2024-10-04 14:06:57 -07:00
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# Week 1
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## Lecture 1 (9/30)
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- Ralph Ellison: novel bound up with nationhood
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- What/who are we?
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- What has been the experience of this particular group?
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- How did it become this way?
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- What stops us from attaining the ideal?
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- American writers + artists always return to question of our national
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collectivity -> successes / failures
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- American flag is abstraction + symbol
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- Same painting, over and over again, different meaning/symbol
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- w/ rise of democracy in US, slavery happened in parallel -> cannot talk about
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one without the other
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- Use example of Asian American literature as entryway toward understanding
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larger American / minority literature
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- _Otherness_: radical difference -> Asian is always "foreigner", "strange",
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"grotesque"
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- Asians come to US for labor shortage (railroads, etc)
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- Perceived through 19th century and further as radically different
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- Assimilation: American promise of leaving behind "tradition" -> "modern life"
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- Theoretical concept -> trickle into daily lives
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- W.E.B. DuBois -> "the problem of the color life" + "double consciousness"
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- Most useful metaphor: double consciousness
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- Double consciousness -> hybridity: rethinking from two different distinct
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selves -> combination / overlapping "hybrid consciousness"
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- Does the arc of history bend toward progress?
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2024-10-04 14:47:58 -07:00
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- On style: how do stylistic decisions (by writers) shape their thematic
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arguments?
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2024-10-04 14:06:57 -07:00
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- Leave things out, emphasize, etc
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- On realism, modernism, postmodernism
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- Next: read Erika Lee
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## Section (10/04)
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2024-10-04 14:47:58 -07:00
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### Logistics
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- 2 excused absences -> no questions asked
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### Notes
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- Minority-ness in 5 categories
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- Assimilation
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- Hybridity
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- Double consciousness
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- Invisibility
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- Otherness
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#### Otherness
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- What is us? -> group an individual identifies w/ and sense of belonging
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- Other -> (perceived) different / "out group"
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- Distinguishing "us" / "other" -> culture, language, behaviors, religious
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traits, citizenship, race, etc
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- Social constructs -> (may) change over time
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- Stereotypes, power, political policies, hegemony, etc...
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- Anti-Asian laws and policies
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- 1875 Page Act
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- 1882 **Chinese Exclusion Act**
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- 1907 Expatriation Act
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- 1913 First Alien Land Law
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- 1922 Cable Act (reverses Expatriation Act except for women who marry "aliens ineligible for citizenship")
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- 1924 Immigration Act
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- Keep in mind while reading Bulosan (191X, 1930-1956)
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- Attain citizenship for rights, representation, and influence
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- Accumulate wealth through real estate
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- Form _families_ and establish a lasting presence
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