History

SARE: Southeast Asian Review of English is an international peer-reviewed journal founded in 1980 that publishes scholarly articles and other materials. Launched initially by the Malaysian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (MACLALS), it is now produced by the Department of English at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of Universiti Malaya, the nation's oldest and premier university.

Writing in the inaugural issue, its founding editor, Lloyd Fernando, Professor of English and Head then of the only university department of English in Malaysia, declared that though SARE was envisaged as "a specialist journal" covering "an already diverse and still expanding area of literary, cultural and social interest -- Malaysian and Singaporean literature in English through Commonwealth literature to Third World literature in English it won't be a journal of a jealously and zealously delimited specialism". 

Forty years later, SARE remains true to those inclusive founding principles. It continues to be committed to its mission to promote scholarship that transcends established canons while being attentive to texts and constituencies that occupy the margins of cultures, histories, and nations.  A pioneer in the academic and literary scene of Malaysia and Singapore at the time of its launch in 1980,  SARE now serves a global community of readers, writers, and scholars as an open access electronic journal that is freely and immediately available.