Advanced Topics in Arts and Performance (380-0-1)

Topic

Performing Wellness in Asian America

Instructors

Raymond San Diego
Crowe 1-125

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-425: Tues, Thurs 2:00PM - 3:20PM

Overview of class

This course uses performance studies as a primary framework to analyze how illness, disability, and wellness are staged, enacted, and reconstituted across Asian American expressive cultures. Rather than treating disability and disease solely as individualized, clinical conditions, we will explore them as dynamic, relational, and political performances shaped by history, race, and empire.

Through theater, crip solo performance, film and media, life writing, art, photography, and other visual and expressive forms, students will trace how Asian American bodies navigate multiple and often competing pressures, from model minority myth to medicalized racialization. Course topics will include intergenerational trauma as bodily repertoire, mental health (de)stigmatization, Asian American disability aesthetics, grassroots community care practices, and the cultural staging of death, dying, and collective grief. Students will critically analyze creative works and develop their own projects to reframe care, bodily autonomy, and interdependence.

Class Notes

Attendance at first class is mandatory

Class Attributes

Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
SoC Humanities and Fine Arts Distro
SoC Individual and Social Behavior Distro