ENGL 386 A: Asian-American Literature

Techno-Orientalism, a discourse which imagines Asian racial difference through and as technology, became pronounced in the U.S. 1980s, as the U.S.’s waning production economy founds its expression through fears about Japanese invasions.  On the one hand, this tapped into a longer history of anti-Asian racism in the U.S. as the “enemy alien,” the “yellow peril,” and the “forever foreigner.”  However, on the other hand, the depiction of Asian people as robots and their cultures as robotic has projected fears about the dystopic inhumanity that will reign as a strategy to manage U.S. anxieties about what will happen when the empire loses economic dominance. As an upper-level course offering in Asian American literature, this course will examine a range of stories, poems, essays, and films by Asian diasporic writers and artists that respond to these discourses to ask: If the future itself has been racialized, what are the conditions through which we can imagine a more progressive sense of time?  How have Asian diasporic writers and artists negotiated the conditions of race and racism both to critique and affirm the possibilities of an Asian-ized future? 

Previous coursework in Asian American cultural studies is not required, but note that the theme of the course will centralize robots, space ships, and synthesizers more than parents and ethnic cultures.  Assessments will include two papers across the quarter and a longer paper or project that applies course themes and frameworks.  Authors may include Franny Choi, Rachel Heng, Ted Chiang, Janice Lobo Sapigao, and Aliette de Bodard; media may include Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, Outsourced, and the music of Sen Morimoto.  Instructor will not be adding new students after Monday, January 9.