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COURSE CODE: AN 33003BA03
Fall 2009
From Multiculturalism to Transnationalism: A Literary Survey
Time & Place: Tue 12. 00-13. 40, Mbl 121
Instructor: Lenke Németh
Email: nemeth.lenke@unideb.hu
Office Hour: Tue 15.00-16.oo; Rm 118
Mbl, Tel.: 512 900/22069
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course offers a comparative approach to the close study of literary works that are
representative of two significantly different phases in American cultural history,
multiculturalism and transnationalism. While the former dates back roughly to the
period from 1960s to 1980s, the latter cultural pattern is a contemporary phenomenon
that has evolved over the past two decades as a result of the increased immigration in
the US triggered by globalized industrialization. Through a close reading of the
selected literary texts including short stories, novels and plays by authors of various
ethnic background we will investigate how differences in such factors as nationality,
ethnicity, age, gender, class shape one’s experiences of multiculturalism,
globalization, and transnationalism. We will pay particular attention to issues of
immigration, cultural identity, ethnicity, and the Englishes used in the
individualworks. Ultimately, the course will seek to re-conceptualize the concept
“Americanness” within the framework of transnationalism.
Authors selected for the course (listed below) include African American, Chicano,
Chicana, and Asian American voices belonging to the multicultural scene, while
Mexican American, Dominican American and Filipino Americans represent current
literary developments.
Alice Walker (African American, 1944-)
Suzan-Lori Parks (African American, 1968-)
Carlos Morton (Chicano, 1942-)
Sandra Cisneros (Chicana, 1954-)
Cherri Moraga (Chicana, 1952 -)
David Henry Hwang, (Asian American, 1957-)
Helena Maria Viramontes (Mexican American, 1954-)
Junot Diaz (Dominican American, 1968-)
Zamora R. Linmark (Filipino American)
INSTRUCTIONAL METHODS
The course will be taught in a seminar format where the class time is devoted to the
discussion of the assigned texts and of relevant critical studies selected from the
Articles listed in the bibliography below. (The length of the articles does not exceed
10 pages). On each class students are required to hand in a response paper (max. one
page) with a short summary of the main points of the assigned critical reading.
METHODS OF ASSESSMENT
Active participation and attendance are required.
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Writing Assignments
[1] Midterm test: it will check students’ familiarity with the texts, their contexts, and
the critical studies discussed up to that point in the semester.
[2] Take-home essay: an analytical essay that discusses one of the works (or several)
that the seminar covers. Format: 8 pages, 2,5 cm margins, double spaced, full and
correct citation, alphabetical works cited (MLA Style), fastened, with student’s name
on each page.
In-class presentation
It is a max. 10-minute talk on a critical or a theoretical essay related to the work on
the agenda. It should serve as a good starting point for the discussion of the relevant
work of art.
Evaluation Criteria:
Participation: 10%
Response paper: 10%
SCHEDULE
(1) Sep 7 Orientation
Introduction.
SHORT FICTION and FICTION
(2) Sep 14
African American:
Alice Walker, “Everyday Use” (1973) (16 pp), “In Search of Our Mothers’
Gardens.” (1984) (12pp)
Topics: roots, ancestry
(3) Sep 21
Chicana
Sandra Cisneros, “Never Marry a Mexican” (1991) (16 pp)
Topics: Mexican American identity, clash of cultures
(4) Sep 28
South Asian American
Bharati Mukharjee, “A Wife’s Story” (1988) (18 pp)
Topics: home, female roles
(5) Oct 5
Chicana
Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (1983) (109 pp)
Topics: Chicana subjectivity, patriarchy
DRAMA
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(6) Oct 12
Chicana
Cherri Moraga, Giving up the Ghost (1994) (32 pp)
Topics: family, Catholicism
(7) Oct 19 READING WEEK
(8) Oct 26
Chicano
Carlos Morton, Dreaming on A Sunday in the Alameda (1992) (65pp)
Topics: Critique of cross-section of Mexican society, Catholicism
(9) Nov 2
Asian American
David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly (1988) (36 pp)
Topics: deconstruction of stereotypes, orientalism
(10) Nov 9 Midterm Paper
(11) Nov 16
SHORT FICTION and FICTION
Mexican American
Helena Maria Viramontes, “The Cariboo Cafe” (1983) (18 pp), “The Moths” (8 p)
Topic: home, shifting point of view narration technique
(12) Nov 23
Filipino American
Linmark R. Zamora, “The Two Phillipinos,” “Tongue-Tied” (1995)
Topics: Otherness, Creole and Pidgin Englishes
(13) Nov 30
Dominican American
Junot Diaz, “Drown” (1996), “Aguantando”
Topics: poverty, migration
(14) Dec 7 Endterm
(15) Closing
5. Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2008) (335 pp)
Topics: initiation, sexual identity
DRAMA
13. African American
Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog (2002) (110 pp)
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS
Anzaldúa, Gloria. La Frontera/Borderlands: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt
Lute P, 1987.
