English362F
Draft Syllabus * Autumn Quarter 2014 * Tuesdays 2:15-5:05
TRANSNATIONAL AMERICAN STUDIES
Shelley Fisher Fishkin
This seminar will explore the transnational turn in American Studies, focusing on how transnational
perspectives enrich and complicate our understanding of American literature, history and the arts. What
cultural work do American novels do outside the U.S.? What is lost—and found—in translation? How
have scholars interrogated notions of national borders and boundaries? How do contemporary scholars
engage issues such as the forced and voluntary movement of people (through migration, immigration,
emigration, and trafficking)? How do they engage the global circulation of books, media, and consumer
goods? These are some of the questions that will concern us.
Readings will focus on recent (21st-century ) scholarship on transnational American Studies in theory and
practice. Topics will include transnational American Studies and its discontents; Uncle Tom’s Cabin in
England and Haiti; Huck Finn in China, Japan, France, and Germany; borderlands and contact zones;
poetry and fiction beyond borders; the “ethnic avant-garde”; cosmopolitanism; transactions between
cyberpunk Japan and avant-pop America; transnational Native American Studies, etc. We will also have a
series of conversations in real time (via Google Hangout, or skype, or in person) with leading scholars
and writers whose work we are reading.
Scholars and writers who have agreed to meet with the class virtually include: Dr. Tsuyoshi
Ishihara (American Culture, Waseda University, Japan); Dr. Selina Lai (American Studies, Hong
Kong University); Dr. Sarah Meer (English, Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, U.K.); Dr.
Hsinya Huang (English, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan); Transnational poet-critic Dr.
Shirley Geok-lin Lim (Hong Kong); Transnational novelist Min Jin lee (New York).
Scholars who will meet with the class in person include: Dr. Alfred Hornung (American Studies,
Johannes Guttenberg University, Mainz, Germany); Dr. Takayuki Tatsumi (English, Keio
University, Japan); Dr. Steven Sunwoo Lee (English, UC Berkeley); Dr. Ana Minian (History,
Stanford).
Students are encouraged to experiment with digital technologies that allow archival materials in different
locations to be in conversation with each other. They will have the option of using a digital platform to
present their research.
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Course Requirements:
1) Read the assigned readings for each class. There will be (approximately) between 60 and 150
pages of assigned reading each week, mainly on coursework or online.
2) By midnight the Sunday before each Tuesday class, post a response to one or more of the readings
(a few paragraphs or a page in length) on the class Forum on Coursework
3) Read the responses of your classmates and think about the issues they raise. (Feel free to reply to
their responses on the Forum.)
4) Come to class prepared to discuss the readings. Be prepared to discuss what the authors are trying
to achieve and how well they succeeded. Note a specific passage that you find helpful or
illuminating (and why), and a specific passage that strikes you as problematical or with which you
disagree (and why).
5) For each class in which we will be interviewing a scholar or writer whose work we’ve read, come
prepared with three questions you’d like to ask the person we’re interviewing.
6) Frame a research project involving transnational American Studies, and submit a 10-12-page
prospectus for the project or, if your project will be web-based, construct a preliminary web site
for the project with a substantial narrative component. Post an abstract of your project on the
class Forum in Coursework. Come prepared to discuss it during the first half of the final class. If it
is web-based, come prepared to show the project. I am very open to collaborative digital projects
if any of you would like to work on a topic together.
This schedule is a penultimate draft that will be revised.
Week 1. Sept. 22 Introduction
Week 2. Sept. 30 Transnational American Studies and its Discontents: Theories, Approaches,
Trajectories, Challenges
Mita Banerjee.“Introduction: Towards an ‘American Studies without Borders’?”Mita Banerjee, ed.
