Asian American Literature, ENG 207: 1, Spring 2018 MWF 1030-1120, 302 KUY Jee Young (Vera) Lee | Office: 317 KUY, Office hours: TBA j.vera.lee@hawaii.edu; 808-956-3033
Asian American Literature
What is the legacy of the Angel Island poems? Between 1910 and 1940, Chinese immigrants, awaiting trials (“processing”) for entry into the United States, inscribed poems on Angel Island detention center walls. The poems were discovered in 1970, just as the detention center was about to be demolished, and later translated.
The reading of the Angel Island poems provides a rare glimpse into the material conditions of representation and production, translation and discovery in the face of erasure, that informs and helps format a reading and understanding of Asian American Literature as we know it today.
In this course, students will trace the complicated history and aesthetics of self/representation in Asian American Literature, and work to understand the legacies and histories that survive, multiply, or are repudiated in contemporary works. For example, we might ask how Asian American Literature is understood in relation to notions of agency and representation in Hawai‘i.
The class will read literature quite closely as a formal expression of experience, and also pose questions about historical and critical context. For instance, what is the relationship between the Angel Island poems and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882?
As the class studies Asian American Literature within a broader critical, historical and cultural conversation, students will work on a sustained project throughout the semester that focuses on a theme or work in relation to other work/s; students will articulate a web of critical inquiry and influence.
The project will involve a personal narrative (written, visual, oral, creative, or alternate media), research proposal, annotated bibliography and outline, and one long written work. The class will also take a final exam.
Readings: TBD and will include works by Kazim Ali, Theresa Cha, Frank Chin, Don Mee Choi, Rey Chow, Candace Fujikane, Elaine Kim, Myung Mi Kim, Maxine Hong Kingston, Krys Lee, Henry Wei Leung, Yiyun Li, R. Zamora Linmark, Lisa Lowe, Viet Ngyuen, Ruth Ozeki, Josephine Nock-hee Park, Craig Santos Perez, Shawna Yang Ryan, Dorothy Wang, Lois-Ann Yamanaka
Required Texts & Resources: Reading and resource material will be available on Laulima; MLA Formatting and Style Guide, Purdue OWL https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/
Requirements: Attendance and participation,25%; 2 short works [personal narrative (1500 words); research proposal (500 words)] 20%; annotated bibliography/outline, 15%; research essay (2000 words), 20%; final exam, 20%