ENGL 047A. Asian American Literature and Culture

Cross-listed as ASAM 047A
Asians resurface in U.S. national culture from time to time, remembered anew amid perennial forgetting. To what extent does this (in)visibility betray a constitutive role in history? Through literary and cultural texts as well as ethnic historiography and criticism, this course charts the shifting place of Asians in modern America-as activists, transnational holders of capital, immigrants, family members, coolies, migrant laborers, colonized “nationals,” “internees,” refugees, diasporic/hybrid/futuristic subjects of color, alien suspects, and artists-by examining im/migration, empire’s wars, and the interracial future/diaspora. In providing a critical history of Asian America, this course expands the foundational concerns of Asian American studies as a field toward a transpacific and continental Asia/America while exploring minor adoptions of and resistances to Western politics, economics, and aesthetics. Readings may include Crazy Rich Asians, The Year of the Dragon, Philippine-American War political cartoons, America is in the Heart, Obasan, Dictee, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Tropic of Orange, Homeland Elegies, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Immigrant Acts, Compositional Subjects, Coolies and Cane, Impossible Subjects, The Oriental Obscene, Partly Colored, Alien Capital, and Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation. This course may be combined with another in the 47 series into an Honors Preparation course (pending instructor approval).
20th/21st c.
Prerequisite: At least one W course.
Recommended before or while taking the course: HIST 05B or HIST 010.
Humanities.
1 credit.
Eligible for ASIA, GLBL-paired.
Fall 2023. Ku.
Fall 2024. Ku.
Fall 2025. Ku.
Catalog chapter: English Literature
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature

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