Virtually American? Denationalizing North American Studies. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag
Winter, 2009, 7-22. (7-15)
Laura Briggs, Gladys McCormick, J. T. Way. “Transnationalism: A Category of Analysis.” American
Quarterly. Vol. 60, No. 3 (September 2008), 625-648 (625-645)
Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Deep Maps”: A Brief for Digital Palimpsest Mapping Projects (DPMPs, or
“Deep Maps”) Journal of Transnational American Studies, 3(2) (2011) 1-31
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/92v100t0
Evelyn Hu-Dehart, Russell Leong, and Wang Ning, eds, Towards a Third Literature: Chinese Writing
in the Americas. Amerasia 38:2, 2012). [Excerpts ]
Donald E. Pease, “Introduction: Re-mapping the Transnational Turn.” In Winfried Fluck, Donald E.
Pease and John Carlos Rowe, eds. Re-Framing the Transnational Turn in American Studies.
Hanover: Dartmouth College Press, 2011, 1-46. (1-32)
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Wilfried Raussert and Reinhard Isensee, eds. Transcultural Visions of Identities in Images and
Texts. American Studies. A Monograph Series. Vol. 175. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter,
2008, 1-11 (1-10)
[optional]
Shelley Fisher Fishkin, “Crossroads of Cultures: The Transnational Turn in American
Studies—Presidential Address to the American Studies Association, November 12, 2004.”
American Quarterly. Vol.57, No. 1 (March 2005), 17-57.
Shelley Fisher Fishkin, “Asian Crossroads/Transnational American Studies.” The Japanese Journal
of American Studies, No. 17 (2006), 1-48. (1-33)
Rocío Davis, “Introduction: The Transnationalism of American Culture.” In Davis, ed., The
Transnationalism of American Culture: Literature, Film, and Music. London: Routledge, 2012, 1-13
(1-10)
Week 3. October 7 Huck Finn in Japan, China, France, and Germany
Tsuyoshi Ishihara, Introduction, Chapter 1: “What Happened to Huck? Kuni Sasaki’s Translation of
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Chapter 4: “Japanese Animations of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer,” in
Mark Twain in Japan: The Cultural Reception of an American Icon. Columbia, MO: University of
Missouri Press, 2005 (1-35, 89-130)
Ronald Jenn, “From American Frontier to European Borders: Publishing French Translations
of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (1884-1963).” Book History 9 (2006) 235-60.
Raphael Berthele, “Translating African-American Vernacular English into German: The problem of
‘Jim’ in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 4/4 (2000): 588-613.
Selection from Selina Lai, Mark Twain in China
[Optional]
Judith Lavoie, Introduction, Ch. 1: “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: l’ironie comme outil
dénonciateur;” Ch.2: “William Little-Hughes et Huckleberry Finn: Traduir pour aseptiser;” Ch.3:
“Suzanne Nétillard et Huckleberry Finn: Un début d’oralité.” In Lavoie, Mark Twain et La Parole
Noir. Montréal: Les Presse de l’Université de Montréal, 2002
Conversations with Dr. Tsuyoshi Ishihara, American Culture, Waseda University, Tokyo,
and Dr. Selina Lai, Hong Kong University
Week 4. October 14th Uncle Tom’s Cabin in England and Haiti
Sarah Meer. “Introduction,” Chapter 5: “Uncle Tom in London: British Dramatizations,” and
Chapter 6 “Tom Mania in Britain: The Stafford House Address and ‘Real Uncle Toms.’” In Meer.
Uncle Tom Mania: Slavery, Minstrelsy and Transatlantic Culture in the 1850s. Athens, Georgia: U
of Georgia Press, 2005. (1-17, 133-193)
Anna Brickhouse. “The Writings of Haiti: Pierre Faubert, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and
Beyond.”American Literary History. Vol. 13, No. 3. Fall 2001. 407-444.
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[optional]Colleen Glenney Boggs, Chapter 5. “Intellectual Property: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
Copyright.” In Transnationalism and American Literature: Literary Translation, 1773-1892
Conversation with Dr. Sarah Meer, English, Selwyn College, University of Cambridge
Week 5. October 21. Migrants, Immigrants, Borderlands and Contact Zones
Mae M. Ngai, Introduction, Excerpt from Part I: The Regime of Quotas and Papers in Impossible
Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004.
