Asian American Visual Cultures: Graphic Novels and Popular Media

3 units

What does it mean to see, know, and encounter Asian Americans through images, media, and in our everyday lives? What kinds of visibilities and invisibilities shape Asian American presence in the U.S.? This course studies Asian Americans through visual, textual and auditory mediums of graphic novels and popular media. We will examine depictions of Asian Americans as racialized subjects, refugees, romantics, survivors, superheroes, mixed race children, international adoptees, feminized/ overhyped masculinities, and whiz kids that characterize the new generation of Asian Americans in the 21st. century. We will draw from historical representations of Fu Manchu, Charlie Chan, and Bruce Lee, and examine modern depictions in popular media like Shang-Chi, The Karate Kid, The Brady Bunch, and Everything Everywhere All At Once. Studying these representations through the critical frameworks of representational politics, stereotypes surrounding Asian Americans, and historical obscurity, we will question the ethics, and influences of these popular representations on the lived experiences of Asian American demographics in the U.S. Drawing from Asian Americans with cultural ties to China, Japan, India, Vietnam, Korea, and other nationalities, the course will take you on a visual and auditory journey of what we see, hear, and know in the discourses surrounding Asian America in today’s day and age. Students will engage in creative assignments of tracing graphic novels, creating zines, blogs, and analyzing visual availability of Asian American presence around them through material, visual, and auditory spaces.