AMST 304
Queer in Asian America Fall 2024
Division II Writing Skills Difference, Power, and Equity
Cross-listed AAS 304 / WGSS 306

Asian America has always been queer. This is both to say that, since the first waves of Asian immigrants to the Americas, there have always been queer individuals counted among them, and that the Asian American subject has historically figured as “queer” and “different” within the Western cultural, social, and economic landscape. How does queerness resonate, redound, or otherwise modulate the idea and experience of Asian Americanness? What are the textures and contours of this queerness? Does it have an aesthetic and literary dimension? This course surveys a range of scholarship and literature by queer and feminist Asian Americans that explore the interpenetrations of race, gender, and sexuality in the construction of Asian America and Asian American identity. Particular focus is paid to how Asian American artists and writers actualize queer subjectivity, relation, and intimacy across experiments in narrative, form, and media. The class will move between foundational scholarship at the intersections of Asian American studies, queer studies, and gender and sexuality studies alongside key works of art and literature. Potential artists and writers include Ocean Vuong, Justin Chin, Larissa Lai, Monique Truong, Alok Vaid-Menon, TT Takemoto, Jes Fan, and Leonard Suryajaya. Students will also have the opportunity to contribute their own selection of art and literature to the class conversation.