Topics in Cultural Theory: Popular Asian/America
Cultural Studies
This course offers a survey of Asian/American cultural studies by focusing on popular texts, including genre literature, film, television, and music. Students will gain a foundational understanding of some of the primary issues in the field of Asian/American studies, such as model minority and yellow peril stereotypes, Claiming America, intergenerational conflict, diasporic community building, intersectionality, anti-Orientalism, pan-Asian essentialism, queer subjectivity, and transnationalism. This course pairs Asian/American cultural criticism and theory with primary texts organized into three categories: 1) Genre Fiction 2) Visual Cultures and 3) Cultural Expressions. Students will get a clear understanding on how cultural studies differs from critical ethnic studies, but where and how those two approaches meet.