Department of English

This course will explore the varieties of Asian American experience by considering the literary forms they take. Our readings will range from first-person narratives of development to fictions of failure and loss. The course will consider literary representations of a broad range of Asian American experience: tales of migratory labor, Chinatown stories, the extraordinary case of Japanese American internment, panethnic activist literature, and the different accounts that emerge when Asian America expands beyond East Asia to include South and Southeast Asian American experience. In each instance, we will read these forms within their historical moments, ultimately asking how these formal expressions map onto the conditions of Asian America. Course requirements: short papers, midterm exam, final exam.