L98 AMCS 330: Immigrant Subjects: War, Refugeehood and Borders in Asian American Literatures
This course will explore the effects and realities of Asian American presence in the U.S. as a result of global American war efforts. Exploring constructions of Asian Americans as immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, boat people, illegal aliens, etc, the course interrogates the frameworks of Asian Americans as satiated subjects who are receivers of American benevolence and competing achievers of the American dream. Situating Asian Americans as refugees highlights the hypocrisy of monolithic images of whiz kids and model minorities, exposing Asian American populations as part of the continuum of global politics of securitization, American exceptionalism, xenophobia, and racialization.
This is a very important, and timely course as we navigate at least two active global wars in 2023/24. I am excited to introduce students to short stories, poems, graphic novels, short novels, and photographs to study the obscured history of Asian American presence in war efforts and scholarly participation in eliciting questions of anti-war, social justice, and humanitarian ethics around the world. Some authors we will read are Thu Bui, Viet Nguyen, Ocean Vuong, Hisaye Yamamoto, John Okada, and Nora Okja Keller.
L98 AMCS 330: Immigrant Subjects: War, Refugeehood and Borders in Asian American Literatures
Professor Ghosh’s research focuses on displacement aesthetics in Asian American and Postcolonial Studies, interrogating how themes of displacement, diaspora, migration, immigration laws, new materialisms manifest in literary forms and disrupt questions of identity, culture, ethics, alterity, and nationhood.
