An introduction to literary study that helps students develop the skills necessary for college-level reading, writing, research and critical thinking. Through exposure to a variety of literary forms and genres, historical periods and critical approaches, students are taught how to read closely, argue effectively and develop a strong writing voice. The course is reading and writing intensive and organized around weekly assignments. There are no waivers for LAS-E101 except for transfer students who have taken an equivalent college course.

First-year Students are pre-registered for this course by the department.

Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Transfer Students register into the designated section(s).

Major Requirement | BFA

This class examines Asian American and diasporic literature to understand key social issues and historical events that have affected immigrant and diasporic communities in the US. These events include but are not limited to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese internment, the civil rights and women's rights movements, the Vietnam War, and the LA uprising. Students will engage with scholarly, literary, and visual responses to these historical developments, which articulate the field of Asian American and diasporic studies around the following challenges:

1) how to secure the civil rights of Asian Americans as a racial minority group

2) how to mediate ethnic, sexual, and socioeconomic differences among Asian Americans and between other racialized groups

3) how to know and respond to the racial injuries of being Asian in America.

Offering students a historical grounding in Asian American and diasporic literature and culture, the course additionally asks students to question the relationship between multiple cultural forms (the short story, autobiography, novel, play, epistolary, and graphic novel) and their impact in shaping Asian American and Diasporic studies.

Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.

Elective

Affects describe the palpable manifestations of feeling--the thoughts, senses, expressions, gestures, and actions that both precede and respond to the gravity of emotions. In this course, we will question the affects that emerge within Asian American literature and film, especially those born from feelings of vengefulness, regret, filial love, and duty. To what degree are these affects unique to Asian American contexts? What narrative conventions and histories produce these affects and how might we chart an ever more expansive tapestry of feeling Asian in America?

Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.

Elective

In this course, students will engage with transnational narratives about Asian American women, organized around the figures of the self-sacrificial martyr, avenger, betrayer, and loyalist. The course contextualizes these figures within the historical conditions that have affected transnational Aaian American diasporas since the 1940’s. In particular, students will learn how to analyze prominent narratives of sacrifice, vengeance, loyalty, and deceit to illuminate the kinds of desires and actions that have been (un)imaginable for women at specific points in history. In addition to the above goals, students will consider how the categories of “Asian” and “Asian American” women constitute shifting anchors of identification and belonging by virtue of their transnational characteristics. Students can expect to read heavily across historical, theoretical, literary criticism alongside novels, short stories, film, and graphic novels. The course comes with a content warning as it will grapple with some major events of historical trauma and sexual violence.
Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.

Elective

The course begins with a rehearsal of the body as a social construct, tracing how the body accrues meaning particularly in the forms of gender, race, and sexuality. We will examine the stakes of redefining the body as a fixed and knowable entity while also examining the body in terms of its relationship to the state. Towards the end of the course, we will examine how a social constructivist framework for understanding the biological body is not enough, venturing into post-human and new-materialist perspectives. Some driving questions of the course are: How do we trace the human body as it accrues different meanings across the fields of sexuality, women’s studies, and critical race studies? What are our investments in the body as an object of knowledge? How does the body extend beyond discourse and when? How do we reimagine the relationship between the biological and the cultural that moves beyond binary formations? At the conclusion of this course, students will gain various tools for analyzing how a body comes to matter and to what ends.

Open to Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.

Elective

The course begins with a rehearsal of the body as a social construct, tracing how the body accrues meaning particularly in the forms of gender, race, and sexuality. We will examine the stakes of redefining the body as a fixed and knowable entity while also examining the body in terms of its relationship to the state. Towards the end of the course, we will examine how a social constructivist framework for understanding the biological body is not enough, venturing into post-human and new-materialist perspectives. Some driving questions of the course are: How do we trace the human body as it accrues different meanings across the fields of sexuality, women’s studies, and critical race studies? What are our investments in the body as an object of knowledge? How does the body extend beyond discourse and when? How do we reimagine the relationship between the biological and the cultural that moves beyond binary formations? At the conclusion of this course, students will gain various tools for analyzing how a body comes to matter and to what ends.

Open to Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.

Elective