English 428: Asian American Literatures - Techno Orientalism: Envisioning Global Asias Across Time and Space
Spring 2024, Section 001
Instructor Info and Course Overview | Materials
Instructor Info
Instructor Information
Robert Nguyen
ran22@psu.edu *
Burrowes 314
Spring 2024 Office Hours to be determined.
*I reply to emails by the end of the next business day. Please plan ahead if you have timely questions regarding a project.
Course Overview
From the pulp fiction villain Dr. Fu Manchu (1912) to the neon-tinged streets of Blade Runner (1982) and the Chinese slang of Firefly and Serenity (2002, 2005), Asia and Asianness are frequently associated in American culture with the future and with technological sophistication. This is often undergirded, however, by an anxiety over the potential for geopolitical rivals' rise in Asia, whether Japan in the 1980s or China in the present, and intimately connected to racist, "yellow peril" framings of Asian American immigrants as threats. In this course, we will examine how these associations have been historically formed and the shapes that they take today. Through the phenomenon of techno orientalism, we will explore how these tropes have often been adopted by Western creators to signal a collapse or decline of the West—but also how Asian and Asian American writers and filmmakers play with these conventions to push back against or subvert them. Works studied will include novels, comics, graphic novels, films, poems, and short stories. Assignments will include a mini-essay (500 words) written for a shared course journal document, a medium-length essay (1,000 words), and a capstone research paper (3,000 words) that you will develop with the help of your classmates over the course of the semester.
Spring 2024
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays 11:15AM - 12:05PM
General Education: United States Cultures (US)
Robert Nguyen
