Final Paper and Grade Pick Up!

On Wednesday, Dec. 15, I’ll be in my office from 4-7 p.m.  If you’d like to drop by during that time, I’d be happy to hand your papers back to you, explain anything, decode my handwriting on your work, etc., etc.  Please feel free to come by!

If that time won’t work for you or is inconvenient, PLEASE let me know in advance.  I’d be happy to send you your work if you provide me with an address.

Reflective Essay Workshop

There are three key components to a good reflective essay: selection, analysis, and organization.

I.  Selection

How do you choose a good passage from which to work?  What are you looking for?  Consider the passages below:

A.  Perhaps I’m too “straight” as the novel would put it, but I was thinking throughout a good portion of the reading that I really didn’t like many characters. I found Jenny more sympathetic toward the end, when she started doubting her past, and for a little while I felt for Pauline, but not for very long. I saw the three comrades as harsh radicals that didn’t understand The People in the least and had an abhorrent disregard for life. Juan constantly makes references to Jenny being “Third World,” despite her resistance to these comments. Pauline doesn’t know economic hardship and only wants to belong. Yvonne is along for whatever ride Juan takes her on. I know this sounds harsh, since Choi works so hard humanizing these characters, but I still found most of them difficult. Where do the moral lines lie and where do the importance of these morals become inferior to these “greater” ideals?

B.  Like Anne, I spent a lot of time trying to find the parallels between Sin Nombre and elements and themes we’ve seen so far in Asian American texts. I think Cary Fukunaga did an excellent job with the film, and I feel like search for the parallels marks the film as a success in a post-racial context.

And just as I was typing that, I wondered what the film was really about. Was it really about the Mexican experience of illegal immigration and gang life, or was it more about the more generalized experience of being trapped and needing to escape, an idea that can be tied in with our previous assessments of Vietnam and Japanese internment? Just as we’ve been trying to establish what qualifies an Asian-American experience all semester, so this film begs that question of what defines a Mexican experience. Is this question even valid, since this particular Mexican experience is contextualized by its Asian American director, and has been distributed to an English-speaking audience (though I suppose this does not necessarily denote Caucasian)? There are several filters in place here, so I’m still left wondering how I should view the film. Who’s lens am I supposed to be looking through?

Selection Criteria: questions; awareness of the author’s aims/work of the text; awareness of self; a move from the personal to the objective; audience awareness; moments of failure or disconnection; passage identifies a number of textual functions and explains their importance; explains complexities (e.g., different ethnicities’ experiences); broadens specific experiences/observations to a more general consideration or audience.

II.  Analysis

Once you’ve chosen good passages, what do you do with them?  What evidence do you see that can help you answer the question?  How do you interpret that evidence in order to extend and complicate your answer to the question?

Example: “the last two sentences, ‘There are several filters in place here, so I’m still left wondering how I should view the film. Who’s lens am I supposed to be looking through?’ provide a clear understanding of what a Humanities student would need to understand and identify in a particular text of a post-racial era.  In particular, those ‘filters’ that refer to the questions above in the passage (e.g., Mexican gang life, English-speaking audiences, etc.) exemplify the variety of specific but sometimes intersecting positions that would effect viewership and interpretation of elements like the identity and motives of the characters.  Since the post-racial era has been described as one in which individuals identify with a constellation of cultures and sub-cultures inclusive and sometimes exclusive of race, the recognition of these ‘filters’ is a necessary tool for navigating the post-racial era.  Furthermore, as per Susan Koshy’s argument about the ways in which sociological and legal discourses are dedicated to strict definitions and boundaries of race, it falls to another sector of cultural life to identify the places where a constellation of cultures and influences come together.  In the passage above, then, I notice that the identification and realization of the complexities of intersecting filters becomes a key set of skills that is unique to the ways that Humanities scholars understand the texts and events of a post-racial era.”

III.  Now that you have a series of interpretations of your passages, how might you articulate an answer to the reflective essay question?

Reflective Essay Assignment

On Monday, December 13 by MIDNIGHT,  I’d like to collect from you (via email) a blog portfolio and a reflective essay. Please submit:

1. A numbered list of all of your blog posts, with titles and dates of the post. (example: #1, “This is the Beginning,” 8/30)
2. a numbered list of all of your comments with the title of the post on which you commented, the name of the person’s blog to whom it was posted, and the date.  (example: #2, “Woman Warrior,” Lisa’s blog, 8/30
3. A short (4-6 page) reflective essay based on your posts and comments.

REFLECTIVE ESSAY: Your reflective essay assignment is designed to surface and articulate what you’ve learned over the course of the semester by looking back on and analyzing your own writing during this time. Your essay should answer one of two questions (but NOT BOTH):

What important practices have I developed as a reader, or writer, or thinker (or some combination of two of these) over the course of the semester?

OR

What unique skills and qualities does the reader/writer/literary type (whichever of these you would call yourself) activate to come to a sophisticated understanding of  the “post racial” moment?  [Remember that Susan Koshy makes the case for the Humanities scholar at this moment in history.  So, how have your own experiences created a model for navigating the post-racial period?]

