Spring 2003

This information effective for Spring 2003. Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.

American Literature

[LTAM-140I]

140I. Regions of the United States: The Literatures of Hawai'i

"Imagining Hawai'i: Representations/Contestations/Hallucinations"

Note: This syllabus based on course taught in spring 2001

Instructor: Rob Wilson

Course Description:

The microstate island that is contemporary Hawai'i does not fit easily into being called a "region of the United States." For complicated historical and cultural reasons we will explore, Hawai'i both is and is not inside the "mainland" United States; and, furthermore, it is not just a trope or figment of the Hollywood imagination [as in the tourist dreamland of "Blue Hawai'i"]. Instead, the literatures of Hawai'i—and there are more than just one, including the U.S. national-canonical literature (Twain, Melville, Jack London et al.) as well as the counter-literatures emerging around Bamboo Ridge Press and other more radical literary journals—can be understood as a site of social struggle and dream-drenched imagining by various authors and social groups.

We will study Hawaii's literature not as literary "icons" but as sites (and genres) of social "representation" and struggle, political "contestation" (for example, as in the ongoing Native Hawaiian sovereignty struggle to achieve recovered nationhood status), and all-too-romantic "hallucinations" of multicultural Asian/Pacific/Haole Paradise by a varied cast of explorers, settlers, plantation workers and their offspring, Pac Rim tourists, transnational operators, pidgin-speaking locals, the culturally profound indigenous people, Christian real estate agents, Bamboo Ridge poets, novelists, crazed beachcombers, enchanted ethnographers, and so on.

In this lecture-and-discussion course, we will focus on the literary and cultural construction of "Hawai'i" as this has historically developed and been transformed by various authors into place, community, nation(s), and region of cultural identity. As I mentioned, we will examine texts (in various written and film genres), not just as "literary" icons, but as sites of social representation and historical struggle.

To arrive at a more situated and critical knowledge of Hawai'i, we will study the devices, tropes, narratives, discourses, and genres that have been used to represent and give voice to the place that is called Hawai'i. We will look at the portrayal of Hawaii as site of (a) EuroAmerican fascination and control since the era of colonial, capitalist, and Christian contact. We will also study (b) the counter-hegemonic, local, and indigenous perspectives that have sprung up and reclaimed identity since the "postcolonial"/decolonizing ferment of the 1970s. Our goal is to produce a more dialogical, multiple, critically attuned, and historically informed portrait of what is now being called a region and/or the fiftieth state of the United States, Hawai'i.

Required Texts (books available only at Literary Guillotine downtown and reader at UCSC Copy Center** [TBA]):

1. Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Saturday Night at the Pahala Theater (Bamboo Ridge Press).
   
2. Jack London, Stories of Hawaii (Mutual Press).
   
3. Mary K. Pukui and Alfons Korn, The Echo of Our Song: Chants & Poems of the Hawaiians (University of Hawai'i Press).
   
4. Richard Hamasaki, Spider Bone Diaries: Poems and Songs (Noio 2000 Press).
   
5. Milton Murayama. All I Asking For Is My Body (University of Hawai'i Press).
   
6. R. Zamora Linmark, Rolling the R's (Kaya Press).
   
7. Kathy Dee Banggo, 4-Evaz Anna (Tinfish Works).
   
8. Rob Wilson, Pacific Postmodern: Writing the Experimental/Local Pacific (Tinfish Works).
   
9. **Course Reader containing various essays, stories, chants, background works,
   polemics, plays, poems, etc. [availability TBA].

Required Assignments:

1) For each assigned reading unit per week, instead of keeping a journal entry, each student should post a one to two paragraph "reaction" comment expressing her/his overall comments on the assigned readings (perhaps zooming in on one or two works, and providing not just paraphrase but critique). This can be done in an analytical or a creative mode of expression and should aim to stimulate class discussion, raise questions, and provoke on-line reflection on the shared readings. You should post at least one e-mail per week, but you can write as many as you want on the readings and course.

[We need to set up a class "e-mail discussion group" to facilitate the distribution and feedback on our various, honest, and even off-the-cuff reactions to the readings and to possible essay topics, etc. We can set up an e-mail discussion list at CATS—maybe somebody can serve as "Listmaster," or we can break into two groups?].

2) There will be a midterm (with some identifications, poetry analysis, and brief essays)

3) There will be a final paper that will generally consist of a "research" essay, ranging in length at around 12 pages and in the form of critical analysis with footnotes and bibliography. But other options will be given.

[Topics will be announced in advance of due date: as we discuss possible essay topics, the writing process will be emphasized in workshop-like class sessions focusing on the making of student essays, from "brainstorming" and "thesis-making" to the "revising" of essay drafts.]

Syllabus
(Subject to some small ad hoc changes/additions as the quarter progresses)

Week One: Introduction to Hawaii:

Wednesday, March 28, 2001:
Introduction to the course themes, procedures, requirements, and to each other.

Friday, March 30:
Introduction to Hawaii (continued).

"Insider"/"Outsider" dynamics of "representing" the diverse peoples and cultures of Hawai'i; center (colonizing mainland) versus periphery (island) and place-based dynamics; residents ("locals") and Native Hawaiians versus tourists.

Readings:
A) Poems from Rob Wilson and Arif Dirlik, eds., Asia/Pacific as Space of Cultural Production, by Joseph Puna Balaz, "Da Mainland to Me;" Lawson Inada, "Shrinking the Pacific;" Haunani-Kay Trask, "Hawai'i."
Puanani Burgess, "Choosing My Name."

