Curriculum Guide for CMLT 2400: Asian American Literature

The Project:

Presented below is the concluding summary of an analysis I did of lower-division multicultural literature courses for a seminar on Multicultural Issues in Higher Education; as a summary, it aims only to present the key pedagogical issues that need to be addressed in designing lower-level multicultural classes, and was designed for a broad audience, presumably of new instructors, to show ways of addressing these challenges.

However, a brief summary of the full paper is in order:

In my analysis, I examined the competing academic claims that must be balanced to make a multicultural survey course work: the broad demographic of the students, the cognitive and practical skills that need to be practiced, and the multicultural perspective that requires a dialectical method of organizing the course materials. As a case study, I analyzed my own course design from an Asian American course I was teaching; I compared different methods of constructing the syllabus and weighed the merits of each as to how well they allow the instructor to balance the competing pedagogical goals. Classes that focus too much on content and skills may not allow the students enough room to develop the multicultural perspective that only comes from comparing the texts. But classes that focus too much on the multicultural perspective may not allow younger students and non-majors enough time to grasp the reading and writing skills they need to perform quality analysis.

I concluded that my Asian American Literature course must be designed to allow different pedagogical elements to be stressed at different times and to guide students from reviewing the basics of literary analysis through a secondary stage which stresses coverage of the historical contexts that inform the literature to a final stage in which the literary and the historical can be discussed as being interwoven and reciprocal. My course might move from an opening review of literary analysis and writing into a set of thematic topics that allow students to see the importance of historical context and of comparing the texts in relation to ethnicity. I want my students to recognize that different Asian groups had different experiences due to their cultural backgrounds, to American biases, and to changing American laws. To show this, we would study several topics, e.g., East-West conflict, generational conflict and gender conflict, in order to allow students to compare more easily the different ways these issues arise. My course would need to close with a more unified synthesis of the literary and historical aspects, such as to explore how literature reveals, responds to and/or resists the problems Asian Americans have faced.

N.B.: The guide below is simply a summary of pedagogical issues that arise when designing lower-level literature courses with multicultural content;

I tried to keep it broad enough that it could be useful for instructors in other fields.

Goal:

How to best fit the disciplinary needs of multicultural literary studies with the pedagogical needs of a lower-level elective.

Course Description (from the UGA Bulletin):

Works of literature by Asian-American writers, including works written in English and translations of works originally written in Asian languages. This course can be used to fulfill the undergraduate multicultural requirement.

Course Objectives:

In accord with the expectations for sophomore-level electives and with the needs of the multicultural requirement, students should be expected to demonstrate proficiency in the following skills:

· analyzing the literary aspect of texts, such as symbolism, narration, irony, etc.

· using textual evidence to construct and support arguments about literary texts

· writing focused, well organized essays about literature

· analyzing literary texts in relation to their historical and cultural contexts

· using comparative approaches to show the diversity and complexity of Asian American literary traditions

· explaining differing Asian American perspectives on 20^th century American history and culture

Issues to Consider Related to Class Demographics:

You can expect to have all of the following in your course at the same time:

· non-majors who are not familiar with literary analysis

· students who have not completed Freshman Comp, who exempted Freshman Comp, or who completed Freshman Comp three years ago—all in the same class

· upper-level students who have had little or no substantial writing assignments during their coursework

· students who have little or no experience with persuasive writing, thesis statements, compiling evidence, composing an argument, etc.

· white students who have no experience with and/or interest in ethnic minority issues

· minority students who are cautious about opening up in front of white students and/or have been raised as passive learners (something that is common in Asian cultures and affects Asian American students)

Strategies to Consider:

Cognitive skills

· Devote early class sessions to ensuring that the class has the same set of analytical skills and understands the disciplinary aspects of literary studies

· Create assignments that build on these skills in a progressively sequential manner, moving from easier cognitive skills to harder, and from lower-stakes assignments to higher-stakes

· Design tests and other evaluative tools that require the students to think on their feet rather than simply to regurgitate factual information

· Create in-class exercises that reinforce argumentation by requiring students to defend or rebut propositions and to use textual to weigh competing claims

Multicultural content

· Stress the historical aspects of the text alongside its aesthetic qualities: How does it both build on and react against the surrounding culture, including literary culture: in what ways is it critical of culture and in what ways is it favorable? Similarly, how was it received by the culture and why?

· Leave space in the syllabus for students to learn about the racial attitudes of the dominant culture during the period being studied: important historical events (Japanese internment camps), legal and political policies (immigration restrictions), popular culture and media (Charlie Chan films), etc.

· Also devote space to aspects of the non-American culture that would continue to play a role in the characters’ experiences (e.g. cultural Confucianism, Chinese and Japanese heroic narratives, etc.); note that not all these cultural practices are transmitted faithfully by Asian American authors—how are Asian stories altered for an American context?

· Examine literary strategies for exposing racist attitudes that permeate the culture: what techniques does the author use to affect the reader? How does the book’s aesthetic reflect the conditions for its existence?