ASIAN 4424 - [Asia Memoirs: Trauma and Social Upheaval in East and Southeast Asia]

@ (CA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits.

Next offered 2012-2013. Co-meets with ASIAN 6627.

L. Paterson.

From the Chinese Cultural Revolution to Khmer Rouge Cambodia, social upheaval in Asia has given rise to a genre of trauma memoir. In this course we will discuss how periods of societal terror are represented and remembered within these personal narratives. Through reading such accounts in conjunction with secondary scholarship, we will examine various issues of representation such as intended audience, construction of memory, and framing of individual experience. We will also examine to what extent these accounts contribute to, or contradict, national narratives of the respective countries. (LL)