"Reading" Culture: Asian American Visual Literatures and Popular Culture

AMERICAN CULTURE STUDIES 206

This course provides a literary introduction to Asian American Studies and Literature through the visual and auditory medium of graphic novels and popular media. We will examine depictions of Asian Americans as racialized subjects, as refugees, as romantics, and as superheroes in graphic novels, and in American films like "Shang-Chi" as well as narratives like Fa-Mulan. We will draw from your popular knowledge of Asians in movies like The Karate Kid, The Brady Bunch, Everything Everywhere All At Once, and historical images of Fu Manchu, Jackie Chan, and Bruce Lee. We will analyze themes of multigenerational families, globalized nationalities, war riddled refugees, mixed race children, international adoptees, feminized/ overhyped masculinities, and whiz kids that characterize the new generation of Asian Americans in the 21st. century. Drawing from Asian Americans with cultural ties to China, Japan, India, Vietnam, Korea, and other nationalities, the course will take you on a visual and auditory journey of what we see, hear, and know in the discourses surrounding Asian America in today's day and age. Students will engage in creative assignments of tracing graphic novels, and analyzing visual availability of Asian American presence around them through material, visual, and auditory spaces.
Course Attributes: EN H; BU Hum; AS HUM; FA HUM; AR HUM; FA VC; FA CPSC

Section 01

"Reading" Culture:
INSTRUCTOR: Ghosh
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