Seminar in Asian American Lit & Theory: Transnational Asian American Literary and Cultural Studies

Transnational cultural and literary texts by writers and artists of Asian ancestry who live and/or work in the Asia and Pacific regions and north America have been a crucial force in decentering and redefining the geographical, historical, and political parameters of United States studies, which had become overwhelmed by the desires of dominant political and cultural groups for a “pure” Anglo, northern-western-European point of cultural origin. In terms of a US-centric Asian American studies, the concept of transnationalism—broadly understood “as sustained activities across national borders” (Yeoh and Willis 1) emerged beginning in the 1990s to challenge and undo “Asian American,” “America,” “immigration,” as well as terms borrowed from other so-called US “ethnic” literatures, such as “old country,” “traditional” values. Yet, the concept of transnationalism is most explicatory of dressage (Lefebvre) if it is not essentialized as traits to be arrayed against territorialized notions of the nation-state, nor as merely “inter-national” activities, sustained or otherwise. Transnational poetics and politics might be understood as contingent, nodal, multi-lateral, polyvocal, recombinant intertextuality, and a kind of chaotics. Transnational literary and cultural texts can be deployed to critique and reconstitute normative metrics of nation and immigration, for example, as well as to juxtapose the concept with related ideas, such as diaspora, cosmopolitanism, and globalization.

 

Issues considered in this class include:

  1. How might that most Asian American novel—I Hotel, Yamashita’s book about the Asian American movement—be read as a transcultural, multi-centered narrative that reinvents Asian and “western” literary techniques, cinematic and dance aesthetics, historical figures, and political ideas in ways that exploit western instantiations of postmodernism?
  2. Transcultural poetics in the texts of Hahn, Linmark, and Poon.
  3. Politics of resistance found, for instance, in Ai Weiwei’s work and his transnational public persona.
  4. The rise and fall of Tiger Woods and the transnational intersectionality of race, gender, class, and nation.

 

Student Learning Outcomes:

  1. Students will gain the ability to position their scholarly and creative work within the critical and creative conversations of transnational Asian American, Asian American and US literary traditions and critical cultural studies.
  2. Students will gain an awareness of the contributions of Asian and Asian Anglophone literary and cultural traditions in the formation of English Studies in the 21st
  3. Student’s ability to undertake independent research using primary and secondary sources will be reinforced.

 

 

Assignments:

Weekly blog post on the reading assignment for the week; one presentation with a PPT and a paper on the presentation (length of presentation—20 to 30 minutes; length of paper—minimum, 1 page, single-spaced); one research paper (minimum 18 pages, not including notes and works cited).

 

Required primary texts:

 

Ai Weiwei (exhibits, documentary)

Hahn, Kimiko. Narrow Road to the Interior (2000) (poetry; excerpts)

Yurusarezaru mono (original title) (2013; Japan; dir. Sang-Il Lee)** (remake of Eastwood’s Unforgiven)

Pushing Hands (1992; Republic of China; dir. Ang Lee);

Linmark, R. Zamora. Leche (2011) (prose)

Poon, Wena. Kami and KAZE (2013) (prose)

Sense8 (2015-2018; NETFLIX; (created by J. M. Straczynski and Lana and Lilly Wachowski)

Tamaki, Mariko. Skim (2010) – YA graphic novel***

Yamashita, Karen Tei. I Hotel (2010) (mixed genre narrative)

Press coverage of Tiger Woods ‘scandal’ (PDF)

 

Main secondary texts:

 

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities (Excerpts)

Auge, Marc. Oblivion (Excerpts)

Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture (Excerpts)

Chow, Rey. Writing Diaspora (Excerpts)

Cohen and Van Hear. Global Diasporas. An Introduction (Excerpts on Asian and Jewish diasporas)

Derrida and Dufoumantelle. Of Hospitality

Icaza, Rosalba. “Border Thinking and Vulnerability as a Knowing Otherwise”

Mai, Xiwen. “’Continental Drift’: Translation and Kimiko Hahn’s Transcultural Poetry”

Nederveen, Jan. “Introduction,” “Twenty-first Century Globalization.” Globalization and Culture: Global Melange, 2015 (3rd edition).

Perez, Hiram. “How to Rehabilitate a Mulatto: The Iconography of Tiger Woods”

Yeoh, Brenda S. A., and Kate Willis, “Introduction.” In Yeoh and Willis, eds. State/Nation/Transnation. Perspectives on Transnationalism in the Asia-Pacific.

 

** Sang-Il Lee is a Japanese Korean filmmaker.

*** Tamaki is of mixed Japanese Canadian and Jewish Canadian descent.