March 27th: Class with w/John Prendergast, Kean Univ Human Rights Senior Fellow

Next week on Thursday, March 27th, we will have a special class with Human Rights Activist and Kean University Senior Fellow John Prendergast:

"How Apple and Students Can Help End the World’s Deadliest War"

11:00-1:15 Academic Affairs Talk with Students and Faculty STEM 6th Floor

This talk connects the dots between our demand for consumer electronics and the deadliest war in the world since the Holocaust. It turns out the minerals that are used to power our cell phones and laptops originate in part from the Congo, where armed groups vie for control of those minerals. A major consumer movement has emerged that is changing the equation for Apple, Intel and the U.S. government, which in turn is having an impact in the war zones of the Congo.

**Please note that this event starts earlier than our usual class time slot, and takes place on the 6th floor of the STEM building. Please make every effort to arrive on time if possible. For those of you who are booked until 12:30pm, please attend and just do your best to enter quietly.

In addition, here is a link to a video about John's latest book "Unlikely Brothers".

Invitation to the Human Rights Institute Conference, March 21

Dear #EthnicAmLit students,

You are all invited to join me tomorrow in considering the rebuilding of lives and communities after the trauma of war.

I will be emceeing the 7th annual Human Rights Conference.  Here is a link for more information.

What is coming up?

The week after Spring Break we will be addressing new material in class.  Please be prepared to discuss the following material on the dates below:

1. Monday, March 17th:  Discussion of Smoke Signals & "The Third and Final Continent" by Jhumpa Lahiri (link to this reading is on this blog).
2. Thursday, March 20th:  Complete discussion of Lahiri's story and discuss "Fictive Fragments of a Father and Son" by David Mura (link to this reading is on this blog).  
3. Monday, March 24th:  Screening & Discussion of Cats of Mirikitani
4. Thursday, March 27th:  Screening of Cats of Mirikitani

Smoke Signals

Dear #EthnicAmLit students,

While I am attending the Digital Media and Learning conference later this week, I would like you to watch the film Smoke Signals.  This independent film was directed and co-produced by Chris Eyre and the screenplay is by Sherman Alexie (based on his short story "This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona" from his book Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven).  It is also reminiscent of the his poem "Postcards for Columbus" which was discussed thoroughly in class during the excellent group presentation given last Thursday.  The film is unique as an all-Native American production: including the producer, director, screenwriter, actors and technicians.

Here is the link to the film on-line:  Smoke Signals

Please write one of your blog posts on the film, offering your close reading of prominent themes and metaphors threading this text together.   Here are some prompts for your explication of this film:

• How is the question of history addressed in the film?
• How is tradition addressed here?
• What do you make of metaphors such as fire, smoke, storytelling, memory?  The fourth of July? The well known American trope of the "road trip"?  Fry bread?  What about the tropes such as the -"West" as a place of progress, -expansion, -cowboys & indians, -John Wayne?
• What about the theme of fathers & sons?  The notion of a legacy or inheritance?  
• How is violence (both personal and historicized violence) addressed in the film?
• What about the significance of names in the film?  Victor Joseph, Arnold Joseph?  Thomas-builds-the-fire?, etc.  Why the inclusion of Thelma & Lucy?  What might their roles refer to? …And their car in reverse?
• The significance of the title of the film itself?
• What kind of commentary does this film offer us in terms of understanding America?

I will see you all on Monday after Spring Break.  In the meanwhile, I will be completing the rubric evaluation for your group presentations and reading your blog posts over the break.

Enjoy the week off!  Let's hope we finally catch a glimpse of springtime….

Dr. Zamora

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, 1951-1982

Korean-America artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha was born in Busan, South Korea during the Korean War.  Her family eventually moved to the United States in 1962, settling down in California. She received her B.A. and M.A. in Comparative Literature and an MFA from the University of California, Berkeley. After leaving university, she moved to Paris, France, where she studied filmmaking and critical theory before returning to the Bay Area as a filmmaker and performance artist.  Cha was raped and killed by a security guard in New York City, New York, a week after the publication of her experimental novel, Dictee.

Although she lived only 31 years, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha left a substantial and diverse body of work. The primary mediums in which she worked were: ceramic, performance, artist’s books, concrete poetry, film, video, sculpture, mail art, audio, and slide projections. In many cases her work combined aspects of different media, blurring the boundaries between conventionally distinct categories. It was characteristic of Cha to take the thematic and formal approaches developed in one medium and reinterpret them in another.  The central theme of Cha’s art is displacement. While she occasionally addressed the personal and historical circumstances of her exile directly, Cha typically treated this theme symbolically, representing displacement through shifts and ruptures in the visual and linguistic forms of her works. 