Brater, Enoch, ed. Feminine Focus: The New Women Playwrights. Oxford, OUP,
1989.
Brater, Enoch and Ruby Cohn, eds. Around the Absurd: Essays on Modern and
Postmodern Drama. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1990.
Cisneros, Sandra. “Never Marry a Mexican.” Woman Hollering Creek and Other
Stories. New York: Random House, 1991.
Christian, Barbara: Women Writers: Texts and Contexts. Rutgers UP,
Diaz, Junot. Drown. London: Faber, 1997.
---. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. London: Faber, 2008.
Fisher, Dexter, ed. The Third Woman: Minority Women Writers of the United States.
Boston: Houghton, 1980.
Fuchs, Elinor. The Death of Character: Perspectives on Theater after Modernism.
Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996.
Garner, Stanton. B. Jr. Phenomelogy and Performance in Contemporary Drama.
Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1994.
Huerta, Jorge. Chicano Drama: Performance, Society and Myth. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2000.
Jenckes, Norma, ed. New Readings in American Drama: Something’s Happening
Here. New York: Peter Lang, 2002.
Geis, Deborah R. Postmodern Theatric(k)s: Monologue in Contemporary American
Drama. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1993. *
Manzanas, Ana Maria, ed. Border Transits: Literature and Culture Across the Line.
Critical Approaches to Ethnic American Literature, no. Amsterdam, Rodopi,
2007.
Mukharjee, Bharate. “A Wife’s Story.” The Middleman and Other Stories. Grove P,
1999.
Ozieblo, Barbara and María Dolores Narbona-Carrión, eds. Codifying the National
Self: Spectators, Actors and the Dramatic Text. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2006.
Schmidt, Kerstin. The Theater of Transformation: Postmodernism in American
Drama. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005
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Viramontes, Helena Maria. The Moths and Other Stories. Houston: Arte Publico P,
1995.
Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” Christian, Women Writers. 23-39.
---. “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens.” Christian, Women Writers. 39-51.
ARTICLES
Abramson, Myka-Tucker. “The Money Shoot: Economies of Sex, Guns, and
Language in Topdog/Underdog.” Modern Drama 50.1 (2007): 78-97.
Brady, Mary Pat. “The Contrapuntal Geographies of Woman Hollering Creek and
Other Stories.” American Literature 71.1 (1999):117-50.
Carbonell, Ana María. “From Llorona to Gritona: Coatlicue in Feminist Tales by
Viramontes and Cisneros.” MELUS 24.2.(1999):19-29.
Davies, G. Roco. “Have Come. Are Here: Reading Filipino/a American Literature.”
MELUS 29.1 (2004): 5-18.
Deeney, John J. “Of Monkeys and Butterflies: Transformation in M.H. Kingston’s
Tripmaster Monkey and D. H. Hwang’s M. Butterfly.” MELUS 18.4
(1993):21-41.
Doyle, Jacquelyn. “More Room of her Own: Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango
Street.” MELUS 19.4 (1994): 5-35.
Ellis, Trey. “The New Black Aesthetic.” Callalo 38 (1989): 233-43.
Ganz, Robin. “Sandra Cisneros: Border Crossings and Beyond.” MELUS 19.1
(1994):19-29.
