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Gender, Sexuality, and Health (332-0-22)

Topic

Asian American Disability Politics

Instructors

Jonathan Gen Magat
Crowe 1-135
Office Hours: Thursday 1-2pm and by appointment

Meeting Info

University Hall 418: Mon, Wed 12:30PM - 1:50PM

Overview of class

Topic: Asian American Disability Politics.

In the introduction to 2013's Amerasia Journal on "The State of Illness and Disability Studies in Asian America," James Kyung-Jin Lee asks, "What would it mean for Asian American Studies to imagine its central subject, its imagined body, as a disabled or ill one?" Following this question, this course centers historical and contemporary writing and cultural productions—such as memoirs, essays, poetry, zines, blogs, visual and performance art—by Asian/Americans living with illness and disability. We will use this to explore potential topics such as: the model minority discourse and sickness; queer, feminist, Asian Americanist approaches to care and cure; crip theory/activism; eugenics and racial capitalism; disability and COVID-19; Roe v. Wade; and current issues in disability justice movement.

Class Materials (Required)

Wong, Alice. Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Alice Wong, Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2020.

Lee, James. Pedagogies of Woundedness: Illness, Memoir, and the Ends of the Model Minority. Temple University Press, 2022.

Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018.

Class Attributes

Social & Behavioral Sciences Distro Area