| ASIANAM 110 | COMING OF AGE ASAM | LEE, J. | What is it like to grow up Asian American in the United States? What kinds of expectations, pressures, obstacles, stereotypes, and exclusions do young Asian Americans face and how do they respond? This course examines those questions in contemporary Asian American culture: film, narrative fiction, graphic novels, essays, and new media. Our focus will be on understanding the unique demands placed on Asian American subjects as they emerge from childhood and adolescence into adulthood. We will start by thinking about the broad genre of the bildungsroman and how its conventions are used, adapted, revised, or rejected by Asian American writers. We will examine how the experience of racial alterity affects the development of Asian American identities as well as the role that ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality play in these coming of age stories. |