Asian American Masculinities

3 credits · Undergraduate

Asian American studies has focused on the emasculation of Asian men, arguing that Asian/American men have been historically marginalized as queer and abject, as failing to meet white standards of masculine embodiment. This crucial scholarship has worked to explain a long history of Asian men's (heterosexual) undesirability as the product of specific forms of anti-Asian racism and exclusion in a white supremacist society. In this course, we will read broadly in Asian American studies and gender and sexuality studies to explore the tropes that have defined Asian and Asian American masculinities in US literature, theater, film, television, and social media. Additionally, we will investigate the ways these tropes have evolved in recent decades concomitant with the rise of anime, K-pop, and other Asian/American popular media forms in the global mainstream.