A (Not So) Arbitrary Triumvirate

General Introduction

• By Way of a Proposition: Way Chee Dimock, "Literature for the Planet", PMLA 116 (1) 2001: 173-188
• What's Wrong With Literary Studies?
• Additional reading TBA

Of Mice and Men: Transitioning and Spying For World Peace

• Ha Jin,  A Map of Betrayal
• Arlif Dirlik, "Literary Identity/Cultural Identity: Being Chinese in the Contemporary World."
• Ha Jin, "The Art of Fiction," No. 202, Paris Review
• Ha, Jin. "Exiled to English." In Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader, edited by Shu-mei Shih, Chien-hsin Tsai and Brian Bernards, 117-124. New York: Columbia UP, 2013.
• Michael Wutz , "The Individual versus the State - A Conversation with Ha Jin," Weber, 31. vol. 2, Spring/Summer 2015, 4-16.
• Uighurs in China: Muslim Minority in China facing "political indoctrination" (Reuters)

             Of topical interest:

• Fae Myenne Ng, "Orphan Bachelors - Exclusion and Confession . . . " (Harpers, 22 Jan 2019)
• Asian American perspective on "Yellow Face" / Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
   
• Betrayal I _______________________________________       Betrayal II ______________________________________

Literature, Exile, and the Reach of the Big Brother

• Ha Jin, The Boat Rocker
• Bing Blocked in China (1/19)
• Media Censorship in China (Council on Foreign Relations)
• China's Censored World
• Writing Under Totatalitarian Regimes (6/18)
   
• Boat Rocker I _______________________________________      Boat Rocker II _______________________________________
• 
  Of topical interest
  • Kevin Kwan, Crazy Rich Asians (8/18), Crazy Rich Asians is changing stereotypes (NPR)
  • Detention of Uighurs Must End, UN Tells China
  • Leave No Dark Corner -- China's "social credit" system

Caught Between Two Worlds

• Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
• JL official site including interviews and Readers' Guide
• Additional readings on CAL PAL TBA
  => NEA page on The Namesake, Identity/Relationships
   
• The Children of 1965: Allegory, Postmodernism, and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake
  
  
  Of topical interest
• Michael Wutz, "Gogol + Nikil = Nikon? — Power, Place, and Photography in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake."
  The Place of Photography", Ed. Julia Faist and Kerstin Schmidt, Leiden: Brill (2019)
• Mira Nair, The Namesake (2007, film screening, time permitting)
   
• Namesake I _____________________________________      Namesake II ______________________________________

Radicalism Abroad & Nation Building: Naxalism, Ecology, and the Burden of Migration

• Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland
• (Dipesh Chakrabarty, "The Climate of History: Four Theses," "New Literary History" 35, 2 (2009): 197-222.)
• "Postcolonial Studies and the Challenge of Climate Change, "New Literary History" 43, 1 (2012): 1-18.
• Reviews of The Lowland I, II, III, IV
• The Lowland – Focus Questions
   
• Lowland I ______________________________________        Lowland II _______________________________________
   
• Of topical interest:
  • Why Do So Many Contemporary American Writers Send their Characters Abroad?
  • Teju Cole, When the Camera Was a Weapon of Imperialism. (And When It Still Is.) NYT, 6 Feb 2019
  • WEED: Water Hyacinths in India 
  • Michael Wutz, "The Archaeology of the Colonial - Un-Earthing JL's Unaccustomed Earth," SAF 42.2 (2015)
  • A Human Magnetic Sense (3/19)

Counselor Troi in the Maghreb: Literature, Genetics, and the Need for Empathy

• Richard Powers, Generosity and select essays/interviews in CALPAL
• Generosity, the complete review
• Cognitive Science I,    Cognitive Science II
• Marco Roth, "The Rise of the Neuronovel," n+1, 8, Fall 2009
• James Wood, "Brain Drain - The Scientific Fictions of Richard Powers," The New Yorker, 5 Oct 2009
• Joseph Carroll, "Biology and Poststructuralism" (to be put online)
   
• Generosity I __________________________________       Generosity II _________________________________

• Of topical interest:
  • Germline cells and gene editing (3/19)
  • C.P. Snow, "The Two Cultures" (1959)
  • From "hygge" to "pyt" :)

The Endgame for Ents, or, Writing Over the Top: An Arboreal Epic for Our Time

• Richard Powers, The Overstory
• "The Inner Lives of Trees," Richard Powers in conversation with Steve Paulson
• Eadweard Muybridge, the zoopraxiscope
• Suzanne Simard, "How trees talk to each other" - TED talk (June 2016)
• Last Tree-Sitters leave Redwoods, (NBC, Sept. 2008)
• Svalbard Global Seed Vault (Cary Fowler, One Seed at at Time, TED talk. July 2009)
• Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement (LSE book review)
• RP, By the Book (NYT, 3/19)
• 
   
• The Overstory I __________________________________        The Overstory __________________________________
•  
• Of topical interest
  - Not so long ago, cities were starved for trees (1/19)
  - Alan Weisman, The World Without Us (2007), 4-minute summary :)
  - Rosalind Franklin, the forgotten woman and the modeling of the DNA
  - The Strangling Trees of Angkor Wat
  - Bartolomaus Traubneck: What do Tree Rings Sound like on a Record Player? <=> Rainer Maria Rilke, Primal Sound (1919)
  - "a religious conversion": How writing The Overstory changed R Powers' Life, The Atlantic, 16 April 2019

Student Project Thumbnails, Artificial Summary & Conclusion

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last updated, 16 April 2019