LIT379: Asian American Literature

LIT379: Asian American Literature
Prof. Harriet Hustis, Office: Bliss 201
Phone: x2632 Email: hustis @ tcnj.edu
Office Hours: Tuesdays 12:30-3:30 or by appointment

Untitled
Figure 1: Oakland, CA, March 1942 (Photographer: Dorothea Lange; Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print)

Course Description: This course will examine how issues of identity (class, race, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity) have intersected with debates about literary history and tradition (aesthetics, canonicity, and questions of cultural “value”) in Asian American literature. Although the selected course materials and assignments may vary from semester to semester, depending on the interest and/or focus of the instructor, as a literary history course, each offering of this course will focus on the issues, contexts and representations that have shaped Asian American literature over a period of at least 50 years. In particular, this course will focus on how the Asian American literary tradition and its surrounding contexts have changed in response to, among other things, new patterns of immigration and new debates about the scope, definition and value of the overarching term “Asian American.”

Purpose:
Designed for students who have little or no familiarity with Asian American literature, this course will explore how questions of identity, literary history and aesthetic value inform and are influenced by the texts and contexts generated by Asian American writers in the 20th and 21st centuries. Throughout this course, we will question the use of the umbrella-term “Asian American” to encompass a wide variety of very different cultural and literary traditions in the United States and Canada and we will examine the varying roles that gender, social class, sexuality, race and ethnicity play in the selected texts of these traditions. In particular, we will examine how literary histories and traditions are “translated” by Asian American writers (for example, the use of classical Chinese texts and legends in revised contexts by Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston); how Asian American writers use literature to write and rewrite significant historical events (for example, the Japanese Internment during World War II, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the labor movements in California and the American West, and the war in Vietnam); and how works by Western writers and artists have been resisted, reconfigured and reimagined by 20th– and 21st-century Asian American writers (for example, David Henry Hwang’s retelling of Puccini’s opera, “Madame Butterfly” and Toshio Mori’s rewriting of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio).

Learning Goals:
The objectives of this course are threefold: 1) to familiarize students with the texts and contexts that have shaped Asian American literature; 2) to explore how and why questions of identity (class, race, gender, sexuality and ethnicity) have featured so prominently in the shaping of that literary tradition; and 3) to analyze questions of aesthetic value and issues of “universality” within the field of Asian American literature and literary history. (Please see pgs. 6-7 for a list of the English Department Learning Goals and HSS Learning Outcomes.)

Course Materials:

All texts are available at TCNJ’s Bookstore, unless otherwise indicated. Selected essays will be made available in Canvas. You may use either print or electronic editions.

Jade Snow Wong, Fifth Chinese Daughter (1950) (excerpts available in Canvas)
Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976)
Carlos Bulosan, America Is In the Heart (1946)
Frank Chin, Donald Duk (1991)
Frank Chin, “Come All Ye Asian Writers…” (1990) (excerpts available in Canvas)
David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly (1988)
Eric Liu, The Accidental Asian (1998) (excerpts available in Canvas)
Louis Chu, Eat A Bowl of Tea (1961)
Toshio Mori, Yokohama, California (1949)
John Okada, No-No Boy (1957)
Joy Kogawa, Obasan (1981)
Ronald Takaki, From Different Shores (1994) (excerpts available in Canvas)
lê thi diem thúy, The Gangster We Are All Looking For (2003)
Monique Truong, The Book of Salt (2003)

Course Requirements:

There are no prerequisites for this class. Your grade for the course will be based on your performance on the following assignments:

2 Comparative Essays (8 pgs.) (worth 25% each, 50% total): Two comparative papers will be assigned in the course of the semester: although suggested topics will be made available, you are encouraged to focus on the particular aspects of the course materials that interest you.  Papers are due in Canvas at the start of class on the due dates indicated: no late papers will be accepted. (Please see the end of the syllabus for my Grading Rubric for Writing Assignments.)

