CAST 245 - Asian American Experiments in Life Writing

FC ARHU CD

4 credits
This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary and experimental nature of life writing produced by Asian American artists, scholars, activists, poets, essayists, memoirists, and culture critics. Prioritizing Asian American life narratives in the form of creative nonfiction, memoirs, essays, documentary poetry, graphic autobiography, ethnographic research, oral histories, epistolary correspondence, zines, archival family documents, social history, and cultural criticism, our course asks: How might we tell our life story(ies)? How do we curate our lives for public consumption? What constitutes the stories we tell about ourselves, our families, and our communities? How do we narrate our lives, our failures, and our successes? The course features a range of experimental and boundary-shifting life narratives that focus on coming-of-age in Asian America; transnational adoption narratives; Asian American experiences of being immigrants, refugees, and/or being undocumented in the United States; the aftermath of Japanese internment; the legacy of U.S. colonialism in the Philippines; the repercussions of the Korean and Viet Nam wars; ongoing forms of U.S. imperialism in Asia, the Pacific Islands, and beyond; the post-9/11 War on Terror; the consequences of model minority discourses; Asian American mental health; and Asian American cross-racial coalition movement building and activism.

This course is appropriate for new students.