This seminar is designed to provide English majors with intensive and closely supervised work in critical reading and writing. Although sections of the course may address any literary question, period, or genre, they all provide an introduction to critical and methodological problems in literary studies.

The premise of this upper-level seminar is that Asian Americans have long had to navigate the often violent constraints of competing transpacific empires: from imperial Japan in the early twentieth century, to a United States intent on containing Asian communism after World War II, to an ascendant People’s Republic of China in the Cold War’s wake. How does literary form provide insights into such historical transitions—for instance, by revealing continuities between empires, as well as by interrogating the very meaning of “empire”? How do—and do not—cultural texts help us to grapple with the traumas borne from war, sexual exploitation, and other forms of state-sanctioned violence? Finally, how might contemporary writing, films, and other creative expression provide a handle on what it means to be American as global hegemony shifts across the Pacific, in a 21 st century increasingly framed as an “Asian Century”?

Repeat Rules

Requirements class fulfills