Request for Foundations Curriculum credit for
ENGL
3290 Asian American Literatures
A. Basics
1. Foundations Course Area: Humanities
2. Department in which the course
will be taught: English
3. Department Administrator’s title, name, and email: Chair of English, Michael A. Palmer, palmerm@ecu.edu
4.
Course Prefix, Number, and Name: ENGL 3290 Asian American Literatures
5.
Number of credit hours: 3
6.
Prerequisites (if applicable): ENGL 1200 Composition
7.
Course description as it will appear in the
catalog:
3290.
Asian American Literature (3) (S) P:
ENGL 1200. Overview of Asian American literature from twentieth and
twenty-first centuries
8.
School in which the course will be taught:
9.
School director’s name and email (if applicable):
10.
College in which the course will be taught: Harriot College of Arts and Sciences
11.
College dean’s name and email: Dean Alan White, whitea@ecu.edu
12.
Date approved by department curriculum committee
and chair’s initials: 10/10/2007; mf
13.
Date approved by department voting faculty and
PC chair’s initials: 11/7/2007; mp
14.
Date reviewed by department chair and his or her
initials: 11/7/2007; mp
15.
Date approved by the Harriot College curriculum
committee and chair’s initials: 12/11/2007;
jp
16.
Date forwarded to Academic Standards: 11/20/2008
B. Using the Foundations Goals listed under the course’s area:
Goal One: Students will learn the subject matter of at least one
discipline in the humanities.
ENGL 3290 Asian American Literatures explores literatures and film by writers and filmmakers of Asian descent. As a basis for this exploration, students will study elements of genre, form, technique and style typical of English and American literature and film, as well as introductory literary theory in order to understand how Asian American writers and filmmakers use and alter these conventions to express unique ethnic identities and issues-- how they “write back” to mainstream, read European American-- representations in order to redefine themselves and their ethnic identity. Through their study of these texts, students will acquire knowledge about the discipline of English Studies, including:
· genre categories and characteristics in literature and film.
· techniques and styles by which Asian American authors and filmmakers both employ traditional Western forms and genres and alter those forms and genres for their own purposes.
· themes, techniques, and symbol systems unique to the literary/filmic texts of specific Asian national groups.
· themes, techniques, and symbol systems that unite literary/filmic production across Asian national groups.
· basic concepts of literary critical analysis, particularly theories of race and gender pertaining to Asian America.
·
basic concepts of rhetorical and discourse
analysis as they apply to representations of Asians in
· essential skills in composition, including drafting; revising; editing for standard English usage, punctuation, and spelling; exposition and argument.
Such training combines traditional formalistic analysis with more recent cultural theories and equip our students with both knowledge in Asian American literature and skills in literary analysis, which they can further apply to literature and culture produced by other groups of writers.
Required texts include:
Literary Anthologies
Hagedorn, Jessica, ed. Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction. New York: Penguin, 1993.
---, ed. Charlie Chan Is Dead 2: At Home in the World. New York: Penguin, 2004.
Lai, Him
Mark, et al,
Lim, Shirley Geok-lin, ed. Asian-American Literature: An Anthology. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC, 2000.
Novels and Memoirs
Huynh, Jade Ngoc Quang. South Wind Changing. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf, 2000.
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior. New York: Random, 1977.
Lee, Chang-rae. Native Speaker. Boston: Riverhead, 1996.
Mukherjee, Bharati. Desirable Daughters: A Novel. New York: Hyperion, 2003.
Okada, John. No-no Boy: a Novel. Rutland, VT.: Charles E. Tuttle, 1957.
Films
Carved
in Silence (Dir. Felicia Lowe,
1988, 45 min)
The
Cats of Mirikitani (Dir. Linda
Hattendorf, 2006, 74 min)
CHO Revolution (Dir. Lorene Machado,
2004, 85 min)
Eat
a Bowl of Tea (Dir. Wayne Wang, 1989, 102 min)
My America, or Honk If You Love Buddha (Dir. Renée Tajima-Peña, 1997, 87 min)
Picture Bride (Dir. Kayo Hatta, 1995, 95 min)
Saving Face (Dir. Alice Wu, 2004, 91 min)
History
Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1989.
