(Trans)Pacific Literatures and Cultures - Single View

Course material  will be circulated via the moodle course. The course can be accessed via the link above.

Students that signed up for the course will receive a password to enter the website after their enrollment has been accepted.

This undergraduate seminar is designed as a survey course on literary and cultural products on or from the Pacific. 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 contested field of transpacific studies from various perspectives. Considering that the Pacific has been described as a site crucial for the negotiation of imperial and postcolonial identites of a variety of groups and nations, the students will encounter both colonial and indigenous perspectives on the topic.

While it is, for obvious reasons, beyond the scope of this class to comprehensively cover 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.

Reading Assignments and Textbooks

Please note: This is a reading intensive course, which means you are required to read and prepare novels, shorts stories, plays, and theoretical texts for the individual sessions. Therefore I strongly advise you to get an overview of the reading material a.s.a.p. (end of the second week at the latest) and schedule your reading time. Time management is part of your job!

For each class session, you will have to read a number of texts. It is your responsibility to locate the texts, to read them in advance, and to bring a hard copy of them to class. Some of the texts are available in the university library or purchasable at a reasonable price at your book retailer of choice. The following novels marked as “purchasable” in the reading material list need to be purchased up front.

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 and particularly the books by Perez and Yang are hard to come by. 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.

The rest of the reading material are excerpts or individual chapters, which will be made available to you via Moodle once you have enrolled for the class. If there are any problems with locating the texts, feel free to contact me (jtemmen@uni-potsdam.de).

Reading Material

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and practice in postcolonial literatures. New York: Routledge, 1989. [Moodle/library]

Hemmings, Kaui Hart. The Descendants London: Random House, 2011. [purchasable]

Kaplan, Amy. The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993. [Moodle/library]

Kim, Elaine H. Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1982. [Moodle/library]

Leon W., M. Consuelo. “Foundations of American Image of the Pacific.” Boundary 2 21.1 (1994): 17-29. [databases of university library]

London, Jack. The Strength of the Strong. [Moodle/library]

Ozeki, Ruth. A Tale for the Time Being. New York: Penguin Books, 2013. [purchasable]

Perez, Craig Santos. from unincoporated territory. Kane'ohe: Tinfish Press, 2008. [purchasable]

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

Rowe, John Carlos. “Transpacific Studies and the Cultures of U.S. Imperialism” Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field. Yunte Huang. ed. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2008. 134-150. [Moodle/library]

Rowe, John Carlos. Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism: From the Revolution to World War II. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. [Moodle/library]

Said, Edward. Culture & Imperialism. London: Vintage Books, 1993. [Moodle/library]

Suzuki, Erin. “Transpacific” The Routledge Companion to Asian American and Pacific Islanders Literature. Rachel C. Lee. ed. New York: Routledge, 2014. 352-364. [Moodle/library]

Twain, Mark. Letters from Hawaii. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 1966.[Moodle/library]

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

These textbooks offer detailed academic analyses of most concepts and events we discuss in class. Wikipedia, in contrast, is not an academic database, and neither are 99% of all Internet resources, so please rely on the books above or academic databases such as Oxford Reference Online if you are in need of further information. Furthermore, I expect you do your own research on the individual topics and texts.

Requirements
            1.    Log on to our Moodle2 website. Make sure to download the available texts for your class assignments.
            2.    In order to obtain credit for this course you must not miss more than two group assignments (see. group work for more information).
 
PLEASE NOTE: You may cancel your enrollment without consequences up to the second session, but regular attendance begins with the very first session. Please note also that in case you signed up for this class and missed the first session without excuse, you automatically forfeit your spot.

             3. Your active participation is indispensable to the success of this course.

• Have all your assignments completed before class: all students prepare the weekly reading assignments; check, if applicable, vocabulary; familiarize yourself with the context.
• Participate in in-class assignments such as discussions, group work, and by passing quizzes and presentations

Take Notes!
 
    4.    Group Work
All students will sign in for permanent groups, which will prepare the reading assignments together on a weekly basis. You should read the material outside of class and are of course free to meet as a group outside class to prepare as well. I will, in any case, set aside 20 minutes of course time each week for you to discuss the books and answer the guiding questions in.
Each group is obligated to protocol their group work. These protocols are traditionally brief (1-2 pages, max) and in note form. I do of course accept more creative variants. The protocols will be handed in during class either personally or via email.
The group work includes either locating the thesis of the text read for that session and collecting examples or further arguments from that text, or applying last session's theory to the piece of literature of the week.

The group work is part of the class requirements. You may not miss more than 2 group works sessions unexcused.

5. Indidual thesis statements

Each student will hand in a thesis statement by June 12, 2015 via email. The thesis statements will have to be about 1-3 pages and will have to include the summary of a thesis and its application to a particular piece of literature (detailed instructions will follow in class).
The thesis statement and the group work are mandatory, will be graded, and will count towards passing the course and obtaining the three credits for this class.

6.    I reserve the right to do pop quizzes over the course of the semester, which will count towards your final grade.
 

Grading

1. Group Work: The group work will be graded on the basis of the protocols. The average of all protocol grades will make up 20 % of your final course grade. The group grade will be re-distributed as a pool grade by the students. If group work is done sloppily or not all, groups will be removed from course roster.
2. Thesis statement: The individual theses will make up 80 % of the final course grade
   Both the thesis statements and the protocols need to be passed in order to receive an overall final grade (you will not pass the course if you fail one of the two tasks).
3. Oral participation: Oral participation will only be counted favorably towards your course grade. Active participation can improve your final grade by 0.3 – 0.7 grades.
4. Module paper: In order to gain the additional 3 credits for my class you need to write a seminar paper (12-15 pages) on a topic or text discussed in class. Deadline: September 15, 2015. There will be no extensions! Possible paper topics and the guidelines for the paper will be discussed during office hours.