Asian Am Lit & Theory: Asian American Literature
and Critical Assemblages
Asian American literature and theory can be understood as assemblages of
various modes of literary and cultural representation, analysis and critique, taking
the risk of homogenizing a broad range of ethnic and national groups through
the use of the descriptive term “Asian American.” In this course, we will be exploring the
reasons why this is a “risk” and why such a risk is undertaken. Ethnic studies and Asian American studies emerged
at the intersection of global and domestic struggles for liberation. If we
take the 1968-1969 Third World Student Strikes at San Francisco State
University and U.C Berkeley demanding scholarly programs for the study of
African Americans, Asian Americans, Chicanos and Native Americans as a starting
point, we can see the historical necessity for a pan-Asian solidarity committed
to what Daryl Maeda describes as “interracialism” and “internationalism.” As Asian American students worked to build
alliances with African American, Chicano, and American Indian students, they
also looked to anti-imperialist student-led liberation movements in Asia,
Africa and Latin America in redefining “America.” We can also take as a second point of
consideration a landmark event that took place in the spring of 2011 when an
historic conference at U.C. Riverside entitled “Critical Ethnic Studies: The
Future of Genocide: Settler Colonialism, Heteropatriarchy and White Supremacy”
raised questions for scholars about the ways in which ethnic studies academic
frameworks had over time begun to reproduce the logics of liberal
multiculturalism and nation-building under the imperatives of global
capitalism. The conference called for
what is now being termed a “critical
ethnic studies” that engages the intersectionality of ethnic studies with critiques
of heteropatriarchy, genocide, globalization, capitalism, and settler
colonialism.
In this course, we will trace some of the major
historical shifts in the field of Asian American literary, cultural and
critical studies over the period between these two events and work that has
happened since then. We will begin by contextualizing
the imaginative and transformative ways that Asian American writers and artists
have articulated the issues that they face, and in thinking about Asian
American critical assemblages, we will be reading their work through
theoretical approaches that are assemblages of such fields as Marxist critical
studies, critical ethnic studies, critical race studies, diaspora studies,
indigenous studies, gender and queer studies, globalization studies, media
studies, cultural studies and critical cartography studies. We will also consider critical debates that
have emerged over competing representations in these texts and strategies for
reading them. How do Asian American writers,
artists, and critics explore aesthetic forms of representation to articulate what
is at stake for them, and how are Asian American literature and art key in the
production and circulation of knowledge?
How do these texts enable
alliances between Asian Americans and other ethnic/racial and indigenous groups,
building a broad-based movement for civil and human rights? What are the material contradictions they
pose, and how can we approach these contradictions in ways that are enabling
rather than disabling? Throughout the
course, we will consider the ways that Asian American writers, artists and
critics envision and enact political
agency, alliances and transformation.
Student Learning Outcomes
(SLOs): Student Learning
Outcomes (SLOs) include an awareness of the contributions of Asian American
literature and theory to the formation of the contemporary field of English
Studies–including such subfields as twentieth-century American literature,
ethnic literature, rhetoric, cultural studies, indigenous land-based literacy
and visual literacy–an understanding of advanced research methods, written and
oral ability to place one’s own scholarly work within a broader critical
conversations, independent research using primary and secondary sources.
Required texts (will be
available at Revolution Books):
Yuri Kochiyama, Passing It On: A
Memoir(2004)
Frank Chin, Chickencoopy
Chinaman/Year of the Dragon(1971/1974)
Maxine Hong Kingston, Tripmaster
Monkey: His Fake Book(1990)
Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel
(2010)
R. Zamora Linmark, Rolling the R’s(1997)
Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie Woman: The
Odyssey of Indenture(2014)
Monique Truong, The Book of Salt(2004)
Nora Okja Keller, Fox Girl(2003)
Darryl Maeda, Rethinking the Asian
American Movement(2011)
Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts
(1996)
Jasbir Puar, Terrorist
Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times(2007)
A course reader may include work by Sau-ling Wong, Alice Chai, Monisha
DasGupta, Dean Saranillio, Daniel Kim, Mimi Ngyugen, Glenn Omatsu, Rachel Lee,
Eric Hayot, Robert Diaz, Andrea Smith, Rajini Srikanth, Vince Diaz, Gizelle
Gajelonia, Katharine Moon, Vijay Prashad, Eric Estuar Reyes, Grace Lee Boggs,
Neferti Tadiar, Dylan Rodriguez, Chandan Reddy, Thuy Tu, Linda Revilla, Theresa
Hak Kyung Cha, Moustafa Bayoumi, archival selections from Gidra, selections from Amerasia
Journal’s special issue responding
to the immediate aftermath of 9-11, “After Words: Who Speaks on War, Justice, and Peace?” and others.
Assignments and course
requirements: Short email assigments shared with the class on issues raised in the
texts (20%), two presentations, one on a reading assignment and one on the
final project (20%), one 5-page project proposal with annotated bibliography
that outlines the objectives of the seminar paper (10%); 20-page seminar paper
(50%), attendance and participation.