ENGL 257 A: Asian American Literature

Spring 2025
View in MyPlan View in Time Schedule
Meeting:
MW 2:30pm - 4:20pm / CHL 015
SLN:
14088
Section Type:
Lecture
Instructor:
ADD CODE FROM INSTRUCTOR PD 3
Syllabus Description (from Canvas):

ENGL 257: Asian American Literature

Satisfies the following GE Requirements: 

Diversity (DIV)
Arts and Humanities (A&H)
Writing (W)

Instructor:  Shawn Wong

Professor, Department of English, Byron and Alice Lockwood Professor in the Humanities

Email: homebase@uw.edu

Office Hours: MW 1:30-2:30 and by appt. on Zoom, M-F.  Appointments required for both in-person and Zoom office hours.

Office: B423 Padelford Hall (4th floor), 206.616.0941

“The UW building in which we are learning about literature and social difference stands on the lands of the Coast Salish peoples, where generations of their ancestors told stories.  I encourage you to read the stories of the Coast Salish people about the land we share."  Recommended reading:  Jesintel: Living Wisdom from Coast Salish Elders (University of Washington Press, 2022).

Course Description:

An Introduction to Asian American Literature

Examines the emergence of Asian American literature as a response to anti-Asian legislation, cultural images, and American racial formation. Encourages thinking critically about identity, power, inequalities, and experiences of marginality.
This course is not meant to be a comprehensive survey of Asian American literature, rather the goal is to read writing that represent the range and scope of Asian American literature and Asian American communities.  Through this examination, it will be possible for students to read any Asian American writing and understand the social, historical, and cultural context by which to critically understand the literary work and the community it represents.

Required Reading:

(books will be read in the following order)

Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers, edited by Frank Chin, Jeffery Chan, Lawson Inada, and Shawn Wong (University of Washington Press 3rd edition)

Interior Chinatown, a novel by Charles Yu 

A Man of Two Faces, a memoir by Viet Thanh Nguyen

The Liberators, a novel by E.J. Koh

Classroom Policies and Structure:

First, I have designed this class to ensure your success.  If you complete all individual and small group assignments, you will succeed.  See grading policy below.

Second, the class will be divided randomly into small discussion groups and I ask that you try and sit with each other in every class session.  This serves several purposes: (1) if you miss a class, you can contact your group members for notes, (2) your group can develop their own strategy for completing group Canvas assignments and, (3) if one of your group members becomes ill, it is easier to do contact tracing because you will always know who you were seated next to in class.

Discussion Groups & Group Assignments:

There will be 10 small discussion groups (they will be listed in Canvas under People).  Please exchange contact information and get to know each other since you will be working together for the entire quarter, which will hopefully make our class a little more personal.

Each group will develop and write six discussion questions for the readings assigned to your group, take notes of the class discussion, and email them to me and I will upload them to Canvas Files.  The assigned readings for your group will be listed in the course schedule.

Essay Assignment:

There are five essay topics in Canvas Assignments to choose from for your final essay.  You are required to write an short one paragraph abstract of your essay topic, a first draft and a final draft of your essay (5-7 double spaced pages or 1,750 to 2,450 words). 

Grading Policy:

Grading policy in this class is simple.  All assignments are either marked "complete" or "incomplete" with no overall points or scores or other grades. 

The grade breakdown is as follows:

  • Final essay is worth 40% 
  • First draft of your final essay is worth 10% 
  • Mandatory peer reviews (3) is worth 10%
  • Group discussion questions of the reading (6 discussion questions) is worth 10%
  • Discussion notes taken by your group and participation in group discussion of all the readings is worth 10%
  • Three exams is worth 20%

There is no make up opportunity for a missed assignment.  That said, there will be opportunities for an occasional extra credit (see below) option in case you miss an assignment other than the final essay.