B) Eric Chock, "Poem for George Helm: Aloha Week, 1980"

C) CD selections of Hawaiian lyrics by George Helm and examples of Hawaiian-pidgin stand up comedy by Bu La'ia from False Crack????

D) James Clifford, "Year of the Ram: Honolulu, Feb. 2, 1991" (these and other poems from Hawaii are gathered in Xerox handouts to be brought to first class by RW).

Week Two:
Bloody Mary Meets Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Imagining Hawaii Locality as Body, Place, Trauma

Mon. April 2, Read first half of Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Saturday Night at the Pahala Theater.

Wed. April 4, Finish Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Saturday Night at the Pahala Theater.

Friday, April 6, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Saturday Night at the Pahala Theater.
Secondary Reading: Related critical essays by Candace Fujikane, Nadine Kam, and Rob Wilson in Course Reader.

Week Three:
Settling and Constructing "Hawaii" as part of the U.S. Pacific::
EuroAmerican Lineages of Cultural Hegemony

Mon. April 9, Read and reflect upon short stories and travel works written by Jack London, Stories of Hawaii, especially "The Leper of the Koolaus" and "Chun Ah Chun," as well as other short stories set in post-sovereignty or territorial Hawai'i.

Wed. April 11, Finish and discuss short stories and travel works written by Jack London, Stories of Hawaii.
Secondary reading: Tom Horton, "The Inevitable Visiting Writer" (in Course Reader).

Fri. April 13, Finish and discuss short stories and travel works written by Jack London, Stories of Hawaii.
Secondary reading: Tom Horton, "The Inevitable Visiting Writer" (in Course Reader).

Week Four:
Deconstructing Settler Colonialism and "Orientalism" in Hawaii:

Mon. April 16:
Mark Twain, Letters from Hawaii (selections in Course Reader).
Secondary: Rob Wilson, "Exporting Christian Transcendentalism, Importing Hawaiian Sugar: The Trans-Americanization of Hawaii" (in Course Reader).

Wed. April 18:
Primary texts:
Oscar and Hammerstein's "blockbuster" Broadway musical, South Pacific. (See Course Reader for selections from the screenplay/play on which musical was based, plus re-read the Rob Wilson essay from week two.)
Selected scenes from South Pacific and the Elvis Presley movie Blue Hawaii.

Fri. April 20:
[No class: boundary two "worlding" conference at UCSC campus]

Week Five:
Towards a Native Hawaiian Sense of Place:

Mon. April 23: Richard Hamasaki, "Mountains in the Sea: The Emergence of Contemporary Hawaiian Poetry in English" (essay in Course Reader).
Richard Hamasaki, first half of Spider Bone Diaries: Poems and Songs.

Wed. April 25, Richard Hamasaki, "Mountains in the Sea: The Emergence of Contemporary Hawaiian Poetry in English" (essay in Course Reader).
Richard Hamasaki, finish and discuss Spider Bone Diaries: Poems and Songs.

Friday April 27: John Dominis Holt, "On Being Hawaiian" (essay in Course Reader).
Richard Hamasaki, finish and discuss Spider Bone Diaries: Poems and Songs.

Week Six:
"Local Literature" Movement in Hawai'i and Asia/Pacific America:

Mon. April 30: Gary Pak, "The Valley of the Dead Air" (short story in Course Reader).
Candace Fujikane, "Between Nationalisms: Hawaii's Local Nation and Its Troubled Racial Paradise" (essay in Course Reader).

Wed. May 2: Preparation in class for midterm. Readings TBA.

Fri. May 4 [*midterm exam in class]

Week Seven: On Becoming Hawaiian:
Genealogy, Place, Hybridity, Cultural Schizophrenia, Political Struggle:

Mon. May 7: Poems, chants, legal documents from Mary K. Pukui and Alfons Korn, The Echo of Our Song: Chants & Poems of the Hawaiians

Wed. May 9: Poems, chants, legal documents from Mary K. Pukui and Alfons Korn, The Echo of Our Song: Chants & Poems of the Hawaiians

Fri. May 11: Finish and discuss Mary K. Pukui and Alfons Korn, The Echo of Our Song: Chants & Poems of the Hawaiians

Week Eight:
Writing "Local Literature" Origins on the Plantation and Beyond:

Mon. May 14: Read first half of Milton Murayama, All I Asking For Is My Body.

Wed. May 16: Finish Milton Murayama, All I Asking For Is My Body.

Fri. May 18: Diverse materials by Maxine Hong Kingston, Steven Sumida et al. on the "Talk Story" conference of 1978 and subsequent literary/cultural events in the Hawaiian literary scene (in Course reader).

Secondary: Rob Wilson, Pacfic Postmodern: Writing the Experimental/Local Pacific in Hawaii.

Week Nine:
Queer Hawaii: Towards a Mongrel Poetics of Identity

Mon. May 21: R. Zamora Linmark, Rolling the R's.

Wed. May 23: Writing the Postmodern Pacific:
Kathy Dee Banggo, 4-Evaz Anna. Also read "post-local" works by Kathy Dee Banggho, Barry Masuda, Carolyn Lei-Lani Lau et al., and Tinfish poets et al. [in Course Reader]

Fri. May 25 (no class: I have to give two talks down at UCSD)

Week Ten: Finishing Up.

Mon. May 28 (no class: Memorial Day].

Wed. May 30: Review of readings and discussion of your final essay projects.

Fri. June 1: **Final Class: your essay will be due.