Lisa

Lowe





USA401H1S / COL2100H1
9-24 October, 2012




IN209 4:00-6:30 PM



Asian diasporas: migration, memory, imagination

"Diaspora" provides a suggestive concept for the study of modern world histories of
displacement and connection of peoples originating from a single region or location,
like Asia, permitting analyses that highlight global processes usually left out of nation-
based histories. Diaspora contains the contradictions of the impulse toward cultural
unity, on the one hand, and the ruptures of separation and dislocation, on the other
hand. From the Greek word meaning the sowing of seeds, diaspora had been
primarily used to convey the integrity and homogeneity of the Jewish Diaspora,
dispersed yet unified by religion, text, and culture; more recently, it has been
expanded to refer the projects of remaking the sociality of various peoples who were
at one time unified, and then forcibly displaced. The study of African diaspora
powerfully conceptualizes the global history of people of African descent living
outside of the continent of Africa; it is both a unifying term enabling scholars to
discuss centuries of African-descendant communities dispersed across national
boundaries, as well as a way to discuss the recuperation of histories of captivity,
enslavement, and forced labor in the aftermath of the Atlantic slave trade. Scholars
employ Asian diaspora to refer to the global migrations of peoples from various
East, South, and Southeast Asian national origins. In this seminar, we will test the
critical capacity of the concept of Asian diaspora, employing it to study both the
displacements and connections of Asian peoples within a range of modern processes
of dislocation, i.e., through colonialism, imperial trade, war, or labor immigration.

In the first week, we will consider the concept of Asian diaspora for the study of the
nineteenth-century emigrations of Chinese and Indian workers that were so central to
the emergence of the world system and expansion of the modern global
economy; trades brought Asian workers to French and Dutch colonies in the Indian
Ocean, Spanish Cuba and Peru, the British West Indies, Hawaii, and the United States
and Canada. In these contexts, Asian workers were often part of multi-group
workforces that included African slaves and other forms of coerced or unfree
labor. We will also explore Asian diaspora, in the second week, to examine the
explosion of migration and immigration from Asia to North America in the second half
of the twentieth century, in relation to U.S. wars in Asia and the Pacific, particularly, in
Korea and Vietnam. Asian diaspora may be a means to articulate the collective
memory and retrieval of histories occluded by official nationalisms, whether of origin,
or of the new nation in which the diaspora settles. Following captivity, war,
colonialism, or persecution, diaspora may be a medium of collective unity through
which the trauma of dispersal can be made legible, in which a collective reckoning,
mourning, or reconstruction may be attempted. Yet if the concept stresses only
collective cultural identifications, diaspora may itself obscure some of the political
economic logics of colonial or imperial states that led to displacement or exploitation.

To counter this, in the third week, we will consider the possibility of rearticulating
diaspora as a critique of national essentialism, or as means of forging new political
imaginations of collaborative struggle across differences. This cultural studies
seminar emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches drawing from history, literature
and anthropology to assess the concept of Asian diaspora in a global framework.



Course Requirements

The seminar will be concentrated in eleven class meetings over three weeks, October
9-24, and will include the following course requirements:

Reading Responses: Students are asked to post short responses to the reading on the
Blackboard website discussion board. These responses should be around 200 words
each and should reflect critically on the assigned readings. The course requires that
you post on the assigned readings for six of the eleven classes; e.g., one possible
schedule would be that you write two posts each week during the three week
course. Please observe the following suggested posting schedule, designed to keep
you on top of the reading and enable timely feedback: post two responses for the first
week of assigned readings before October 8th; post additional responses for week 2
assigned readings before Tuesday, October 16th; and post responses for week 3
assigned readings no later than Tuesday, October 23rd. You are encouraged to engage
with one another in your responses. Weight: 30%
Collaborative presentations: Students will take part in paired or small group
collaborations, one for each weeks unit, ultimately sharing their perspectives with
the class in a 20-minute presentation. Students will work outside class to discuss and
identify the stakes, methods, and objectives of the assigned materials, and each week,
student groups will lead and involve the class in a discussion of the interventions the
works are making; e.g., What concept of diaspora does the reading uphold? Into
what debates are the pieces intervening, how and why, and for what ends? Which
disciplinary or theoretical concepts are being criticized, and which employed? Groups
are welcome to bring in additional materials, if relevant. Weight: 30%
Final Paper: The final paper is to be 12-15 pages, and engaged with the course
material. Further instructions will be available in class. Due Wednesday December
5th. Weight: 40%

Articles and documents will be posted and available on course website:

