2024-2025 Academic Catalog

Nov 16, 2024

2024-2025 Academic Catalog

ENG 273 - Black-Asian Solidarities: A Literary Exploration of Racial Constructions in America

The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the viral racism that communities of color face in the United States. In particular, media narratives about the spike in anti-Asian discrimination in the US are dominated by a fiction of antagonism between Black and Asian Americans. This course will investigate how this narrative originates and persists, and counter it by examining the long histories of solidarity and intimacy between Blacks and Asians in the US. Understanding social experiences of marginalization require an understanding of their ideological basis. In tandem with the literature we study, it is necessary to unpack the legal constructions of personhood and citizenship as they evolve throughout US history, from founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution through key legislation and executive orders that regulate public and private lives, including but not limited to immigration, naturalization, and citizenship; enslavement and labor; and marriage and family. With this knowledge about legal narrative informing our readings of literary and cultural productions, students will develop tools and strategies to demystify the cultural folklore that sustains institutionalized racism in America. In doing so, students will fill their anti-racist toolkits with strategies, resources, and community connections necessary to begin the work of facilitating courageous conversations around race and racism at Clark and beyond: students will deliver primers on Black-Asian solidarities and lead conversations about shared texts with high school students and grassroots organizations in Massachusetts.

For English majors, this course satisfies the D-3 requirement. For English minors, this course counts as a 200-level English seminar.

Prerequisites: Prerequisites: One 100-level English literature course (ENG 100-199) or permission of instructor

Course Designation/Attribute: DI, POP

Anticipated Terms Offered: Bi-annually