HOW TO ANSWER THE QUESTION: you should use the writing that you’ve done over the course of the semester—I’m particularly interested in your blog posts and comments, but your drafts, your expertise projects, etc. are fair game. With the above question in mind, read back over your writing and locate particular sentences and passages that attest to your learning. In your paper, you’ll quote these and analyze them. In what ways do they show what and how your ideas have changed? What terms, concepts, and phrases provide evidence of the complex ways that your thinking has progressed and shifted over the course of the semester? How do they provide evidence that you can use to answer the questions above? Essentially, you’re going to “close read” your own writing for evidence of how you’ve come to terms with the ideas we’ve discussed in class. I’m looking for a deep engagement with your own writing here.

PLEASE INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING:

1. an introduction that contextualizes your main idea(s).
2. an argument about either a) where you are now and how you got there, with reference to particular terms, experiences, actions, skills, etc. that you see yourself working with throughout the course of the semester; OR b) an argument about the particular skills and qualities that you’ve acquired, and how they’re representative of what someone would need to engage with literature in the “post-racial moment.”
3. the “I” voice (I don’t know how you’d do it otherwise!).
4. a coherent structure/approach. You may feel free to use a chronological approach (ex., “when I first started this class, I thought Asian American literature was ____. My first blog post contains this comment: “______.” Here, you can see the ways that I was dedicated to x idea. All I could associate with that x idea was___. In a blog post three weeks later, however, there is a marked shift in my language and tone. “______.”). You may also choose a different kind of structure if it makes sense to you (you could arrange it by theme: “these three quotes show the ways that my thinking changed from x to y about the structures of heterogeneity as a form of analysis.” “These two show the ways that I am a writer that needs a number of drafts to shape a complicated argument”.)

Paper Workshop

For Wednesday’s class, please bring 4 (1 for you, and 3 for others) copies of the following parts of your paper:

1. an excerpt (1-3 pages) where you articulate your argument and explain what’s at stake in that argument, with regards to a particular theory, genre, event, period, etc.
2. an excerpt (1-2 pages) where you work to synthesize two or more secondary sources to provide a critical context for your work.
3. an excerpt (2-4 pages) where you work closely with a specific scene/passage, and explain the ways that it supports your argument about the work(s).

The number of pages here is approximate.  While your individual approach to the writing tasks above may vary, I’m hard pressed to imagine a paper that will not have to do some version of each of the analytical moves above.  Let me know if you have questions!

 

Final Film for Class?

Post-Racial Asian American Cinema, via Cary Fukunaga:

Sin Nombre

 

OR

 

Canonical Asian American Cinema, from Wayne Wang:

Chan is Missing

Eng Expertise Project

You can find our final expertise project of the semester (!!), discussing the ins and outs of David Eng’s article, courtesy of Jonathan and Brianna, here.

Draft Assignment

Instead of meeting as a class next week, we’ll have individual conferences to discuss your research papers.  After you’ve received your exploratory draft back with comments, please draft the following and send it to me by Wednesday, Oct. 27 @ 10 a.m.

In your next draft (6-8 pages), I’d like to see the following:

1. Close work with and analytical reading of 2-3 passages from the primary texts that you’re working with.  This kind of work will be different for everyone, but I hope to see you wrestle with the deployment of aesthetics, thematic interests, political and/or material representations, etc.  In what ways do the passages that you choose help you to articulate important ideas about the text that you’re working on?  What kinds of terms, tones, associations, etc. do they reference and implicate in order to do this?  [With your analyses, I’m hoping to see ways that you’re argument is developing and becoming more sophisticated.]  At the end of these readings, please give me another attempt at stating your argument or research question, in light of your new work.  What is it that you find yourself pursuing?  Why is important?  What does it reveal about that is new or surprising?
2. A working bibliography of 8-10 sources.  I don’t expect you to have read all of these!!  I just want a brief survey of the kinds of sources that you think will be useful, and a birds’-eye view of the field from your perspective.
3. With reference to the bibliography, please include a short paragraph that begins to situate your work within a larger context of ideas/themes/approaches/debates in Asian American literary/cultural criticism.  Feel free to use the expertise projects that people have produced here.  What does your readings and anticipated argument add to what we’ve seen thus far?  Do you find yourself falling into line with a particular theorist/critic?  do you find yourself taking issue with his/her assumptions or conclusions?

Like your exploratory draft, I don’t expect to see polished, beautiful writing here, nor do I expect to see the paper developing from introduction to conclusion.  Instead, I’m asking you to do some hard thinking and reading to ground your research and writing close attention to the primary text itself, and then to the ways in which your creative and analytic readings can enter into ongoing debates and conversations in the field of Asian American theory.

 

Expertise Project: Troeung on Truong

Up on both Sean and Meghan’s blog: their expertise project on Y-Dang Troeung’s article on The Book of Salt.

Expertise Project: Autobiographical Debates

For your reading pleasure, here is Tony’s expertise project about the complex notions that underpin the autobiographical genre (with an eye toward Gertrude Stein/Alice B. Toklas, of course!).  Enjoy, and think about how this might complicate our reading of The Book of Salt!

Asian American Women and Depression, c/o PBS

A recent “Need to Know” segment on PBS focused on the largely unknown epidemic of depression among Asian American women.  Among other things, it notes:

“According to the Department of Health and Human Services, depression is the second leading cause of death for Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women between 15 and 24, who consistently have the highest suicide rates among women in that age group. AAPI women over 65 have the highest rates of suicide among all races in that age group.”

 

While the article focuses on the influence of culture, this may be a place for us to activate some of Lisa Lowe’s observations about the importance of heterogeneous material conditions…