Department of English

What does it mean to be brown in America? This interdisciplinary class examines race and ethnicity as a lived social, historical, and cultural experience, with specific focus on South Asian immigrants in the United States. Covering more than 300 years of South Asian immigration to the Americas, we will focus on cultural texts created by first-, second-, and third-generation immigrants from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Our method will necessarily be broad and diverse, as our readings encompass history, ethnography and sociology; literary and legal texts; music, art, television and film. Together, our curriculum illuminates how race, class, caste, gender, sexuality, and religion emerge as political constructs of identity, and how they intersect in challenging ways.