AAS 3750 - Asian American Digital Lives

(crosslisted) ENGL 3960, VISST 3750
(CA-AS)

Fall. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

D. Wong.

This course looks at the historical and shifting relationships between Asian Americans and (new) media technologies—from Yellow Peril, techno-Orientalist figurations of Asians as machines to the apparent success of Asian/American YouTubers. We will examine Asian American digital production, labor and performances within the broader contexts of imperialism, racism, migration, and the shifting parameters of Asian American studies. By situating “new” media productions and performances by Asian Americans within these contexts, this course attends to a few major questions: How does virtual Asianness engender modes of Asian Americanist critique? What are the relationships between Asian American digital media and neoliberalism/capitalism? Alternatively, how do these digital lives rupture or resist imperialist structures either in practice or theory? What futures and memories do online Asian American performances carve out?