ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE, EPIPHANY SEMESTER

Connecting the Dots: Studies in Asian American Literature

What do we mean when we speak of Asian American literature? How do we fuse the vastness of a continent of cultures and regional histories with the immense diversity of literature in the U.S.? Is it even possible to distill the experiences of people of Asian descent into something essential, comprehensible, and clear? The artist Yayoi Kusama writes, “My life is a dot lost among thousands of other dots.” Her installations express this condition by plastering domestic settings, everyday objects, and mirrored boxes and rooms with multicolored dots large and small. The Asian literary diaspora in the United States can feel similarly bewildering in its variety and diversity, as it is ultimately not all one thing. 

Ellen Kim writes in her introduction to the anthology, Charlie Chan is Dead 2, that we are mistaken if we see the Asian American experience merely “in terms of nonwhite people disappearing like raindrops into … the ocean of mainstream white European American society.” Our project in the course in Asian American literature is to reconnect those “lost” dots and to throw into relief their integrity as discrete, concordant expressions of what it means to be American. The course treats the dots as coordinates in plotting the many historical and cultural trajectories that Asian immigrants and Americans of Asian descent have traveled in this country. We foreground and center the Asian in Asian American experience by looking past familiar Western tropes: the exotic, eternal “other”; the inscrutable alien threat; or simply the “model minority,” whose superficial acceptance obscures the ambient racial animus of white supremacy. 

Texts that give voice to the complex mix in the US of acceptance and ambivalence toward the Asian experience are the focus of this course. In America Adjacent, a play by Boni B. Alvarez, a group of undocumented Filipina women await the birth of their children on US soil in a secret safehouse. Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu explores the effacement of Chinese culture in Hollywood’s artificial reality. No-No Boy by John Okada portrays a Nisei conscientious objector to the Second World War who struggles with family rejection and the shame of having refused to defend the country of his birth. Selections from Charlie Chan is Dead 2, an anthology edited by Jessica Hagedorn, includes works by Bharati Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri, Carlos Bulosan, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Darrell Lum.

ASIAN HISTORY, EPIPHANY SEMESTER

Critical Junctures: A Comparative Historical Exploration of East Asian Development

This course examines the historical foundations of contemporary East Asia through a comparative analysis of three states: China during the Qing Dynasty, Korea during the Joseon Dynasty, and Japan during the Ashikaga and Tokugawa Shogunates. While the historical trajectories of these states contain significant, and sometimes even determinative differences, they are bound together through networks of exchange dating back centuries, in which commodities, ideas, and people circulated with varying degrees of freedom over time. Thus, we ask: What common factors have shaped these societies? And at which critical historical junctures have these countries diverged from one another, and why?

To answer these questions, we delve into the societies, political processes, and economies of the region to understand the impact of the past upon the present. Of particular interest is Japan’s development of feudalism, the only country of the region to do so, and its subsequent early adoption of capitalism. Another topic of interest is the utilization of Confucianism in traditional systems of authority in the region, and contemporary debates about the potential impact of Confucianism as it is reinterpreted today upon economic growth and politics. We explore whether and/or the extent to which Connfucian ideas play a role in these societies, and we ask: Does Confucianism really have an impact on economic and political development today? 

In class, students read excerpts of well known historical works like Reinhard Bendix’s Kings of People or Jahyun Kim Haboush’s A Heritage of Kings: One Man’s Monarchy in the Confucian World. In addition, students draw upon primary sources, such as Confucius’s Analects, and consult well known forms of art and culture such as Kibuki theater in order to gain deeper insight into contemporary East Asia.