Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Investigates topics in Asian-Canadian and/or Asian-American literature. The course may vary according to theoretical, historical or geographical focus. Writing.

COURSE DETAILS:

English 457W: The Cold War in Asia: Asian American and Asian Canadian Responses                                                                               

Course Description: The period post-WWII until the 1980s is conventionally understood in the West as the Cold War. Marked by events such as the Cuban missile crisis, the war in Vietnam, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, these years are remembered as a tense time when it seemed that the conflict between communist and capitalist democratic ideologies might result in the outbreak of nuclear war. At the same time, it is important to remember that these same tensions played out very differently in Asia and took the form of multiple bloody and violent wars.  This course will return to this historical period in order to rethink what is conventionally remembered in the West as a conflict between the US and the USSR as a struggle that also involved—and, indeed, was staged in—Asia.  

By reading literature that moves us through the Chinese civil war, Korea, and the wars in Southeast Asia, we will explore the legacies of Cold War logics and the afterlife of the wars in Asia for Canadians and Americans. How do these contradictory memories and competing historical narratives shape how Asians in North America imagine themselves and are understood by non-Asians? How does what critic Jodi Kim calls the “protracted afterlife” of the Cold War continue to influence current conversations about migration, citizenship, and global events and politics? We will contextualize our discussions of these literary texts with critical and theoretical material and documentary films in order to think critically about these competing cultural representations and the narratives they produce.  

This is a W course so we will spend time developing writing and revision skills.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: