Critical Social Thought 249FD - Asian Amer. Food in Lit/Cultr

This course will focus on 20th and 21st century Asian American literature and culture through the critical lens of food: as medium of representation, crucible of memory, site of labor, and material trace of history. Through analyses of pop culture, literature, film, and cultural history, we will examine the intimate association of Asian American subjects with food, eating and cooking, as well as food's relationship to anti-immigrant sentiment, cultural assimilation, multiculturalist celebration, and U.S. empire. This course will further situate food within an intersectional framework, through which we consider the co-articulation of race with gender, sexuality, class, and nation.