Asian American Posthumanisms: Biopolitics, Ecopoetics, and Literature
ENGL 319
Spring 2024
| Section:
01
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| Crosslisting:
AMST 320 |
| Course Cluster and Certificates: Asian American Studies |
From 19th-century anxieties concerning subhuman coolies to 21st-century celebrations of suprahuman cyborgs, U.S. discourses have always figured people of Asian descent as peripheral to the category of the human. While Asian Americanist scholarship has often responded by asserting the humanity of Asian Americans, a number of scholars and writers have begun to explore and even embrace the inhuman character of the Asian American. Drawing from recent scholarship in science studies, political ecology, anthropology, and literary studies, this course will consider what it looks like to shift the scale of analysis from the individual, organismal human to the social logics, biopolitical infrastructures, and ecological entanglements that supersede the human, or conversely, to the body parts, molecular processes, and fragments that subtend the scale of the human. We will pay particular attention to the question of what consequences decentering the human has for the ethnic novel, a genre often valued for its ability to affirm the humanity of racialized subjects. For instance, what kinds of aesthetics and politics emerge from an imaginary centered not on the human individual but on systems, landscapes, entanglements, and other imaginative forms and social practices? What does a novel centered not on a human protagonist but on an object, a clone, or an ecosystem look like? To explore these nonhuman centered logics and forms, we will read a selection of theoretical texts by Asian American and other authors, alongside a selection of contemporary (and capaciously defined) Asian/American novels by writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Larissa Lai, Ruth Ozeki, and others. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS AMST |
| Course Format: Discussion | Grading Mode: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (AMST)(ENGL) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 50% - 74% |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Kazuo Ishiguro, NEVER LET ME GO
Han Kang, THE VEGETARIAN
Larissa Lai, SALT FISH GIRL
Chang-rae Lee, ON SUCH A FULL SEA
Ling Ma, SEVERANCE
Ruth Ozeki, A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING
Anna Tsing, THE MUSHROOM AT THE END OF THE WORLD
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Examinations and Assignments:
Two short papers, longer final paper, discussion leading, weekly Moodle posts |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
Contributes to the fulfillment of ENGL major requirements: American Literature, Theory, World Literature, Literary History 3, elective. |
| Instructor(s): Tang,Amy Cynthia Times: ..T.R.. 10:20AM-11:40AM; Location: DWNY200; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 19 | | SR major: 7 | JR major: 6 | | |
| Seats Available: -1 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 2 | JR non-major: 0 | SO: 4 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 7 | 1st Ranked: 1 | 2nd Ranked: 1 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 5 |
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