Asian American Literature - Einzelansicht

After you signed up, please follow the "Moodle course page" link above for more information on course readings, course requirements and grading.

This undergraduate seminar is designed as a survey course on literature that negotiates the construction of Asian American identity. Reading critically acclaimed and commercially successful texts published since the 19th century, students will come to appreciate and learn to interpret novels, short stories, plays, and critical texts. They will not only acquire the proper terminology to analyze these complex texts, but they will also explore the field of Asian American literature from various perspectives. The students will encounter a variety of texts that exemplify that constructions of Asian American identities have been crucial to both the composition of US colonial and imperial narratives, as well es decisive in deconstructing a US national identity geared towards marginalizing ethnic groups. While it is, for obvious reasons, beyond the scope of this class to comprehensively cover essential the historical developments in all detail, the course will convey a wide-ranging overview over the most essential currents of the field, allowing for students to enter an informed discussion of the field. Registration: The number of participants in this course is limited to 40 students. Please use PULS to enroll for this class. Students who miss the first session of class (unexcused) will automatically forfeit their spot.

Please note: this class is going to be reading intensive. To manage the workload, it is your job to familiarize yourself with the required reading immediately and schedule time to prepare for each class.

For each class session, you will have to read a number of texts, including novels, plays, scholarly texts etc. A detailed list of the reading material will be available on moodle after your registration. However, the following books represent the main body of texts we will be discuss in our class. I recommend you to get a copy of those texts in advance and start reading them as soon as possible.

Chin, Frank. Donald Duk. New York: Coffee House Press, 1991. [purchasable]

Huang, Eddie. Fresh Off the Boat. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2013. [purchasable]

Hwang, Henry David. M. Butterfly. New York: Plume Book, 1989. [purchasable/excerpts on moodle]

Kingston, Maxine Hong. China Men. New York: Vintage Publishing, 1989. [purchasable/Semesterapparat]

Rohmer, Sax. The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu. Dover: Dover Pubn. Inc., 1998. [purchasable]

Yang, Gene Luen. American Born Chinese. New York: Square Fish, 2006. [purchasable/excerpts on moodle]

If there are any problems with finding the texts, feel free to contact me (jtemmen@uni-potsdam.de).

As indicated in the list, some of the texts are available in Semesterapparat (Campus Neues Palais, Library, Building 9) or purchasable at a reasonable price. Excerpts or individual chapters will be made available by me via Moodle. I've asked the Havelbuch book store (on the Neues Palais campus, right next to the cafeteria) to order copies of those books (just mention that you need them for this class). They have ordered the cheapest available editions. You are of course free to buy your books from any other online retailer or book store, and any edition of these texts is, of course, perfectly acceptable.

It is your responsibility to locate the texts, to read them in advance, and to bring a hard copy of them to class.