Asian American Literature
Published on 17. November 2022
Book
Hardback
240 pages
978-1-350-33602-5 (ISBN)
Description
This book introduces Asian American literary studies by engaging the conditions, contingencies, and immediate and long-term effects of its major debates. Two rationales inform Ling's presentation of the field in this way: first is a felt need to provide recognizable contours and trajectories for the evolution of Asian American criticism as an ethnic-specific minoritarian formation in the United States; second is an imperative to historicize its practices - including polemics, controversies, and ideological ruptures - as an ongoing negotiation undertaken by Asian American critics for a more self-conscious and more adequate representation of the field's interests. These rationales are fully contextualized in the book's Introduction and Conclusion.
The main body of this study is organized non-chronologically into 8 chapters, with each designed to reflect how the field has been energized by its demographic transformation, its growing intellectual heterogeneity, its defining moments, and its cross-cutting relationship with the trends in other disciplines. What has emerged and been given prominence to in the surveys and discussions of this book then constitute the essential criticism of Asian American literary studies, a discourse almost 5 decades in the making when examined retrospectively.
The main body of this study is organized non-chronologically into 8 chapters, with each designed to reflect how the field has been energized by its demographic transformation, its growing intellectual heterogeneity, its defining moments, and its cross-cutting relationship with the trends in other disciplines. What has emerged and been given prominence to in the surveys and discussions of this book then constitute the essential criticism of Asian American literary studies, a discourse almost 5 decades in the making when examined retrospectively.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 138 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-350-33602-5 (9781350336025)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Jinqi Ling is Professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. He is the author of Narrating Nationalisms: Ideology and Form in Asian American Literature and Across Meridians: History and Figuration in Karen Tei Yamashita's Transnational Novels.
Content
Acknowledgements
Introduction:
Unfinalizing the Aiiieeeee! Moment: A Historicist View of the Field
Chapter One
Race, Gender, and Class: Overlapping Formations
--Centering Gender
--Exploration of Sexuality
--Essentialism and Difference
--Race and Class Revisited
Chapter Two
The Necessity and Fiction of "Asian America"
--Cultural Nationalism
--Beyond Pan-Asian Ethnicity
--Comparative Race and Ethnicity Studies
--Rethinking Asian American Specificity
Chapter Three
Intercultural and Generational Concerns
--Writing Immigrants
--Cultural Translation
--Model Minority and the Paradox of Assimilation
--Breaking the Tradition
Chapter Four
The Transnational Turn
--Planetary Presence
--The Asia-Pacific Investment
--Cautions and Dissonances
--Locating the Historical Referent
Chapter Five
The Social Function of Literature
--Cognitive Uses of Language
--Community-Based Self-Representation
--Controversies
--Debating Resistance
Chapter Six
Aesthetic Form
--Form after New Criticism
--Legacies and Practices
--Reinventing Realist Genres
--Poetic and Theatrical Studies
Chapter Seven
Protocols and the Politics of Institutionalization
--Reading Formations
--Periodization
--Methodological Challenge
--Post-identity Subjects
Chapter Eight
Emerging Interests
--Food Studies
--Militarization, Critical Refugee Studies, and Ecocriticism
--Speculative Literature
--Digital Humanities and New Media
Conclusion
Anti-essentialist Critique and the Asian American Literary Profession
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Introduction:
Unfinalizing the Aiiieeeee! Moment: A Historicist View of the Field
Chapter One
Race, Gender, and Class: Overlapping Formations
--Centering Gender
--Exploration of Sexuality
--Essentialism and Difference
--Race and Class Revisited
Chapter Two
The Necessity and Fiction of "Asian America"
--Cultural Nationalism
--Beyond Pan-Asian Ethnicity
--Comparative Race and Ethnicity Studies
--Rethinking Asian American Specificity
Chapter Three
Intercultural and Generational Concerns
--Writing Immigrants
--Cultural Translation
--Model Minority and the Paradox of Assimilation
--Breaking the Tradition
Chapter Four
The Transnational Turn
--Planetary Presence
--The Asia-Pacific Investment
--Cautions and Dissonances
--Locating the Historical Referent
Chapter Five
The Social Function of Literature
--Cognitive Uses of Language
--Community-Based Self-Representation
--Controversies
--Debating Resistance
Chapter Six
Aesthetic Form
--Form after New Criticism
--Legacies and Practices
--Reinventing Realist Genres
--Poetic and Theatrical Studies
Chapter Seven
Protocols and the Politics of Institutionalization
--Reading Formations
--Periodization
--Methodological Challenge
--Post-identity Subjects
Chapter Eight
Emerging Interests
--Food Studies
--Militarization, Critical Refugee Studies, and Ecocriticism
--Speculative Literature
--Digital Humanities and New Media
Conclusion
Anti-essentialist Critique and the Asian American Literary Profession
Notes
Bibliography
Index