ENGL 4630 - Rethinking Asian American Literature: Indigeneity, Diaspora, Settler Colonialism

(crosslisted) AAS 4630, AMST 4632
(CA-AS, ALC-AS, SCD-AS)

Fall. 4 credits. Student option grading.

J. Hu Pegues.

What are the limits and possibilities for Asian American longing and belonging? Asian Americans have been variously understood as immigrants, refugees, “forever foreigners,” and “model minorities.” These ideas emerge from and shape US understandings of nation, empire, rights, and citizenship. Native and Indigenous studies scholars have asked how and whether immigrants—including exploited workers—are complicit with settlement and occupation. In this course we will read Asian American literary texts from the Americas through Asian American and Indigenous cultural critique to consider the overlapping dimensions of militarism, carcerality, racial capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and dispossession in order to learn what comparative and relational approaches can teach us.