LTWL115A: Fiction in a Global Context  [UCSC]

LTWL 115A: Fiction in a Global Context

The World, The Text and The Critic: Cross-Cultural Analysis of “Chinese” and “American” Literature

4:00 – 5:45 PM, Tuesday/Thursday, College 8 Acad. #252

Fall 2005

Professor Daniel Vukovich

Phone: 459 5341 (message phone: 459-2781)           Office: Kresge, Room 174

Email: dfvukov@ucsc.edu                                         Office Hours:  Tuesday, 6-7:30

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This course will focus on novels, poems and memoirs written by modern Chinese and Chinese-American authors, primarily women.  It will serve as a necessarily partial introduction to both modern Chinese and Chinese-American literature, and to the issue of cross-cultural analysis. 

The course has two basic goals.  The first is to sharpen our skills at critical literary analysis.  We will read our texts closely, in terms of their literary devices and narrative forms, and in relationship to their respective national histories and contexts.  Towards this end, we will ask what these texts tell us about the lived experiences of Chinese living in the U.S. and China.  And moreover we will examine how they represent this experience and how they represent history, gender, “China,” “America,” and the individual. 

Pursuing this course goal will allow us to set off on another, related one: the fraught but fascinating problem of comparative and cross-cultural analysis.  Our guiding question here will be: How can one comparatively analyze writings from such different contexts as the U.S. and the P.R.C.?   To address this over-arching question we will need to ask several others.  To what extent do we bring our own assumptions and expectations about gender, “Chineseness,” and history into play when we read texts from the U.S. and China?  To what extent do these texts do the same?  What might a “non-Western analysis” of such texts be, and do we need one for understanding Chinese-American authors?  If -- as these texts suggest -- “China” and “America” (and Chineseness and Americanness) are not empirical realities but particular constructions, then what are we reading when we read “Chinese” and “Chinese-American” literature?  Finally, as one way of conducting cross-cultural analysis, we will attempt to read our texts “globally.”  That is, we will situate them in a larger, global history that is neither Chinese nor American though deeply influenced by both national contexts.  We will use our primary texts themselves to help establish this global context, and to help persuade us that “America” and “China” are not, in the last instance, separate and discrete places.

 REQUIRED TEXTS:

Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940.  Ed. Judy Yung et al.

Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club. 

Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior.

Mo Yan, Red Sorghum.

Hualing Nieh, Mulberry and Peach.

Jia Pingwa, Turbulence. 

Anchee Min, Red Azalea.

Chen Yuan-Tsung, The Dragon’s Village: An Autobiographical Novel of Revolutionary China.

Various Authors, Course-Reader for LTWL 115A.  [available 9/28]

All texts are available at Bay Tree Bookstore on campus.  If the course-readers have been sold out when you go there, make sure you order and pre-pay for your copy and they will have it there within 1-2 days.  If you do not pre-pay, they will not make the reader for you. (Their rules, not mine!)  The reader is a required purchase.  There may be additional readings placed on E-reserve at McHenry Library, but if so these will be announced a week in advance.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS and ASSIGNMENTS:

Students must complete all assignments in order to pass the course.  Late work is not accepted.  If you need an extension for a particular assignment, you must see me one week in advance, and must commit to a new due date.   

1. Essay #1: 4-5 pages.  Due: Thursday, 10/13.  (15% of final grade)

2. Essay # 2: 8-10 pages.  Due: Tuesday, 12/6. (40% of final grade)

Specific instructions will be given in class.  The longer essay will take the form of a cross-cultural analysis of two or more texts from our class. 

3. Mid-term Exam.  Due Tuesday, 11/1 (25% of final grade) 

This will be a take-home, short essay exam. 

4. Response Papers. (15% of final grade) 

3 papers of 2 pages in length.  I’ll assign these in class, and you’ll explore topics and questions that come out of class discussion and lecture.  These are due 10/20, 11/15, and 11/22.

5. Participation.  (5% of final grade)   

Expected and much appreciated, your participation includes carefully reading the assigned texts on time.  

Attendance:  You are allowed to miss two classes.  For each subsequent absence your final grade will be docked by 2/3 of a letter (e.g., from B to C+).  No un-excused absences, unless there is some type of official notification from the university. 

WEEKLY SCHEDULE:

*Unless otherwise instructed, read the week’s primary text in its entirety by the first class of the week. 

Week 1: “China,” “America,” and Cross-Cultural Analysis

            TH, 9/22:  Course Introduction. 

Week 2: Beginnings: Angel Island Poets    

TU, 9/27:  Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island.  Read the entire text, including the “Introduction” by Lai, Lim and Yung. 

TH, 9/29:  Course-Reader:  “Introduction: The Minority Which Is Not One” by Colleen Lye.  *(If the course-reader is unavailable, email me and I will send you a .pdf copy.)  

Week 3:  Difficult Inheritances, I: China/America

TU, 10/4:  Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club. 

TH, 10/6:  Course-Reader: Selections from Orientalism by Edward Said.

Week 4:  Difficult Inheritances, II: China/America

TU, 10/11:  Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior.

TH, 10/13:  Course-Reader: Yuan Yuan, “The Semiotics of China Narratives in the Con/texts of Kingston and Tan.”

DUE: ESSAY #1 (4-5 PAGES)

Week 5:  Once Again On Pre-Revolutionary China

TU, 10/18:  Mo Yan, Red Sorghum. 

TH, 10/20:  Course-Reader: Lu Tonglin, “Red Sorghum: Limits of Transgression” and the short reviews by Philips (“Review of Red Sorghum”) and Braester (“Mo Yan and Red Sorghum”).  

DUE: RESPONSE  #1 (2 PAGES)

Week 6:  Transnational China/America

TU, 10/25:  Hualing Nieh, Mulberry and Peach.

TH, 10/27:  Course-Reader: Monica Chiu, “Trauma and Multiplicity in Nieh’s Mulberry and Peach.”

Week 7: Difficult Inheritances, III: China

TU, 11/1:  MID-TERM EXAM DUE IN-CLASS.  Read Jia Pingwa, Turbulence, to page 99.

TH, 11/3:  Jia, Turbulence.  Read up to page 235.

Week 8: Difficult Inheritances, III: China  (cont’d.)

TU, 11/8:  Jia, Turbulence.  Finish reading the novel. 

TH, 11/10:  Course-Reader: Read “Review of Turbulence” by David Der-wei Wang and K.C. Leung (two essays).

Week 9:  Cultural Revolution or Revolutionary Markets?

TU, 11/15:  Min Anchee, Red Azalea.

DUE: RESPONSE #2 (2 PAGES) 

TH, 11/17:  Course-Reader: Gao Mobo, “Maoist Discourse and A Critique of Present Assessments of the Cultural Revolution” and Wang Zheng, “Call Me ‘Qingnian’ But Not ‘Funu’: A Maoist Youth in Retrospect.” 

Week 10:  Cultural Revolution or Revolutionary Markets?  (cont’d.)

TU, 11/22:  Course-Reader: Wang Zheng, Bai Di and Zhong Xueping, “Introduction” to Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era.   

DUE: RESPONSE #3 (2 PAGES)

            TH, 11/24:  No Class.  THANKSGIVING. 

Week 11: Land Reform and Realism: Who Speaks for Chinese Farmers?

TU, 11/29:  Read Yuan-Tsung Chen, The Dragon’s Village. 

TH, 12/1:  Conclusions.  Course-Reader: Thomas, “Review of The Dragon’s Village.”

Tuesday, 12/6: FINAL ESSAYS DUE (8-10 PAGES).  Turn in to my office, Kresge #174, by 4 p.m.