01 CAC TTH4 12160 CHOI MU-210
How have writers of Asian descent made sense of the vast political transformations—colonialism, nationalism, neoliberal globalization—that have shaped Asia across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? This course brings together authors of diverse racial, gendered, and national backgrounds to examine how literature grapples with these transformations across different cultural and political contexts.
While this topic could be approached in many ways, this course focuses on a set of interconnected histories: the intertwined legacies of Japanese and US imperialisms, the proxy wars and authoritarian regimes of the Cold War, and the rapid rise of Asian economies. Guided by frameworks from postcolonial studies and Asian/American studies, we will ask: How do literary works register histories of military violence, political upheaval, and economic development? How do race, gender, and class, structure these experiences? What is the relationship between personal memory and national history? Possible authors include Jessica Hagedorn, Kazuo Ishiguro, Chang-rae Lee, Ha Jin, Mohsin Hamid, and Aravind Adiga, among others.