Irmscher, Christoph. “’The Absolute Power of a Man’? Staging Masculinity in Giacomo
Puccini and David Henry Hwang.” American Studies Quarterly 42. 4 (1998): 619-29.
Lauretis, de Teresa. “Popular Culture, Public and Private Fantasies: Femininity and
Fetishism in David Cronenberg’s ‘M. Butterfly.’” Signs 24. 2(1999): 303-34.
Moore, Deborah Owen. “La Llorona Dines at the Cariboo Café: Structure and
Legend in the Work of Helena María Viramontes.” Studies in Short Fiction 35
(1998). 277-86.
Nubla, Gladys. “Filipino American Literature.” MELUS 29.1 (2004):199-218.
Remen, Kathryn. “The Theater of Punishment: David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly
and Michael Foucalt’s Discipline and Punish.” Modern Drama 37. 3 (1994):
391-400.
Reyes, Eric Estuar. “American Developmentalism and Hierarchies of Difference in R.
Zamora Linmark's Rolling the R's” Journal of Asian American Studies 10. 2
2007. 117-140.
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Rossini, D. Jon. “The Contemporary Ethics of Violence:. Cruz, Solis and Homeland
Security.”
Saaal, Ilka. . “Performance and Perception: Gender, Sexuality, and Culture in David Henry
Hwang’s M. Butterfly.” American Studies 42.4 (1998): 629- 45.
Tucker-Abramson, Myka. “The Money Shot: Economies of Sex, Guns and Language
in Topdg/Underdog.” Modern Drama 50.1 (2007): 77-97.
Shin, Andrew. “Projected Bodies in David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly and Golden
Gate.” MELUS 27.1(2002): 177-99.
WEBSITES
Deresiewicz, William, “Fukú Americanus.” Review of the Brief Wondrous Life of
Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz. The Nation, 8, November, 2007.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071126/dereiewicz
Lim, Shirley, “Asian American Literature: Leaving the Mosaic.” Electric Journal of
the Department of State, 5.1. 2000.
http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itsv/0200/ijse/toc.htm
Lowe, John, “Multicultural Literature in the United States: Advent and Process.”
Electric Journal of the Department of State, 5.1, 2000.
http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itsv/0200/ijse/toc.htm
Vertovec, Steve, “Conceiving and Researching Transnationalism.” Ethnic and Racial
Studies, 22.2, 1999.
http:// transcomm.ox.ac.uk/working%20papers/conceiving.PDF
Borderlands e-journal
http://www.borderlands.net.au/issues
ACADEMIC BACKGROUND OF THE COURSE
Elliot, Emory, Jasmine Paynem, and Patricia Ploesch, eds. Global Migration, Social
Change and Cultural Transformation. New York: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2007.
Cáliz-Montoro, Carmen. Writing from the Borderlands: A Study of Chicano, AfroCaribbean and Native Literatures in North America. Toronto: TSAR, 2000.
Giles, Paul. “Transnationalism and Classic American Literature.” PMLA 118.1
(2003):62-77.
Kroes, Rob. Photographic Memories: Private Pictures, Public Images and American
History. Hanover, NH.: Dartmouth College P: Published by UP of New
England, 2007.
López-Lozano, Miguel. Utopian Dreams, Apocalyptic Nightmares: Globalization in
Recent Mexican and Chicano Narrative. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP,
2008.
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Pavis, Patrice. Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture. Trans. Loran Kruger. London:
Routledge, 1992.
Riofrio, John. “Situating Latin American Masculinity: Immigration, Empathy and
Emasculation in Junot Diaz’s Drown.” Atenea 28.1 (2008): 23-36.
Saldivar, José David. Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies.
Berkeley: U of Claifornia P, 1997.
Schmidt, Kerstin. The Theater of Transformation: Postmodernism in American
Drama.Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005.
Worthen, W. B. “Staging América: The Subject of History in Chicano/a Theatre.”
Theatre Journal 49.2 (1997): 101-20.
Department of Homeland Security: Immigration Statistics.
Websites
http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics
US Immigration, Borders, and Security, Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
http://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/usimmigration.php