Gender and Representation of Asian Women

Readings

Required Books

Soh, C. Sarah. The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan. University of Chicago Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780226767772.

Constable, Nicole. Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and “Mail Order” Marriages. University of California Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780520238701.

SES #	TOPICS	READINGS and screenings
I. Major Terminologies and Frameworks
1	Introduction to course goals, organization, and syllabus	No readings
2	Orientalism	Said, Edward W. “Introduction.” In Orientalism. Vintage, 1979. ISBN: 9780394740676. Prasso, Sheridan. “The Real Memoirs of a Geisha.” In The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, and our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient. Pp. 200-223. ISBN: 9781586482145. Anne, Allison. “Memoirs of the Orient.” In Journal of Japanese Studies 27, no. 2 (2001): 381-398. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In Visual and Other Pleasures. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp. 14-38. ISBN: 9781403992468. Screening: Excerpt of Memoirs of Geisha.
3	The politics of representation	Stoler, Ann L. “Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in 20th-Century Colonial Cultures.” American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (1989): 634-660. ———. “Educating Desire in Colonial Southeast Asia: Foucault, Freud, and Imperial Sexualities.” In Sites of Desire Economies of Pleasure: Sexualities in Asia and the Pacific. Edited by Lenore Manderson and Margaret Jolly. University of Chicago Press, 1997, pp. 27-48. ISBN: 9780226503042. Manderson, Lenore. “Parables of Imperialism and Fantasies of the Exotic: Western Representations of Thailand—Place and Sex.” In Sites of Desire Economies of Pleasure: Sexualities in Asia and the Pacific. Edited by Lenore Manderson and Margaret Jolly. University of Chicago Press, 1997, pp. 123-145. ISBN: 9780226503042. Chatterjee, Partha. “The Nation and Its Women.” In The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 116-135. ISBN: 9780691019437. Screening: The Electronic Storyteller: TV & the Cultivation of Values.
II. Figures and Stereotypes
4	Madame Butterfly and improvisations 1 (gender subversions, place, and race)	Yoshihara, Mari. “The Flight of the Japanese Butterfly: Orientalism, Nationalism, and Performances of Japanese Womanhood.” American Quarterly 56, no. 4 (2004): 975-999. Kondo, Dorinne K. “M. Butterfly: Orientalism, Gender, and Critique of Essentialist Identity.” Cultural Critique 16 (1990). De Lauretis, Teresa. “Popular Culture, Public and Private Fantasies: Femininity and Fetishism in David Cronenberg’s ‘M. Butterfly’.” Signs 24, no. 2 (1999).
5	Madame Butterfly and improvisations 2 (race, power, and place)	Shimizu, Celine Parreñas. “The Bind of Representation: Performing and Consuming Hypersexuality in Miss Saigon.” Theatre Journal 57 (2005): 247–265. Prasso, Sheridan. “The Other Side of Miss Saigon.” In The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, and our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient. ISBN: 9781586482145. Heung, Marina Heung. “The Family Romance of Orientalism: From Madame Butterfly to Indochine.” In Visions of the East: Orientalism in Film. Edited By Matthew Bernstein and Gaylyn Studlar. Rutgers University Press, 1997, pp. 158-184. ISBN: 9780813522951. Screening: Indochine.
6	Bad girls	Sunindyo, Saraswati. “Murder, Gender and the Media.” In Fantasizing the Feminine in Indonesia. Edited by Laurie J. Sears. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996, pp. 120-139. ISBN: 9780822316961. Kim, Elaine H. “‘Bad Women’: Asian American Visual Artists Hanh Ohi Pham, Hung Liu, and Young Soon Min.” Feminist Studies 22, no. 3 (1996): 573-602. Hershatter, Gail. “Courtesans and Streetwalkers: The Changing Discourses on Shanghai Prostitution, 1890-1949.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 3, no. 2 (1992): 245-269. Liechty, Mark. “Carnal Economies: The Commodification of Food and Sex in Kathmandu.” Cultural Anthropology 20, no. 1 (2005): 1-38.
7	The Comfort Women	Soh, C. Sarah. The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan. University of Chicago Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780226767772.
8	The Comfort Women (cont.)	Soh, C. Sarah. The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan. University of Chicago Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780226767772. Screening: Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women.
III. Other Representations
9	Dragon ladies and maids	Shimizu, Celine Parenas. “The Sexual Bonds of Racial Stardom: Asian American Femme Fatale in Hollywood.” In The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian American Women on Screen and Scene. Duke University Press, 2007, pp. 58-102. ISBN: 9780822340331. Chang, Grace. “The Global Trade in Filipina Workers.” In Dragon Ladies: Asian American Feminists Breath Fire. South End Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780896085756. Lowie, Miriam. “Breaking the Cycle.” In Dragon Ladies: Asian American Feminists Breath Fire. South End Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780896085756. Chin, Christina, et al. “Without a Trace, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Prime-Time Television.” In Contemporary Asian America. Edited by Min Zhou and J. V. Gatewood. NYU Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780814797136. Lee, Robert. “The Cold War Origins of the Model Minority Myth.” Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture. Temple University Press, 1999. ISBN: 9781566397537. Screening: Clip from The Curse of the Golden Flower. Screening: Clip from Charlie’s Angels.
10	Female forms of power	Steedly, Mary. “Someone Else is Speaking.” In Hanging Without a Rope. Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 174-202. ISBN: 9780691094618. Tsing, Anna. “Riding, Writing.” In In the Realm of the Diamond Queen. Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 231-252. ISBN: 9780691000510. Heng, G., and J. Devan. “State Fatherhood: The Politics of Nationalism, Sexuality, and Race in Singapore.” In Nationalism and Sexualities. Edited by Andrew Parker, et al. Routledge, 1992, pp. 343-357. ISBN: 9780415904339. Screening: Dream Girls.
11	Romance on a Global Stage	Constable, Nicole. Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and “Mail Order” Marriages. University of California Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780520238701.
12	Romance on a Global Stage (cont.)	Constable, Nicole. Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and “Mail Order” Marriages. University of California Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780520238701.