English Language and Literature Commons^™

I, Discomfort Woman: A Fugue In F Minor, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Contained Identities: Forms Of Resistance In Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee And Pamela Lu's Pamela: A Novel, Zohra Qazi

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis analyzes groundbreaking experimental texts by Asian American writers that employ genre-bending formal innovations to resist the uneasy containment of social hierarchies and aesthetic categories. After a brief discussion of Monica Youn’s 2019 poem, “Study of Two Figures (Pasiphaë/Sado),” I trace such experimentation back to the late twentieth century, focusing on two other texts that explore similar strategies of literary experimentation and that present themselves as novels but, as Youn does with poetry, resist that classification at the same time. The experimental expansions of form in both Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee (1982) and Pamela Lu’s Pamela: A Novel …

Relationship Counseling For The U.S.: Understanding White America's Role In Asian American Experiences, Alison N. Lawrence

Tredway Library Prize for First-Year Research

This paper explores the relationship between White Americans and Asian Americans in an effort to discover the root of the difficulties that first and second generation Asian Americans experience while attempting to integrate into American society. Through an analysis of perspectives from Asian American literature as well as historical and current events, it highlights the racist systems that are ingrained in our everyday lives, continuously reminding Asian Americans that they are out of place in their own country. It concludes with a discussion of White America's necessary role in dismantling these systems, and offers strategies to create a more welcoming …

"They Called Me Kimchi Breath" And Other Short Narrative Essays: A Study In Composing Asian-American Identity In Short Nonfictional Essays, Teddy Kim

Honors Theses

The heterogenous lifestyle of Asian-Americans is one of duality. For this ethnic group, personal identity is a mix between American standard practices and inherited Asian traditions. However, even if their cultural practices are primarily American, Asian-Americans are often “Otherized” and outcast when claiming an American identity, forcing them to be regarded as “just Asian.” As such, they are Americans being rejected by America, and as a result have no other place to call home . In this project, I seek to heal the strife this rejection creates, attempting to confront these tensions and resolve them. As a hyphenated American, I …

Translator Of Soliloquies: Fugues In The Key Of Dissociation, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

Chu, Seo-Young. “Translator of Soliloquies: Fugues in the Key of Dissociation” (chapbook). Black Warrior Review 46.2, Spring 2020.

"Free Indirect Suicide: An Unfinished Fugue In H Minor", Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

In this lyric essay/work of creative nonfiction (listed among “Notable Essays & Literary Nonfiction” in Best American Essays 2020), Seo-Young Chu uses poetry, autotheory, and creative nonfiction to explore the generational trauma/postmemory han she inherited from her parents and the importance of destigmatizing mental illness through dialogue.

"I Refuse To Die:" The Poetics Of Intergenerational Trauma In The Works Of Li-Young Lee, Ocean Vuong, Cathy Park Hong, And Emily Jungmin Yoon, Helli Fang

Senior Projects Fall 2019

This project explores how trauma and violence within immigrant and refugee narratives are preserved and embodied in the poetry and prose works of four Asian American writers, Li-Young Lee, Ocean Vuong, Cathy Park Hong, and Emily Jungmin Yoon. In this examination arises the question of how trauma from a historical event can be passed down to people who have not witnessed them firsthand, such as the children of war refugees. I argue that these works are written not solely with the intention to remain truthful to the informative or factual history of these inherited traumatic events, but rather, to preserve …

Adaptive Acts: Queer Voices And Radical Adaptation In Multi-Ethnic American Literary And Visual Culture, Michael M. Means

Theses and Dissertations

Adaptation Studies suffers from a deficiency in the study of black, brown, yellow, and red adaptive texts, adaptive actors, and their practices. Adaptive Acts intervenes in this Eurocentric discourse as a study of adaptation with a (queer) POC perspective. My dissertation reveals that artists of color (re)create texts via dynamic modes of adaptation such as hyper-literary allusion, the use of meta-narratives as framing devices, and on-site collaborative re-writes that speak to/from specific cultural discourses that Eurocentric models alone cannot account for. I examine multi-ethnic American adaptations to delineate the role of adaptation in the continuance of stories that contest dominant …

Between Settlers And Sovereignty: Literary Solidarity And Anti-Colonial Discourse In Territorial Hawai‘I, 1887–1959, Trevor J. Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project reclaims a history of anti-colonial discourse and collaborations among Asian settlers and Native Hawaiians between 1887-1959 in Territorial Hawai‘i, drawing from archival works, including King David Kalākaua’s poetry, correspondence, and speeches regarding the Hawaiian monarch’s responsibilities toward Asian laborers, Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalaniana‘ole’s speeches about Hawaiian land rights and Asian farmers, and texts written by local Asian authors of the early 20th century, including Fred Kinzaburō Makino, Takie Okumura, James T. Hamada, Wai Chee Chun, and Noboru Itamura. Through this recovery of texts, I show how the racialization of Native Hawaiians and Asian immigrants by the U.S. territorial …

Restoring, Rewriting, Reimagining: Asian American Science Fiction Writers And The Time Travel Narrative, Joanne Chern

Scripps Senior Theses

Asian American literature has continued to evolve since the emergence of first generation Asian American writers in 1975. Authors have continued to interact not only with Asian American content, but also with different forms to express that content – one of these forms is genre writing. Genre writing allows Asian American writers to interact with genre conventions, using them to inform Asian American tropes and vice versa. This thesis focuses on the genre of science fiction, specifically in the subgenre of time travel. Using three literary case studies – Ken Liu’s “The Man Who Ended History,” Charles Yu’s How …