Asian American Literature
English 181/381 brought students to San Francisco for a week during Spring Term 2006. The course examined the voices and the politics of identity location of Asian Americans through a representative selection of novels, poems, and drama. The course asked who and what constitute the "Asian" in "Asian American" and explored how Asian American writers have negotiated an identity along issues of race, gender, language, nationalities, and, crucially, geography.
In San Francisco, the students visited the Asian Art Museum, San
Francisco Museum
of Modern Art, Yerba Bueno Island, Angel Island, Chinatown, and
Japantown to learn the richness of Asian American footprints and
cultural flavor. The
major texts for the course included Amy Tan's The Joy Luck
Club, David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly,
Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, and Mitsuye Yamada's poem in
Camp Notes. You can view the course website at http://othello.alma.edu/~chen/asianamerican
English 181/381
Associate Professor Chih-Ping Chen
Posted: Thu, September 15th, 2005 at 4:17AM
