GSS 341 - Race, Gender & Sexuality in Asian American Literature and Film

This course introduces critical race theory and issues of gender and sexuality specific to Asian American context, using literature, film and media, and art and performance. We will explore problems of identity and citizenship, class and labor history, model minority discourse, sexual politics as well as intersection of gender and Asianness, and locate ways in which contemporary Asian America literature and film respond to these issues: how they critique and reinvent traditional ideas about Asian American culture. Furthermore, this course will pay special attention to transnational discourses (e.g. history of immigration, generational conflicts, border-defying transnational experiences and questioning the problematic “national identity”) within Asian American experience, and how gender and sexuality intersect with such discourses. The notions of power, nation, and citizenship in relationship to gender and sexuality are important in this course as we will be asking how gender-conscious and queer Asian American cultural productions may intercept the traditional US thinking on citizenship and racial differences, particularly at this time in our national history. Finally, this course will have a film/media focus, which means we will learn intellectual ways to analyze and discuss Asian American film works, and consider dynamic ways in which minority discourses can be productively deployed in art, film, media, and performance activism. The course content will encompass different Asian American experience, including South Asian, East Asian, and Southeast Asian American narratives.

Satisfies a requirement in the Gender and Sexuality Studies Major and Minor. (Literary and Cultural Representations Track)
Satisfies a Diversity requirement in the English Major and Minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the Global Literary Theory Interdisciplinary Major and Minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the East Asian Studies Major and Interdisciplinary Minor.
Satisfies a requirment in the Film and Media Studies interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, & Rhetoric requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.