ENGL 535 A: American Culture and Criticism

As a trade, military, and diplomatic discourse which has been formalized through measures such as the Transpacific Trade Partnership, the Transpacific names the connections that have been forged across continents along historical routes of Western imperialism.  The Transpacific serves as another reminder that promises of global connection often maintain imperial and neocolonial power – only now certain Asian states’ capital and military power also enact that domination.  However, the Transpacific as a theoretical turn in Asian American cultural studies since roughly 2010 has offered new possibilities for thinking about how artists, organizers, and critics have responded to these power dynamics within the crises of mass displacement, nuclear militarization, and planetary extinction.  In doing so, they imagine new forms of attachment across and with the planet in spite and because of promises of the global.

This seminar will provide an introduction to Asian American cultural studies, the Transpacific turn, and Indigenous response through a brief survey of theoretical, literary, and cultural texts by Asian North American, Asian Anglophone, and Pacific Islander authors.  The Transpacific turn necessitates a focus on displaced people, perpetual migrants, oceans, and other figures that challenge liberal U.S.-centric frameworks of model minorities, claiming America, and intergenerational conflict.  First, we will begin by rehearsing debates in Asian American studies that extend beyond identity affirmation, to then outline the Transpacific turn.  We will then explore how the Transpacific as a critical framework has engaged with Indigenous studies, postcolonial theory, area studies, Transatlantic Black studies, and hemispheric studies toward new visions of the planet.  Assignments will be aimed toward professionalization and may include teaching and research presentations, research reviews, and conference paper writing.  Reading requirement will average one long-form cultural text and three chapter-length pieces of scholar per week, and as a whole will provide a brief field introduction to contemporary Asian American culture. 

Keywords: Asian American, Pacific Rim, multiethnic, postcolonial, area studies 

**NB: TuTh course time is correct**