Department of English

This seminar will investigate the relationship between race and psychoanalysis and, in particular, the issue of Asian American subjectivity and mental health. Psychoanalysis is typically characterized as a theory concerning sexuality and sexual difference. We will explore how psychoanalysis might be repurposed to incorporate problems of race and racial difference. Throughout the semester we will read classic theorists of psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Jacques Lacan, D.W. Winnicott) in order to establish a critical foundation for fundamental concepts in the field. We will also read a number of critical commentators and clinicians in order to rethink psychoanalysis within a larger global history of colonialism as well as U.S. race relations. Finally, we will examine various novels, films, dramas, and case histories focused on the social and psychic lives of Asian Americans.