Princeton University

Fall 2012

ENG 224/AMS 304   Asian American Law, Bodies and the Everyday

Anne Cheng, Department of English; Program in African American Studies

This course studies the relationship between law and literature by focusing on the roles that Asian Americans played in US constitutional history.   We will examine cases involving Asian Americans that reflect on American policies on citizenship, immigration, civil rights, human rights, and foreign policy, and we will explore novels, plays, poems, and films that respond to these cases.   We will also consider the invisible ways in which the law shapes our everyday lives:   how it structures our feelings, bodies, spaces, and the sense of the quotidian.

AAS 340/ENG 391/AMS 340   Shades of Passing

Anne Cheng, Department of English, Program in African American Studies

This course studies the trope of passing in 20^th century American literary and cinematic narratives in an effort to re-examine the crisis of identity that both produces and confounds acts of passing.   We will examine how American novelists and filmmakers have portrayed and responded to this social phenomenon, not as merely a social performance but as a profound intersubjective process embedded within history, law, and culture.   We will focus on narratives of passing across axes of difference, invoking questions such as:   To what extent does the act of passing reinforce or unhinge seemingly natural categories of race, gender, and sexuality?

Franklin Odo
The Asian American Experience in the Nation's Service
Public Service and Public History in America

Tuesday, March 5
4:30 p.m.
Whig Hall Senate Chamber

Sponsored by Asian American Student Association and The American Whig-Cliosophic Society

Link to

Asian
American
Students
Association