FYS 60 Rhetorical Agency and Cultural Production from the Asian Diaspora
Asian immigration in the U.S. holds a specific history in relation to other migrant or racialized groups. Stock narratives of Asian identity are often constructed under the model minority myth and U.S. exceptionalism, relegating Asians as forever foreigners in the U.S. imaginary. In response to these constricting narratives, Asian/Americans have historically pushed back through writing and various modes of cultural production. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has escalated anti-Asian violence and hate speech, making more visible this violence that Asian/Americans have experienced and the campaigns and activism they have mobilized. In this FYS, students will explore the cultural production of texts from the Asian diaspora that have responded to social injustices. We will analyze writing as a practice that is socially constructed by people across time and space and within specific cultural contexts, a theoretical lens situated in the field of Composition and Rhetoric and Writing Studies, and more specifically Cultural Rhetoric. This lens focuses on what texts do, placing the authors of such text as having agency and driven by the social relationships within their community. To do this, students will learn methods to analyze not only print texts, but also texts that are multimodal. For example, students will read and analyze genres such as the graphic novel, short story, film, and other counterstories written from the Asian diaspora in response to social injustices. Throughout the first half of the semester, you will write two papers based on the assigned readings, while searching for a locally based research topic for your final paper; you will need to identify your research topic roughly halfway through the course. By the end of the semester, students will have gained a stronger understanding of the research and writing process. Open only to first year frosh.