Class Participation (worth 25%): Class participation is extremely important: if you must miss a class, you will nevertheless be expected to find out what you missed and to keep up with the reading and with any additional assigned materials. If you wish to obtain credit for a missed class session, you must contact me and arrange to complete an assignment equivalent to the class which you have missed.  Class participation grades are determined in the following way: I divide 100 points by the number of class sessions for the semester (usually 14 for a once-a-week class meeting, barring any unforeseen cancellations). This means, each class is typically worth about 7 points. It is not hard to earn 7 points in a 3-hour class session: the quality of your contributions matters more than the quantity–they should be relevant, on-topic, and coherent.   Click here for TCNJ’s Attendance Policy.

Final Exam (worth 25%): A take-home final exam will be due during finals week. The final exam for this course will consist of an analytical essay that will cover the texts that we have read over the course of the semester. Click here for TCNJ’s Final Examination Policy.

Except in cases of documented medical or family emergencies, no late assignments will be accepted without PRIOR approval of the instructor.

Course Expectations: This course will require students to present cogent, comparative literary analyses in both oral and written form.  You will be expected to arrive for class on time, awake, alert and aware; you will be expected to engage with your peers and with the course readings in a thoughtful, sensitive and intellectually informed manner. Debates about issues of identity and their role in shaping Asian American literature in the 20th and 21st centuries have often been intense and heated: you will be expected to demonstrate respect for others in the class, no matter how passionate your own opinions may be.

Turn off your cellphones, please, and only use portable electronic devices (laptops, iPads, etc.) to access the assigned course materials in class. Anyone caught texting, IM-ing, Facebooking, Tweeting or using other forms of social media to socialize during class will receive a zero for that day’s class participation.

Although more specific guidelines will be distributed in the weeks before a paper is due (and I strongly encourage you to schedule a conference with me if you have specific questions or would like my feedback on a rough draft), in general, you should keep in mind the following:

  • You should not simply “answer” the paper topic questions. Any paper submitted for this course must have its own thesis and support its argument with detailed textual analysis.  Focus on one or two specific scenes or descriptions, and analyze the language, imagery, symbolism, etc.  Do not summarize the plot! Focus on questions of “how” effects are created in each text, and, more importantly, “why.”  Pay attention to details and nuances: don’t generalize.
  • You will not be able to “cover” an entire work in the space of a short paper: it is up to you to choose the specific examples and passages that best support your interpretation.  Don’t “ignore” points that you don’t “like” or that don’t “interest” you, especially if they are points that might call your thesis into question. Consider any relevant objections that someone might pose to your argument, and be sure to address them.
  • Your paper must be comparative: be sure to balance your treatment of each text equally and try not to focus more on one than on the other.  Also, avoid playing analytical “ping-pong”: don’t just hop back and forth between texts and then conclude, “Hong Kingston does X and Chin does Y, therefore their works are different.”
  • Remember: characters aren’t people!!! They are textual constructions: you need to move beyond simply identifying whether you “like” a particular character or text and why.  Do not speculate about how they could be different if they did different things or made different choices: although this may make for an interesting conversation, it is not the purpose of an analytical essay.
  • Spelling, grammar, style, and vocabulary always count: a poorly-written paper with great ideas is still a poorly-written paper!

Academic Integrity: Academic dishonesty is any attempt by the student to gain academic advantage through dishonest means, to submit, as his or her own, work which has not been done by him/her or to give improper aid to another student in the completion of an assignment. Such dishonesty would include, but is not limited to: submitting as his/her own a project, paper, report, test, or speech copied from, partially copied, or paraphrased from the work of another (whether the source is printed, under copyright, or in manuscript form). Credit must be given for words quoted or paraphrased. The rules apply to any academic dishonesty, whether the work is graded or ungraded, group or individual, written or oral.  Click here for TCNJ’s Academic Integrity Policy.

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Policy: This course complies with TCNJ’s Policy on Disability. Any student who has a documented disability and is in need of academic accommodations should notify the professor of this course and contact the Office of Differing Abilities Services (609-771-2571). Accommodations are individualized and in accordance with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1992.