Also, please remember this is an English class, so spelling, punctuation, and grammar counts.  For example, Asian requires an uppercase A and Asian American should not be hyphenated (more about that in class).  A good source for usage and grammar is the Purdue Owl website (https://owl.purdue.edu/Links to an external site.).  If there are too many typos or other grammatical errors, your assignment will be marked "incomplete."

For the first draft and final draft of your essay, you must use MLA style when submitting your essay.

You are allowed to rewrite any "incomplete" assignment for a "complete" grade provided you turned in the original version of the assignment on or before the due date.

Do not plagiarize your essay or use AI generated essays.  If you do, you will receive a zero for the assignment or, in other words, loss of 40% of your final grade and no opportunity to make up an incomplete grade.

I have plugged in all five essay topics into Chat GPT and here's what I found out:  (1) it can't distinguish between the anthology we're using and other Asian American literature anthologies so it sometimes quotes from other books randomly, (2) it assigns the wrong author to a story (for example, it credited me with something that writer Chang-Rae Lee wrote--you would not know that if you were not familiar with the writing of both authors), and (3) it generally writes at the high school level, using common linguistic patterns typical of the kind of essays you would find in the essay portion of the SAT exam.

Characteristics of plagiarized essays or AI generated essays:

  • No relationship between in-class writing and essay writing.
  • Errors tend to be typing mistakes rather than errors of sentence construction.
  • Inconsistent diction from using more than one source.
  • Quoting a source that isn't in our reading material.
  • Similar sentences from two of more students using the same undocumented source.
  • One student crediting a source and another not crediting the same source.
  • Narrative in the essay makes no reference to any discussion in class.
  • Use of jargon associated with a particular literary scholar.
  • Knowledge of dated literary criticism.
  • Use of passages from the reading that aren't in the assigned reading.
  • Source is available on-line.

 

Statement on Non-verbalization of Racist Slurs in the Classroom

This course is committed to establishing and providing a safe classroom environment for all students.  To that end, we acknowledge that there are complex pedagogical challenges in presenting course materials that may contain racial slurs in texts and/or in various forms of media that may offend students, particularly BIPOC students.  Our course affirms a policy of the non-verbalization of racial slurs by faculty and students, recognizing that the verbalization of racial slurs may have a triggering effect on students when not heard in their own voice or read silently to themselves from their course materials. 

With respect to reading material and other media presented in class, the instructors will review and consider screening content with racial slurs based on four requirements:  (1) articulating the specific relevance to the course topic/module, (2) providing a warning about content, (3) stating that students may opt out of being physically in attendance if course content might cause pain, harm, or alienation, and (4) including a broad warning in the syllabus about course content and materials. 

 

University-Wide Policies

 

ENGL 257 Code of Conduct and Mutual Respect

This course aims to create an ethical, caring, reciprocal environment for safe learning about our roles as writers and students who record and observe the world at large.

To that end: recognizing and valuing diversity is essential to the learning goals of this course and the critical thinking endeavor at the heart of university education.

Respect for difference includes and is not limited to age, cultural background, ability, ethnicity, family status, gender presentation, immigration status, national origin, race, religion, political belief, sex, sexual orientation, preferred names and pronouns, socioeconomic status, and veteran status.

Your participation will require careful and ethical engagement with people and ideas reflective of diversity, including those not in alignment with your personal beliefs and values.  

To that end, you are asked to be mindful and respectful to others (and yourself) in all course interactions.   Act with best attentions, assume best intentions from your colleagues, and give each other the benefit of the doubt.  

Failure to comply with the code of conduct will result in meetings to further discuss pronoun use, respecting diversity, and other learning opportunities.  We all make mistakes, and it is from these that we often learn the most.  

 

Further Resources

 

Catalog Description:
Examines the emergence of Asian American literature as a response to anti-Asian legislation, cultural images, and American racial formation. Encourages thinking critically about identity, power, inequalities, and experiences of marginality.
GE Requirements Met:
Diversity (DIV)
Arts and Humanities (A&H)
Writing (W)
Credits:
5.0
Status:
Active
Last updated:
February 22, 2025 - 5:47 am