Walton Look Lai, Asian Contract and Free Migrations to the Americas, in Coerced

and Free Migration, ed. D. Eltis (Stanford, 2002), pp. 228-258.
Stuart Hall, "Cultural Identity and Diaspora," in Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial

Theory, eds. P. Morley and L. Chrisman (Columbia, 1994), pp. 393-403
Brent Edwards, The Uses of Diaspora Social Text 66, 19.1 (2011): 45-73.
Lisa Lowe, The Intimacies of Four Continents Haunted by Empire, ed. A. L. Stoler

(Duke UP, 2006), pp. 191-212.
Great Britain Colonial Office Correspondence (selections)
Moon-Ho Jung, Outlawing Coolies: Race, Nation, and Empire in the Age of
Emancipation, American Quarterly 57:3 (Sept 2005): 677-701
Madhavi Kale, Chapters 1-2, from Fragments of Empire: Capital, Slavery, and Indian

Indentured Labor in the British Caribbean (U Pennsylvania, 1998), pp. 12-65
Lisa Yun, An Afro-Chinese Caribbean: Cultural Cartographies of Contrariness in

Antonio Chuffat Latour, Margaret Cezair-Thompson, and Patricia Powell,

Caribbean Quarterly 50, No. 2 (Summer 2004): 26-43.
W. W. Rostow, An American Policy in Asia (MIT and Wiley, 1955), pp. 1-7
Henry R. Luce, An American Century, [orig. pub. 1941] reprinted in American

Legacy, ed. M. Hogan (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 11-29
T. Fujitani, Geoffrey White, Lisa Yoneyama, eds., Introduction, Perilous Memories:

The Asia-Pacific War(s) (Duke, 2001), pp. 1-29
Jodi Kim, Introduction, Chapter 1, Ends of Empire: Asian American Critique
and the Cold War (U Minnesota, 2010), pp. 1-62
Yen Le Espiritu, "We-Win-Even-When-We-Lose Syndrome: U.S. Press Coverage of

the 25th Anniversary of the 'Fall of Saigon,'" American Quarterly 58:2
(June 2006): 329-352
U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (McCarran-Walter Act)
U.K. Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962
Lisa Lowe, Chapter 1, Immigrant Acts (Duke, 1996), pp. 1-36
A. Sivanandan, A Different Hunger: Writings on Black Resistance (Pluto, 1982), pp. 5-54
Gayatri Gopinath, Archive, Affect, and the Everyday, in Political Emotions: New

Agendas for Communication, eds. J. Staiger et al. (Routledge, 2010)


Books available for purchase at the University of Toronto Bookstore:
Lok Siu and R. Parreas, eds. Asian Diasporas: New Formations, New Conceptions

(Stanford, 2007)
Patricia Powell, The Pagoda (Harcourt, 1998)
Chang-Rae Lee, A Gesture Life (Riverhead, 2000)
L Thi Diem Thuy, The Gangster We Are All Looking For (Anchor, 2004)
Shyam Selvadurai, ed., Story-Wallah: Short Fiction from South Asian Writers

(Houghton Mifflin, 2004)
Michael Ondaatje, Anils Ghost (Vintage, 2000)

Schedule of assigned readings and discussions

Week 1

Tu Oct 9

W Oct 10

Th Oct 11




Week 2

Tu Oct 16

W Oct 17
Th Oct 18




Week 3
Tu Oct 23

diaspora and the intimacies of four continents

W. Look-Lai, Asian Contract; L. Lowe, Intimacies;
B. Edwards, Uses of Diaspora; S. Hall, Cultural Identity
M. Kale, Chapters 1-2, from Fragments of Empire
M.-H. Jung, Outlawing
Selected colonial office documents

P. Powell, The Pagoda;
L. Yun, An Afro-Chinese Caribbean
First group presentation
diaspora and the aftermaths of war
W. W. Rostow, from An American Policy;
H. Luce, American Century;
T. Fujitani, G. White, L. Yoneyama, Introduction to Perilous;
L. Siu and R. Parreas, Introduction to Asian Diasporas;

J. Kim, Introduction, Ch. 1, from Ends
C.R. Lee, A Gesture Life

Y. L. Espiritu, We Win;
l, Gangster We Are All Looking For
Second group presentation
diaspora, memory, transformation
U.S. McCarran-Walter Act of 1952;
U.K. Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962;
A. Sivanandan, from Distant;
G. Gopinath, Archive, Affect, Everyday;
L. Lowe, Ch. 1, Immigrant Acts;
Selections from Story-Wallah

M. Ondaatje, Anils Ghost
Third group presentation

W Oct 24



Th Oct 25 class cancelled