Excerpt from Madeleine Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and
Migration Between the U.S. and South China, 1882-1943. Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2000.
Browse website: ChineseRailroadWorkers.Stanford.Edu
Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Introduction, Part I: Border Crossers in Mexican American Politics.
Migrant Imaginaries: Latino Cultural Politics in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. New York: NYU UP,
2008
Deborah Cohen, Introduction, Braceros: Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects (2011)
Excerpt from Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera (1987)
Ana Minian, excerpt from dissertation and forthcoming book, Undocumented Lives: A History of
Mexico-U.S. Migration from 1965 to 1986,"
Conversation with Dr. Ana Minian, History, Stanford
Week 6. October 28. Transnational Ethnic Avant-Garde
Steven Sunwoo Lee, Introduction from his forthcoming book, The Ethnic Avant-Garde (2015)
Conversation with Dr. Steven Sunwoo Lee, English, UC-Berkeley
Week 7. November 4. Cyberpunk Japan and Avant-Pop America
Excerpt from Takayuki Tatsumi, Full Metal Apache: Transactions between Cyberpunk Japan and
Avant-Pop America (2006)
Conversation with Dr. Takayuki Tatsumi, English, Keio University, Tokyo
Week 8. November 11 Cosmopolitanism and Intercultural Encounters
Alfred Hornung, Gunter H. Lenz, Rob Kroes, Rudiger Kunow, William Boelhower, “Symposium:
Redefinitions of Citizenship and Revisions of Cosmopolitanism.” Journal of Transnational
American Studies 3:1 (2011)
Alfred Hornung, “Transnational American Studies: Response to the Presidential Address.”
American Quarterly 57:1 (March, 2005).
Excerpt from Alfred Hornung, ed., Intercultural America (2007)
Selections from American Studies/Amerikan Studien, ed. Alfred Hornung
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Conversation with Dr. Alfred Hornung, English and American Studies, Johannes Gutenberg
University, Mainz, Germany
Week 9. November 18. Poetry & Fiction Beyond Borders
Jahan Ramazani, “A Transnational Poetics.” American Literary History. 18:2 (2006), 332-359.
http://alh.oxfordjournals.org.ezproxy.stanford.edu/content/18/2/332.full
Jahan Ramazani, Preface, Chapter 1. “Poetry, Modernity and Globalization” in A Transnational
Poetics; Chapter 2: “A Transnational Poetics.” Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 2009. 1-49
Shirley Geok-lin Lim, selected poems
Min Jin Lee, excerpt from novel-in-progress, Pachinko
Shirley Geok-lin Lim, selected poems
[optional]
“Whitman in Translation: A Seminar.” Ed., Ed Folsom, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review.
No. 1 (Summer 1995), 1-58. (1-21)
Vol. 13,
Conversations with transnatonal poet Dr. Shirley Geok-lin Lim and transnational novelist
Min Jin Lee
Week 10. Dec. 2 Transnational Native American Studies
Excerpts from Hsinya Huang and Clara Shu-chuan Chang, eds. Aspects of Transnational and
Indigenous Cultures (Forthcoming, 2015)
SPECIAL FORUM: Charting Transnational Native American Studies: Aesthetics, Politics, Identity.
Journal of Transnational American Studies 4 (1) 2012. Edited by Hsinya Huang, Philip Deloria,
Laura M. Furlan and John Gamber http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/82m5j3f5
Allen, Chadwick A Transnational Native American Studies? Why Not Studies That Are TransIndigenous? http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/82m5j3f5
James H. Cox, excerpt from The Red Land to the South: American Indian Writers and Indigenous
Mexico. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
Conversation with Dr. Hsinya Huang, English, National Sun Yat-sen University
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