World Literature- Winter 1999

Instructor/Facilitator: Karen Tei Yamashita
Office: Kresge 157D
Phone: 459-2167 (office); 459-2781 (messages); Kresge Steno Pool (mail)
E-Mail: ktyamash@ucsc.edu
Office Hours: Tuesday & Thursday, 12:30-1:30 PM

(Tentative Syllabus)

Course Description: Study of Asian diasporic literature, attempting to discover and define a growing body of contemporary writing under this rubric, including immigrant/migrant histories, memories of exile and refuge as well as the fiction of imagined homelands. Examination of these writings against their historic, political, economic, geographic and social backdrops, focusing on themes and questions raised regarding gender, class, national origins, transnational identities, and aesthetics. While most material examined in class will be in English, students are encouraged to study and share material in other languages.

Course Requirements:

1. Personal essays: 1 page/week

2. Commentaries: 1 page/week

3. In class presentation & participation (informational and/or theoretical)

4. Personal essay: rewritten, edited, with final comments

5. Final Examination: take home or open book, essay questions based on lectures, presentations by fellow students, & reading

Immigrant/Migrant Histories

Week 1

Introduction

Exclusion Acts/Memory/United States

Hongo, Garrett, ed. Under Western Eyes

Week 2

World War II/Good Neighbors/Silence/Canada

Joy Kogawa, Itsuka

Week 3

Prostitution & Picture Brides/Shamanism/Korea

Nora Okja Keller, Comfort Women

Imaginary Homelands

Week 4

Imaginary Homelands/South Asia

Salman Rushdie, Moorís Last Sigh

Week 5

Colonization/Philippines

Jessica Hagedorn, Dogeaters

Exile & Refuge

Week 6

War/Vietnam

Trinh T. Minh-ha, Surname Viet, Given Name Nam (film) (exerpted from Framer Framed)

Week 7

Politics/Cultural Revolution/China

Wang Ping, Foreign Devil

Week 8

Sexuality/Architecture/Thailand

Lawrence Chua, Gold by the Inch

Circular Destinations

Week 9

Labor/Dekasegi/Brazil

Karen Yamashita, Brazil-Maru

Week 10

Wrapping it up

Primary Reading

Chua, Lawrence, Gold by the Inch

Hagedorn, Jessica. Dogeaters

Hongo, Garrett, ed. Under Western Eyes

Kogawa, Joy. Itsuka

Keller, Nora Okja, Comfort Woman

Minh-ha, Trinh T. Framer Framed (chapter from)

Ping, Wang. Foreign Devil

Rushdie, Salman. Moorís Last Sigh

Yamashita, Karen. Brazil-Maru

Muae: Collapsing New Buildings

Bibliography:

Two Spanish Picaresque Novels (Lazarillo de Tormes), Penguin.

The Conquest of New Spain, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Penguin.

Esteban Montejo: the Autobiography of a Runaway Slave, Esteban Montejo.edited by Miguel Barnet.

The autobiography of a slave = Autobiografia de un esclavo , Juan Francisco Manzano, Bilingual ed. Detroit : Wayne State University Press, c1996.

Until we meet again, Elena Poniatowska.

I Rigoberta Menchu, Rigoberta Menchú.

Borderlands/La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldúa.

Coursepack (CP) (at the Copy Center, Communications building)

Description: The course will explore three related problematics (authority and literature, writing and subjectivity, historical and literary discourses of memory) through the genealogical study of a genre: the testimonial narrative in Latin America. First we will see the origins of narrative in the Hispanic tradition in the legal discourse (cartas de relación and picaresque). Here problems of literacy and literary authority will be dealt with. Secondly, we will discuss two nineteenth century examples of autobiographical writing ( by an intellectual and a slave) in relation to nineteenth century discourses of national citizenship. Thirdly, we will study five twentieth century cases of minority and revolutionary writing (Indians, women, guerrilla movements.)

Objectives: The class will attempt to provide a historically grounded view of Testimonial Discourse as a genre. It will do so by linking the development of literature with three distinctive stages of Latin American history: colonial, republican and contemporary. In all three periods a certain relationship of self and writing obtains. They will be studied as challenges to conventional relationships of self and literature on the one hand, and of fiction and non fiction, on the other.

Evaluation:

Midterm essay (6-8 pages) : 25%

Oral report (8 to 10 minutes): 10%

Class participation 25%

Final paper (10-15 pages) 40%

Revised 7/27/04.