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Academic Year 2005/2006

Asian American Literature and Its Discontents
ENGL 243 SP

What is so Asian American about Asian American Literature? The course will survey Asian American literature from its emergence as first anthologized in Aiiieeee (1974) fueled by the Yellow Power Movement to the various cultural and literary challenges since then posed in terms of gender, sexuality and colonialism. The class will give a brief overview of Asian American history in the 19th and 20th centuries to contextualize the two centuries of Asian American writing in the United States, and how themes have evolved and been challenged through the 21st century. The class will develop close reading skills to interrogate literary (traditional and experimental novels) and filmic texts (melodrama and musical) by and about Asian/Asian Americans to raise questions about form, aesthetics and the literary market as they relate to the larger project of Asian American Studies. These texts offer not only different ways of understanding sexuality, gender, migration and ethnicity but also challenge how we ask ethical questions of texts and how we read literature.

MAJOR READINGS

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

COURSE FORMAT: Lecture/Discussion

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL    Grading Mode: Graded   

Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-30-2006

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