Critical Theory
Cheung, King-kok, ed. An Interethnic Companion to Asian American
Literature. New York:
Cambridge UP, 1997.
Bow, Leslie. Betrayal and Other Acts of Subversion: Feminism, Sexual Politics, Asian American Women's Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001.
Koshy, Susan. Sexual Naturalization: Asian Americans and Miscegenation. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2004.
Lee, Rachel. The Americas of Asian
American Literature: Gendered Fictions of Nation and Transnation.
Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999.
Lee, Robert G. Orientals: Asian Americans
in Popular culture. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1999.
Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. Reading Asian American Literature: From Necessity to Extravagance. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.
Goal Two: Students will learn the research
methodology applied by disciplines in the humanities.
Students will be able to define and apply the research methodologies used by scholars in English Studies including:
· close textual readings of individual texts
· literary critical analyses that identify elements of form, structure, and style, and interpret themes, orally in class discussion and in written assignments
· comparative analyses of texts for similarities and differences across ethnic and cultural borders, orally in class discussion and in written assignments
· critical examination of texts through the lenses of appropriate critical and literary theories, including postcolonial and ethnic approaches, orally and in written assignments
· research into cultural and historical contexts of specific texts, presented both orally to the class and in formal papers
· design of a research project that integrates close textual reading of individual texts with contextual and critical resources to develop original interpretations
· argument of conclusions of research in writing and oral presentation
As part of the course requirements, students will show that they can both describe and apply English Studies methodologies through the following projects:
a. Close Reading – Students will prepare
by writing a description of the procedure followed to engage in scholarly close
reading. Each day students will come
to class with 2 or 3 passages (or scenes from films) noted in the assigned text
that they consider especially significant for understanding the meaning of the
text as a whole. They are asked to describe the passage, answering the
following questions: What is the passage about?
Whom does it involve? What does
it accomplish in the text? What does it set up or resolve? What is its relationship to the text as a
whole? Situate the passage in the
context of the text in which it is embedded. Is it typical or paradigmatic of
the text as a whole, or does it provide some kind of rupture or shift? Why did you choose this passage? What does it mean to you? Some Close Readings are assigned as formal
papers; others are written or presented for discussion in class.
b. Response Papers – Students will prepare by writing a description of the procedure followed to produce a scholarly response paper that balances personal opinion/reflection with critical analysis in order to build a conscious understanding of how individualized emotional reactions can form a basis for critical interpretive insight. Students will write weekly Response Papers (2 pages) to assigned reading or viewing. Specific questions for consideration are appended to the Course Syllabus.
c. Team
Presentation/Discussion Leadership – Each class member will participate in
a team of two to four members to prepare an in-class presentation, which will
provide background and context for reading assignments, opportunities to pursue
related subjects of interest, and open detailed discussion and analysis of
assigned texts. Each formal presentation will fill the class period for which
it is scheduled and be accompanied by a two-page handout summarizing key points
with a bibliography of at least five sources. Presentations should reflect
careful organization and planning and engage the class actively as well as
providing information.
d. Final Paper and Presentation - (8-10 pp.) Students will prepare by writing a description of the procedure followed to produce a scholarly research paper. The final project will be a research paper comparing two of the primary texts studied during the semester. Students will select one to three elements or themes of the texts on which to focus their comparisons. They will use standard MLA formatting, including a Works Cited that lists at least five sources--a minimum of three literary critical sources and two historical or cultural sources. During the last week of class, students will present an 8-10 minute abstract of their research paper to the class, including a brief discussion of how their research affected/altered their interpretations of the texts.
