Post-Nationalist American Studies

Syllabus: Pacific America: War, Memory, and Imagination

WOMEN, WAR, AND THE PACIFIC 107 Syllabus PACIFIC AMERICA War, Memory, and Imagination Instructor: Katherine Kinney This class considers the importance of the Pacific and Asia in twentiethcentury American conceptions of nationalism and culture, particularly in relationship to war. For the first half of the course we will consider a variety of historical moments and cultural icons—Captain Cook, Madam Butterfly, the atomic bomb, and war memorials—which mark the frequently militarized place of Asia in American national memory and imagination. In the second half of the course, we will turn to the war novel as a national form, moving from Norman Mailer’s classic World War II work, The Naked and the Dead, to four novels by women which challenge the gendered boundaries of war narratives and the nation. We will consider how these novels plot the imagined relationship of home to battle , the U.S. to Asia and the Pacific, domestic to foreign, and past to present . We will end with Anna Deavere Smith’s performance piece about civil unrest in Los Angeles, Twilight, which “searches for American characters ” within a multiracial, multinational, and Pacific-American landscape . Each student will be asked to complete a midterm “Image Project” in which they will trace the repetition of a single image of Asia and/or the Pacific in American popular culture. Each student must consult at least five different kinds of sources. These could include the Internet, your local shopping mall, a grocery store, travel brochures, magazines, newspapers, toys, movies, television , or maps. The project can take the form of a collage, a visual essay, a website , or any other visual format. Other requirements will include frequent informal writing exercises, midterm and final exams, and a ten-page final essay. HISTORICAL MOMENTS AND CULTURAL ICONS Week 1 Across the Pacific: The United States and Asia We will read short selections from the following: John Ledyard, The Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage to the Pacific in Quest of the Northwest Passage Thomas Jefferson on the China Trade Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power on History (1890; reprint Dover, 1987) William B. Gatewood, ed., “Smoked Yankees” and the Struggle for Empire: Letters from Negro Soldiers, 1898–1902 (letters from the Philippines; University of Illinois Press, 1971) Walt Whitman, “Facing West from California’s Shores,” and “Passage to India,” in Leaves of Grass 108 KATHERINE KINNEY Joan Didion, “Letter from Paradise, 21° 19' N., 157° 52' W.” in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1990), 187–204 Week 2 War Memorials: Iwo Jima; the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; the Enola Gay; The Vietnam Women’s Memorial; The Other Vietnam Memorial Karal Ann Marling and John Wetenhall, from Iwo Jima: Monuments, Memories , and the American Hero (selections; Harvard University Press, 1991) Beyond the Wall (CD ROM on Vietnam Veterans Memorial; Magnet Interactive Studios, 1995) Maya Lin: A Clear Strong Vision (dir. Freida Lee Mock, 1994) James Tatum, “Memorials of the American War in Vietnam,” Critical Inquiry 22 (summer 1996): 634–78 Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian (Marlowe and Co., 1995) David Yoo, “Captivating Memories: Museology, Concentration Camps, and Japanese American History,” American Quarterly 48 (December 1996): 680–99 Week 3 Bikinis and Great Balls of Fire: The Bomb and Popular Culture The Atomic Cafe (dir. Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader, and Pierce Rafferty , 1982) Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families and the Cold War (Basic Books, 1998) Robert Westbrook, “ ‘I Want a Girl, Just Like the Girl That Married Harry James’: American Women and the Problem of Political Obligation in World War II,” American Quarterly 42 (December 1990): 587–615 Weeks 4 and 5 Madam Butterfly as National Narrative David Belasco, Madam Butterfly David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly (Penguin, 1989) China Gate (dir. Samuel Fuller, 1958) Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg, Miss Saigon (sound recording; Geffen, 1990) Selections from Gina Marchetti, Romance and the “Yellow Peril” (University of California Press, 1993); Dorrine Kondo, About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theater (Routledge, 1997); Traise Yamamoto, Masking Selves, Making Subjects: Japanese-American Women, Identity, and the Body (University of California Press, 1999); John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (Pantheon, 1986) THE WAR NOVEL AND THE IMAGINED NATION Week 6 Men without Women Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead (Henry Holt, 1998) WOMEN, WAR, AND THE PACIFIC 109 Week 7 Women and...