HSS Learning Objectives:

  • Written Communication:  Writing is a focus of instruction.
  • Oral communication.
  • Critical Analysis and Reasoning:  Ability to critique the arguments of others in the discipline and the construction of one’s own arguments in the discipline, using evidence is a focus of instruction and/or the ability to analyze linguistic and cultural patterns.
  • Interpret Language and Symbol:  The interpretation of language or symbol is an important focus of instruction in the course.
  • Intercultural Competence:  The development of understanding of other cultures and/or subcultures (practices, perspectives, behavior patterns, etc.) is an important focus of instruction in the course.
  • An understanding of multiculturalism in US society is an important focus of instruction.
  • An understanding power of words.

English Department Learning Goals:

  • demonstrate familiarity with a range of critical, generic, and literary traditions (including recent theoretical approaches) that shape – and are shaped by – literary discourses and texts of particular periods or movements
  • describe the effects of social constructions of identity on a particular literary text and on current debates over aesthetic value, universality, and canonicity
  • identify historically specific elements relevant to a particular text
  • read a literary work and characterize its main aesthetic, structural, and rhetorical strategies in an argumentative, thesis-driven essay or in a writing workshop
  • write a substantial essay of literary scholarship that is theoretically informed and engages with current research and criticism in relevant fields of study, asserting own critical voice in ongoing dialogues and debates

4th Hour Statement: All 4-credit courses in the English Department require students to attend a regularly scheduled 4th hour of class meeting time (as indicated in PAWS) OR to complete additional work outside of class that meets the equivalent of a 4th hour of class meeting time (in the form of group work, attendance at campus events, rigorous reading assignments and/or research, field trips, community-engaged learning, and/or other academic work as stipulated by the individual instructor). This course adheres to the latter requirement; please see below for specific course requirements, assignments and due-dates.

Grading:

94-100 A
90-93 A-
87-89 B+
84-86 B
80-83 B-
77-79 C+
74-76 C
70-73 C-
67-69 D+
64-66 D
60-63 D-
59 and below F

Course Schedule

**unless otherwise indicated, students will be expected to have read the entire assigned text(s) prior to our class meeting

Monday, January 25th:              Course Introduction: Goals and Expectations

Read: –excerpts from Jade Snow Wong, Fifth Chinese Daughter (pp. 1-27, 65-69, 78-96, 103-120, 124-132, 167-173) (available in Canvas)
–Carla Kaplan, “Identity” (available in Canvas)
Monday, February 1st:    Daughters & Warriors: Women and “Assimilation”

Read: Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior

Monday, February 8th:      Fred Astaire & Kuan Gong: The Asian American Man

Read: Louis Chu, Eat A Bowl of Tea

Monday, February 15th:   Gender, Identity and Tradition in Asian America, Part I

Read:   Frank Chin, Donald Duk

Monday, February 22nd:   Gender, Sexuality and Western Stereotypes: The “Butterfly” Effect in Asian America

Read: Frank Chin, “Come All Ye Asian Writers…” Hwang, Abramowitz Lecture AND Eric Liu, The Accidental Asian (available in Canvas)


Monday, February 29th:
    Work, Gender & Identity, Part II: Masculinity and Asian American Labor

Read: David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly; Paper #1 Due in Canvas by the START of class

Monday, March 7th: Acculturation”?  Adapting (to) Western Literary History & Imagination

Read: Carlos Bulosan, America is in the Heart (pp. 87-end)

Monday, March 21st: American or “Other”?: Loyalty and Identity

Read: Toshio Mori, Yokohama, California AND Ronald Takaki, From Different Shores (excerpts available in Canvas)
Monday, March 28th: Issei & Nikkei: The Internment Camps in North America

Read: John Okada, No-No Boy

Monday, April 4th:
Issei & Nikkei: The Internment Camps in North America

Read: Joy Kogawa, Obasan

Monday, April 11th: Paper #2 Due in Canvas by the START of class


Monday, April 18th:
 The Legacy of Vietnam: Refugees and Citizens

Read: lê thi diem thúy, The Gangster We Are All Looking For;
Monday, April 25th: Adapting (to) Western Literary Imagination

Read: Monique Truong, The Book of Salt, Chapters 1-12

Monday, May 2nd: Adapting (to) Western Literary Imagination

Read: Monique Truong, The Book of Salt, Chapters 13-end
Take-Home Final exam published in Canvas: due at the end of the scheduled exam time (during finals week).