Research Methodology Texts:
Bow, Leslie. Betrayal and Other Acts of Subversion: Feminism, Sexual Politics, Asian American Women's Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001.
Espiritu, Yen Le. Asian
American Women and Men: Labor, Laws, and Love. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage,
1997.
Gibaldi,
Joseph. The MLA Handbook for Writers of
Research Papers. Sixth ed. Modern Languages Association of
Koshy, Susan. Sexual Naturalization: Asian Americans and Miscegenation. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2004.
Takaki,
Ronald. A Different Mirror: A History of
Multicultural America. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993.
---. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. 1989. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1998.
Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. Reading Asian American Literature: From Necessity to Extravagance. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.
Students will improve their reading skills, their ability to understand, to infer, to recognize ideological bias, and to evaluate knowledge. They will deepen their sensitivities to connections and differences among texts, increase their capacities for reflecting on experience and analyzing and solving problems creatively, and develop their skills in communicating knowledge to others.
Goal Three: Students will learn about the discipline’s contribution to
general knowledge.
· Through engagement with scholarship in English Studies, students will discover that this scholarship reveals how literary works identify and comment on major historical events affecting Asian immigration and settlements in the US, and how the scholarly study of literature enables students to compare of the Asian American experience with the European American one. For instance, by critically engaging chapters from Takaki’s Strangers from a Different Shore and the poems from Island, students will discover and examine how these works maintain that a racial ideology gave rise to drastically distinct ways of immigration screening at the immigration stations on Angel Island and Ellis Island.
·
Through engagement with scholarship in English
Studies, students will discover that this scholarship reveals how literary
works identify and describe the cultures, histories, politics, and contemporary
lives of Asians in America and consider how Asian Americans have contributed to
the formation of American culture as well as socio-political reforms. For
instance, by critically engaging documentary films on Japanese Internment (Rabbit in the Moon, The Cats of Mirikitani), students will discover the connection
these works assert between Americans’ reactions to Pearl Harbor and 911. This
will help students better understand what racial profiling implies.
·
Through engagement with scholarship in English
Studies, students will discover that this scholarship reveals how literary
works identify and describe the philosophical, aesthetic, and political
traditions that shape Asian American productions and self-representations, and
examine the cross-fertilization of literary production and its socio-political
contexts, For instance, by critically engaging Li-young Lee’s poems about his
family’s immigration from Indonesia, Jade Huynh’s memoir on his escape from
Vietnam, and Shirley Lim’s fiction on the acculturation of Malaysian Chinese in
the US, students will see how these works assert a direct link between US
incursions in the Asia Pacific and Asian immigration to the US.
· Through engagement with scholarship in English Studies, students will discover how this scholarship provides a model that anyone can use to analyze and compare recurrent themes and similar literary strategies adopted by Asian American writers and filmmakers, and compare those with writers from other ethnic groups. Students will use this model to identity similar themes in ethnic literature, such as the re-visioning of history, the importance of memory, cultural assimilation, and so forth.
· Through engagement with scholarship in English Studies, students will discover that this scholarship reveals how Asian American writers/filmmakers contest and rewrite their histories in contrast to mainstream US history; for instance, scholarship in English Studies reveals that the Island poems and the film Picture Bride illustrate not only the inequality Asian immigrants were subject in the first half of the 20th Century and their perseverance but also Asian American rewriting of US history.
· Through engagement with scholarship in English Studies, students will discover how this scholarship makes connections between the production and study of literature and film and issues of human values and global justice; for instance, Kingston’s memoir, Yamamoto’s and Yamauchi’s short stories, Tajima-Peña’s film on Asian America, and the documentary films on the Japanese Internment prompt students to re-examine traditional gender roles and racial ideology.
· Through engagement with scholarship in English Studies, students will discover that this scholarship identifies ways that Asian American productions and the study of those productions impact cultures and the lives of individuals around the world. By studying English Studies scholarship on Asian American literature (Jade Huynh, Gish Jen, Jhumpa Lahiri, Shirley Lim), films, and history, students will better understand not only Asians in America but also Asian culture in general as well as the global forces at work that resulted in the Asian Diaspora.
