Christine Cynn
Korea University
Summer 2004: Syllabus
Description: This interdisciplinary seminar will focus on literary works (novels, short stories, poetry, and plays), films and video, as well as critical and historical texts that address the formation of “Asian Americans.” Rather than presume common understanding of the category
“Asian American,” we will examine the historical and cultural contexts from which the term emerged and how the selected texts and films/videos analyze, participate in, and contest its production.
Required Texts:
Course reader
Theresa Ha Kyung Cha,
Dictée
(xerox)
Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior (xerox)
Requirements:

Informed class participation and attendance: You are expected to do all the reading, attend every class meeting, and participate actively in class discussions. (20%)

Discussion questions/oral presentation: Each of you will be expected to introduce one of the assigned readings (about 15 minutes) and to present a list of questions for class discussion. (10%)

Midterm/Final examinations: The midterm and final examinations will include short essay questions that will address topics covered in class. (Midterm: 30%; final: 40%)
Tuesday, 22 June: Introduction: Historical Contexts
Sucheng Chan, “The International Context of Asian Emigration”
Deborah Gee, Slaying the Dragon (video)
Thursday, 24 June: Defining Asian American
Michael Omi and Howard Winant, “Racial Formation”
Arif Dirlik, “Asians on the Rim”
Recommended: Lisa Lowe, “Epistemological Shifts: National Ontology and the New Asian
Immigrant”
Kip Fulbeck, Banana Split (video)
Exclusion Acts
Friday, 25 June:
“An act supplementary to the acts in relation to immigration,” 1875
“An act to execute certain treaty stipulations relating to China,” 1882
“An act relative to the naturalization and citizenship of married women,” 1922
Sui Sin Far, “The Smuggling of Tie Co”
Maxine Hong Kingston, “The Grandfather of the Sierra Nevada Mountains” (from
China Men )
Recommended: Sui Sin Far, “The Story of One White Woman Who Married A Chinese,” “Pat and Pan”
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Monday, 28 June:
Carlos Bulosan, America is in the Heart (97-126, 143-160)
Ronald Takaki, “Dollar a Day, Dime a Dance” (315-354)
Geoffrey Dunn and Mark Schwartz, Dollar a Day, Fifty Cents a Dance (video)
Internment
Tuesday, 29 June:
Ronald Takaki, “The Myth of ‘Military Necessity’ for Japanese-American Internment (379-405)
Milton Murayama, All I Asking for is my Body (1-43)
Thursday, 1 July:
Milton Murayama, All I Asking for is my Body (44-103)
Lonny Kaneko, “The Shoyu Kid”
Hisaye Yamamoto, “Miss Sasagawara”
Executive Order 9066
Recommended: Korematsu v. United States
Chinatown Fictions
Friday 2, July:
Jade Snow Wong, Fifth Chinese Daughter (1-11, 22-27)
Frank Chin, “The Only Real Day”
Wayne Wang, Chan is Missing (film)
Monday, 5 July:
Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior (1-109)
Recommended: King-Kok Cheung, “The Woman Warrior versus The Chinaman Pacific: Must a
Chinese American Critic Choose between Feminism and Heroism?”
Tuesday, 6 July:
Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior (113-209)
Thursday, 8 July: NO CLASS
Friday, 9 July: NO CLASS
United States Military Interventions
Monday, 12 July: Theresa Ha Kyung Cha, Dictée (1-118)
Tuesday, 13 July:
Theresa Ha Kyung Cha,
Dictée
(119-179)
Deann Borshal Liem, First Person Plural (video)
Thursday, 15 July:
Monique Thuy-Dung Truong, “Kelly” lê thi diem thúy, “the gangster we are all looking for”
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Recommended: Linda Trinh Võ, “The Vietnamese American Experience”
Spencer Nakasako and Sokly “Don Bonus” Ny,
AKA Don Bonus (video)
Friday, 16 July: Midterm Exam
Monday, 19 July:
Civil Rights Movements
Yen Le Espiritu, “Coming Together: The Asian American Movement”
Helen Zia, “Detroit Blues”
Dai Sil Kim-Gibson and Christine Choy, Who Killed Vincent Chin? (film)
Beyond Black/White
Tuesday, 20 July:
Mira Nair, Mississippi Masala (film)
Deepika Bahri and Mary Vasudeva, “Transnationality and Multiculturalist Ideology: Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak”
Thursday, 22 July:
Meena Alexander, The Shock of Arrival (1-43, 63-66, 116-121, 141-145)
Friday, 23 July:
Christine Choy, Elaine Kim, and Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, Sa-i-gu (video)
Nancy Abelmann and John Lie, Blue Dreams (1-84)
Queer Texts
Monday, 26 July:
David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly
Recommended: David Eng, “Heterosexuality in the Face of Whiteness”
Recommended: Richard Fung, “Looking for my Penis”
Tuesday, 27 July:
Ang Lee, The Wedding Banquet (film)
Mark Chiang, “Coming Out Into the Global System”
JeeYeun Lee, “Toward a Queer Korean American Diasporic History”
Thursday, 29 July: Women and Casualized Work
Evelyn Hu-DeHart, “Asian women immigrants in the US fashion garment industry”
Yen Le Espiritu, “Gender and Labor in Asian Immigrant Families”
Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (154-173)
Recommended: Swasti Mitter, “On organising women in casualized work”
Friday, 30 July: FINAL EXAM
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