ENGL 251 - Asian American Literatures

Credits: 5
A study of selected literature and other cultural productions by Asian American writers from various countries and immigration histories, including China, Japan, India, Korea, the Philippines, and Vietnam, among others. Examining genres such as poetry, fiction, drama, spoken word, and memoir, contextualized alongside film, music, and other forms of popular culture, students will address issues such as identity, race, gender, sexuality, class/income, exclusion, resistance, cultural preservation, religion, generation, language, assimilation, disability, multi-racialism, and activism. Students will read individual texts closely, explore various literary critical and comparative approaches, situate texts in their historical and cultural contexts, and produce their own written interpretations.

Enrollment Requirement: Eligible for ENGL 99 or instructor consent.

Satisfies Requirement: Humanities/Fine Arts/English and Diversity
Course Fee: $2.00

Course Outcomes:
Students who successfully complete this class will be able to:

Analyze various literary genres within Asian American literature, including fiction, drama, poetry, spoken word, and memoir, along with related literary criticism.
Perform close reading and critical thinking in relation to texts and contexts.
Produce written responses to the literature, employing literary critical frameworks.
Identify the role of stereotypes, especially gendered ones, and the ways in which Asian Americans have responded through literature, popular culture, and activism.
Recognize the wide diversity within Asian America, including countries of origin, immigration histories (economic migrants, refugees, undocumented, students, etc.}, income and educational levels, among other crucial intersections of gender, sexuality, language, age/generation, religion, disability, multiracialism, etc., as these inform the literature.
Investigate the historical, cultural and political contexts within which literary works emerge and function, including various immigration acts, Japanese internment during WWII , the Korean and Vietnamese wars, the growth of Asian immigration after 1965, and the rise of China and India as global economic powers.
Discuss the rise of “Asian American” as a category and the various literatures and experiences it denotes, including relationships between and within Asian American communities. the experiences of other communities·of color, the traditional American canon, and dominant culture.

Program Outcomes
Demonstrate college-level reading skills by summarizing, analyzing, interpreting, synthesizing, and evaluating college texts; and develop an awareness of the approaches writers use for different audiences, genres, and rhetorical situations.

College-wide Outcomes

Critical Thinking - Critical thinking finds expression in all disciplines and everyday life. It is characterized by an ability to reflect upon thinking patterns, including the role of emotions on thoughts, and to rigorously assess the quality of thought through its work products. Critical thinkers routinely evaluate thinking processes and alter them, as necessary, to facilitate an improvement in their thinking and potentially foster certain dispositions or intellectual traits over time.