Required Textbooks
Hagedorn, Jessica, ed. Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction. New York: Penguin, 1993.
---, ed. Charlie Chan Is Dead 2: At Home in the World. New York: Penguin, 2004.
Huynh, Jade Ngoc Quang. South Wind Changing. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf, 2000.
Jen, Gish. The Love Wife. New York: Knopf, 2004.
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior. New York: Random, 1977.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. Unaccustomed Earth. New York: Knopf, 2008.
Lai, Him
Mark, et al,
Lee, Chang-rae. Native Speaker. Boston: Riverhead, 1996.
Lee, Li-Young. Behind My Eyes: Poems. New York: Norton, 2008.
Lim, Shirley Geok-lin, ed. Asian-American Literature: An Anthology. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC, 2000.
Lim, Shirley Geok-lin. Sister Swing. Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2006.
Okada, John. No-No Boy: a Novel. Rutland, VT.: Charles E. Tuttle, 1957.
Takaki, Ronald. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993.
---. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. 1989. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1998.
Yamamoto,
Hisaye. Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories. New Brunswick, N.J.:
Rutgers UP, 1998.
Yamauchi, Wakako. Songs My Mother Taught Me: Stories, Plays,
and Memoir. New York: Feminist Press at the City U of New York, 1994.
Films
Carved
in Silence (Dir. Felicia Lowe,
1988, 45 min)
The
Cats of Mirikitani (Dir. Linda
Hattendorf, 2006, 74 min)
CHO Revolution (Dir. Lorene Machado,
2004, 85 min)
Eat
a Bowl of Tea (Dir. Wayne Wang, 1989, 102 min)
My America, or Honk If You Love Buddha (Dir. Renée Tajima-Peña, 1997, 87 min)
Picture Bride (Dir. Kayo Hatta, 1995, 95 min)
Rabbit in the Moon (Dir. Emiko Omori, 1999, 84 min)
Saving Face (Dir. Alice Wu, 2004, 91 min)
Such knowledge forms a basis for reflection on the meaning and value of human existence and a full appreciation of life’s aesthetic, ethical, and moral dimensions, enabling a broadly informed participation in national and world citizenship.
Not applicable.
C. When the sample course syllabus does not contain a schedule outlining what will be taught when during the semester, provide this information here. If there is something not covered above that provides evidence that the course satisfies the foundations goals in its area (course pedagogy, etc.), describe it here.
D. Bring samples of course materials (textbooks, etc.) that will be used in the course to the Academic Standards Committee that hears the request for foundations credit for the course. The materials are expected to explicitly address all of the foundations goals for the course’s area.
E. If the course is an upper-division course (3xxx or 4xxx), explain why students should get foundations credit for taking the course.
The primary goal of the Foundations Curriculum is to “provide students with the fundamental knowledge and abilities essential to their living worthwhile lives both private and public.” ENGL 3290 Asian American Literatures, as an elective course for the Emphasis in Multicultural Transnational Literatures, provides students with an awareness of cultural diversity invaluable to any major or profession. Consideration of the how scholarship in English Studies bears the history of and current issues affecting Asians in America is critical to understanding who we are as U.S. citizens in an increasingly diverse and globalizing economy. ENGL 3290 introduces students to these issues using a comprehensive approach, applying critical theory to textual representations in a variety of media, including literature, film, and websites. As a 3000-level course, ENGL 3290 asks students to develop their own critical analyses of texts through close readings, response papers, presentations, and a research paper, ensuring that students develop the critical perspectives they will need to engage with these issues in their majors’ fields of study and their professional careers and to examine their roles and responsibilities as U.S. citizens and members of the global community. The level of theoretical engagement with these real-world issues is possible because this is an upper-level course.