Course

This course analyzes metaphors of space and place in selected works of Asian American literature and cultural production. We will discuss the ways authors work with space as racially bordered, legislated history, lived experience, internalized existential panic, and literary tropes. We will analyze both fictional and non-fiction protagonists who claim their agency through acts of re-naming, re-defining, and re-experiencing space to turn it into place. There will be a little bit of theoretical discussion and reading just to lay some groundwork, but nothing that cannot be made accessible and usable through an afternoon's discussion.

Greg Choy is a Continuing Lecturer in the Department of Ethnic Studies at Cal. He has been teaching at Cal for ten years. His teaching and scholarship focus on Asian American and comparative multiethnic literatures of the US. Before coming to Cal, he was a professor of English at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN, and a Professor of Humanities at The University of Minnesota, General College. He received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington.