ENGL 047C. Asian American Gender/Sexuality/Species

Cross-listed as ASAM 047C.
Asian Americans are typically represented as either the model minority, the immigrant whose successful assimilation serves to discipline other minorities, or the yellow peril, the eternal foreigner threatening to invade (including from within). How are these figures not only racial but also gendered and sexual, ultimately rooted in the fear that the other may not be human-and that this other will encroach upon the self, reveal the human as other? In what ways do gender, sexuality, and animality, in turn, challenge, even undermine, race? This course zeroes in on Asian/American gender/sexuality to examine the intertwined constitution and irreducible contradictions of desire, power, and identity while keeping an eye on the animal at humanity’s limits. Interrogating the social structures-e.g., patriarchy, white supremacy, Western colonialism, heteronormativity, anthropocentrism-that underpin subjective categories, the course will more broadly think about relationality itself, with everything that it entails-e.g., (in)visibility, love, violence, beauty, abjection, friendship, family, the body, consumption, pain, joy, emotionality, optimism, fantasy, and the crossing of boundaries. We will focus on American representations of Asian masculinity and femininity, Asian association in the (post)colony with appetite, and Asian reclamations of the queer/child/animal. Readings may include M. Butterfly, Warrior, The Chinaman Pacific and Frisco R. R. Co., Charlie Chan is Dead 2, The Joy Luck Club, “Happiness: A Manifesto,” The Book of Salt, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, The Surrendered, Dogeaters, Sort Of, and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.
20th/21st c.
Prerequisite: At least one W course.
Recommended: at least one ENGL, ASAM, or GSST course
Humanities.
1 credit.
Eligible for GSST, ASIA, ASAM
Spring 2026. Ku.
Catalog chapter: English Literature
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature

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