New Course on Asian American Cultural Studies for Spring 2012
Spring 2012 is the first semester in which English will be offering ENGL 3965, a new topics course in Asian American Cultural Studies. Next semester, Prof. Patty Chu–known to many majors as our Director of Undergraduate Advising (she probably signed you up for the major!)–will be teaching the inaugural course under this new rubric.
As you’ll see below, “Globalization and Its Discontents” has students reading works by a wide range of Asian American authors, from Korean American novelist Chang-Rae Lee to Iranian-French graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi, whose award-winning book Persepolis, adopted as a 2007 Academy Award-winning animated film of the same name. Here’s a fuller description:
English 3926.10 Globalization and Its Discontents: Asian American Cultural Studies
Tu-Th 2:20-3:30 (67249)
This course examines the cultural legacies of Asian North Americans from China, Japan, Korea, Sri Lanka, India, Iran, and the Philippines. We’ll discuss race and identity, orientalism and neocolonialism in the U.S.; adopted, queer, and colonial subjects; trauma, memory, and racial melancholy; real and imaginary homelands; and the ongoing project of inventing Asian American literature. Representative texts: The Inheritance of Loss, M. Butterfly, The Namesake, Native Speaker, Persepolis. Fulfills the theory/culture studies or the minority/postcolonial requirement for the English major.
