ENGL 375-001
Global South Connections [NEW COURSE!]
Y-Dang Troeung
Term 1
TTh, 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
“Writing the Cold War in Asia”
The Cold War is understood as a state of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. In Asia and other parts of the world, however, the Cold War played out differently as the stage of multiple violent conflicts with devastating consequences that continue to be felt today. In this course, we will examine how literature and culture reimagines the Cold War in Asia and its afterlife, with a focus on writing related to the geographical contexts of North and South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and the U.S. South. The course will focus on asking how contemporary authors respond to the legacies of war, militarism, and migration through experiments in literary form. We will attend to how literature offers an alternative to the dominant “Cold War frame,” and we will pay particular attention to how authors map connections between the Cold War in Asia and the Black American South. Students will have the opportunity to work on a creative group project as one of the course assignments. Authors we will study may include Krys Lee, Han Kang, Toni Morrison, Monique Truong, and Madeleine Thien.
