Department of English

Popular cultural representations frame Asian Americans as either invisible (unseen and unheard) or hypervisible (as “yellow peril” or “terrorist”). In this interdisciplinary class, we will examine how the vibrant lived experience of Asian Americans across race and national origin, language and class, gender and sexuality exceed such binary frameworks of representation. Asian American scholars, writers, and artists have consistently produced cultural works that challenge assimilationist narratives of representation, and that create new futures of Asian America. We will bring critical theories of race and ethnicity, and feminist and queer studies together with a wide range of textual forms: literature, photography, performance, food and visual culture. Our objective is to consider aesthetic modes of representation that move beyond notions of Asian American invisibility or visibility.