Some links to sites which reference her work:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresa_Hak_Kyung_Cha

Voices from the Gaps, Univ of Minnesota

The Dream of the Audience - This is a site for the forthcoming documentary film about Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (currently in post-production). ****The film's Director/Producer - Woo Jung Cho - has recently contacted me.  She is thinking about doing an instagram project about Cha & the film. She has offered an invitation to all of you (my students) who might be interested in taking, tagging, & posting photographs that relate to Dictee/Cha.  If you are interested in this opportunity, just send me an e-mail, and I will get back to her with your interest.

Bharati Mukherjee

Bharati Mukherjee, 1940-

Bharati Mukherjee, (born July 27, 1940, Calcutta, India), Indian-born American novelist and short-story writer whose work reflects Indian culture and immigrant experience.

Mukherjee was born into a wealthy Calcutta family. She attended an anglicized Bengali school from 1944 to 1948. After three years abroad, the family returned to India. Mukherjee attended the University of Calcutta (B.A., 1959) and the University of Baroda (M.A., 1961). She then entered the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, earning an M.F.A. in 1963 and a Ph.D. in 1969. From 1966 to 1980 she lived in Montreal, which she found provincial and racist. She then moved to the U.S. in 1980 and began teaching at the university level. She became a U.S. citizen in 1989 and that year accepted a position teaching postcolonial and world literature at the University of California at Berkeley.

We discussed her story "A Father" in class as we closely read the thematic concerns of: -old world verses new world, -tradition verses progression, -religiosity verses secularism, -family expectation and intimacy, -notions of "success" and the "American dream", -gender construction, and the implicit (and explicit) violence bound to stereotypical identity paradigms.

Some links to sites which feature Mukherjee:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharati_Mukherjee

http://postcolonialstudies.emory.edu/bharati-mukherjee/

http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/mukherjee_bharati.php

Carlos Bulosan

Carlos Sampayan Bulosan, 1913-1956

Carlos Bulosan was a prolific writer and poet, best remembered as the author of America Is in the Heart, a landmark semi-autobiographical story about the Filipino immigrant experience. Bulosan gained recognition in mainstream American society with the 1944 publication of Laughter of my Father, which was excerpted in the New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, and Town and Country. He immigrated to America from the Philippines in 1930, endured horrendous conditions as a laborer, became active in the labor movement, and was blacklisted along with other labor radicals during the 1950s. He spent his last years in Seattle, jobless, penniless, and in poor health.

Many of you have chosen to blog about his story "I Would Remember". In this short story which we read closely in class, his reflective and profound first person narrator explores the impact of death on the journey of life. Themes include displacement, loss, injustice, and the question of 'value' in a human life.

Some links to sites which feature Bulosan:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Bulosan

Carlos Bulosan exhibit

Carlos Bulosan, Annanberg Learner site

Happy Year of the Horse!  

There are several events on campus to celebrate Chinese New Year.  Click here for more details.

Dear students,

The Asian Studies Department is extending a special invitation to us to attend a play by Tony Award winning playwright David Henry Hwang in NYC.  Transportation to and from the play by bus will be provided by Kean:

Kung Fu by David Henry Hwang  

When: Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Time: 12:30 PM meet in front of the Little Theater

Where: Signature Theatre Company 480 West 42nd Street

New York, NYC

Cost: ONLY $10.00!!!!

Click on this link for further details:

Special Invitation

Twitter account tutorial

A short tutorial on how to set up your class twitter account:

Getting Started With Blogger

Here is a reference for all of you on how to get your blogger account up and running:

Welcome to Ethnic American Literature!  This course explores the way in which writers engage directly with dominant narratives of America. We will consider the role the selected literature has played in interrogating questions of ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality in American culture. Issues and topics addressed include: cultural pluralism, the melting pot and American "identity", ethnic and cultural difference; immigration, displacement, and migratory identities; geographical and metaphorical borderlands; mixed blood and the divided self; ethnic nationalism and cultural survival; and "whiteness" as a racial and ethnic category. 

Throughout the course, our focus will be on textual analysis – on how particular literature and films give formal shape to the experiences they depict. You can expect to leave this course able to articulate some of your own claims about how literature interacts with, and shapes, the social context out of which authors write. In the course, you will learn to engage in important conversations about the boundaries of America, by paying close reading attention to the complexity of the literary texts at hand.  You will also tell you own stories, and you will do so in a digital context.  This blog will be our "home base" for sharing and reflecting on our collective American stories.

Looking forward to a special semester with all of you,

Dr. Zamora