Teaching Southeast Asia through fiction and memoirs

Since few undergraduates intend to major in anthropology, let alone go on to professional careers as anthropologists, I ask students to read materials that I think will most compellingly address the curiosity they have about Southeast Asians' lives. This means drawing on the increasingly rich store of Southeast Asian fiction and memoirs available in English. These materials can be used to illuminate important topics in the study of Southeast Asia. Although my own field is anthropology, a similar strategy could be used to teach courses in other fields, such as history and sociology.