Global Arc

This course uses major studies of affect as a lens through which to view Asian American literary texts. At the same time, it reads Asian American literary texts as interventions in affect theory. Are there distinctively Asian American modes of affect? Asian American structures of feeling? If so, what ethical and representational dilemmas do they present? What political and aesthetic possibilities do they open up? How have they been shaped by histories of traumatic dislocation, exile, incarceration, and racialization? How do they condition the experience of temporality? What futures might they enable?

Debates over policing, immigration, and affirmative action routinely position Black and Asian communities on opposing sides, while the model minority myth has been redeployed in the twenty-first century in the form of the Tiger Mom. How did we get here, and what do these trends mean for our daily lives? We respond to these questions by looking at fiction, film, and foodways from the last 30 years of Black-Asian relations in America. Using a comparative race and ethnic studies approach, we identify ways of thinking and talking about interracial difference that forge new paths for social, cultural, and political engagement.

From the height of the Asian American movement began at San Francisco State in 1968, the question of where Asian diasporic communities fit within the American racial matrix has been of pivotal interest for scholars, students, activists and artists across genres. This class seeks to explore Asian Americans' social location in the US. Using a relational intersectional feminist approach, this class will examine Asian Americans positionality in relation to Indigenous, Black and Latinx communities throughout the country. Students will engage and hone Asian American Studies interdisciplinary methods (historical, literary and filmic analysis).

This course will focus on the Asian American arts, culture and youth activist movements in New York City from the early 1970s-1990s. Invited guest speakers--filmmakers, visual and literary artists--will engage with students in talk-story, bridging their cultural practices to present day. We will examine how Asian Americans used their struggle for self-determination and talents to build art, literary and independent film organizations and the projects that they have produced. Students will have the opportunity to produce a creative final project based on oral history interviews with members of Asian American organizations.

In this seminar, students will have the opportunity to explore the diversity of Asian Pacific American cultures, their numerous representations and how APA cultural producers create multidimensional images and narratives. Throughout the semester, students will analyze social issues such as the culture wars, mainstreaming, branding, and centering the margins within mainstream, independent and alternative contexts through utilizing a wide range of film and television screenings; critical and fictional writing; blogs/vlogs; music; social media platforms; and interactions with professionals in film/television, literature, journalism and academia.

In this interdisciplinary course, participants will explore how Asian/Pacific American contemporary literary, media and visual artists create presence for absence in their novels, short stories, poems, cultural essays, films, and visual art depicting a range of Asian/Pacific American experiences. Social issues such as voluntary and forced migration, assimilation, displacement, gender & sexuality, generational differences, youth activism, identity politics, insider/outsider dynamics, the post-colonial condition, and various forms of discrimination within our respective communities as well as across them will be discussed.