Grading Rubric for Writing Assignments

Outstanding: (Letter grade = A/A-)

Skillfully argues a clear, well-supported position and demonstrates mastery of the elements of writing.

  • Presents a compelling, clear, debatable claim which is focused and specific.
  • Provides ample, relevant, concrete evidence and persuasive support (i.e., reasons, examples, data or quotations) for each debatable assertion.
  • Synthesizes information and arguments from multiple, reliable sources or perspectives, summarizes them fairly, and assesses them critically.
  • Displays a clear and consistent overall organization of interrelated ideas.
  • Clearly addresses claim, structure, and evidence to paper’s intended audience.
  • Develops cogent, logically organized paragraphs with clear, concise, and effective transitions.
  • Demonstrates outstanding control of language, including effective word choice and sentence variety, and superior facility with the conventions of standard written English (i.e., grammar, usage, punctuation, and mechanics).

Strong: (Letter grade = B/B+)

Competently argues a position, provides relevant supporting detail, and demonstrates good control of the elements of writing.

  • Presents an interesting, clear, and debatable claim
  • Provides relevant, concrete evidence and persuasive support (i.e., reasons, examples, data or quotations) for most debatable assertions.
  • Incorporates information and arguments from multiple, reliable sources or perspectives, but does not always assess them critically.
  • Displays a clear and consistent overall organization of ideas.
  • Claim, structure and evidence chosen with some attention to the paper’s audience.
  • Develops unified and coherent paragraphs with clear transitions.
  • Demonstrates strong control of language, including appropriate word choice and sentence variety, and facility with the conventions of standard written English (i.e., grammar, usage, punctuation, and mechanics).

Adequate:  (Letter grade = B-/C+)

Argues a position, provides supporting detail, and demonstrates a working knowledge of the elements of writing.

  • Presents a claim which is not necessarily debatable or specific.
  • Provides evidence and support for most assertions (i.e., reasons, examples, data or quotations).
  • Incorporates multiple sources or perspectives, some of which may be unreliable or used uncritically.
  • Displays an overall organization, but some ideas may seem illogical and/or unrelated.
  • Claim, structure or evidence not entirely suited to the paper’s audience.
  • Develops unified and coherent paragraphs with generally adequate or apparent transitions.
  • Demonstrates control of language, including word choice and sentence variety, and a familiarity with the conventions of standard written English (i.e., grammar, usage, punctuation, and mechanics).

Limited: (Letter grade = C/C-)

Attempts to argue a position that is undeveloped, unfocused, and/or unsupported and demonstrates uneven control of the elements of writing.

  • Presents a claim which is vague, limited in scope and/or marginally debatable.
  • Provides little support, analysis or persuasive reasoning; may rely heavily on sweeping generalizations, narration, description, or summary.
  • Insufficiently incorporates multiple sources and/or inadequately addresses alternative perspectives.
  • Displays an uneven, illogical, and/or ineffective organization.
  • Claim, structure or evidence not suited to the paper’s audience.
  • Generally develops coherent and unified paragraphs, but transitions may be weak or abrupt.
  • Displays problems in word choice and/or sentence structure which sometimes interfere with meaning; sentence variety may be inadequate. Occasional major or frequent minor errors in grammar, usage, punctuation, and mechanics.

Seriously Limited: (Letter grade = D+/D or F)

Asserts a position that is largely undeveloped, unfocused, and/or unsupported and demonstrates insufficient control of the elements of writing.

  • Presents a claim which is unclear, inconsistent, and/or insufficiently debatable.
  • Lacks supporting evidence, analysis, or persuasive reasoning; may rely excessively on narration, description or summary.
  • Fails to incorporate multiple sources and/or shows little or no awareness of alternative perspectives.
  • Displays no consistent overall organization.
  • Little or no attempt to consider audience in its choice of claim, structure or evidence.
  • Does not develop coherent and unified paragraphs; transitions are illogical, unclear, or absent.
  • Displays problems in word choice and/or sentence structure that frequently interfere with meaning; sentences are unvaried. Consistent errors in grammar, usage, punctuation, and mechanics