearth of related work on Burma in Asian American and global Asias scholarship. She also enjoys creative writing and is at work on her first novel.