ENGL 364 | Asian American Literature

This course explores important works of Asian American literature, including poetry, novels, nonfiction, and drama. This course considers Asian American literature's historical emergence and relationship to canonical American Literature, attending to the way that literary form mediates authors' responses to socio-historical circumstances like migrant labor, exclusion, immigration, forced internment, assimilation, and racialization. At the fore are theoretical questions about how these works engage and challenge notions of identity in light of pervasive social stereotypes and the ways the investments and injuries of identity inform the form and function of chosen works, even contesting the idea of an Asian American Literature. The course studies the work of such writers as Carlos Bulosan, Jessica Hagedorn, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Fae Myenne Ng, John Okada, Chang-Rae Lee, Sigrid Nunez, and Karen Tei Yamashita.