In his incendiary introduction to Aiiieeeee!! (1974), the playwright and novelist Frank Chin described Asian America as made up of those “Chinese and Japanese Americans, American-born and –raised, who got their China and Japan from the radio, […] from the pushers of white American culture.” Chin’s anthology for Asian American literature did far more than define a literary tradition; he was imagining a racial and politicized community in the U.S., one defined in opposition to white America. This course takes Chin’s declaration and narrow definition as a point of departure, exploring the ways in which Asian Americans (including South and South East Asian Americans that Chin never mentions) have constantly interrogated the meanings of both Asian American and American identity. Drawing from scholarship, historical materials, film, television, and other forms of popular culture, we will ask key questions:
- What are the origins of the term “Asian American”?
In what ways has the term been inclusive, exclusionary, and/or strategic?
- How do Asian Americans fit into larger debates about race and immigration?
- What kind of stereotypes have been constructed about Asian people over the course of American history?
- What was the Asian American movement of the late 1960s, and how does its legacy continue?
- How have artists, activists, and ordinary people helped define the stakes of “Asian America”?
Course Requirements:
No data submitted
Intended Audience:
No data submitted
Class Format:
No data submitted