READINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS FOR TUESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2009

Please make sure to go ahead and set up your course blog. Do a test post, and bring in the URL (or send to me via e-mail)for your blog.

If you do not already have one, please also make sure to set up an account with Turnitin.com. If you need to find out the Course ID # and password again (I announced it in class last Tuesday), just send me an e-mail.

Please also make sure to go ahead and purchase the required books listed on the syllabus. Don't forget that Lois-Ann Yamanaka's book, Blu's Hanging, is not available at the B&N bookstore, and so you will have to make sure and order that book from another venue/source. Let me know if you have any problems with this, and I can probably help you out. I recommend getting a jump on the readings as soon as possible!

Finally, please make sure to read the following materials for class on Tuesday, January 27:

These articles help to explicate/discuss/distinguish key terms such as multiculturalism, post-colonialism, assimilation, and essentialism.

"Postcolianlism and Multiculturalism: Between Race and Identity", by Sneja Gunew.

"Nobody Simply Vanishes: The Politics of Disappearance," by Jung Choi and John Murphy. (Circulated in class via Xerox handout).

The following article, which may be a bit more of a hard nut to crack -- so just hang tough and bear with it -- is a model of how these theories/ideas/issues are being applied and debated within scholarly literary discourse.

"Ethnic Writing/Writing Ethnicity: The Critical Conceptualization of Chicano Identity," by Dean Franco. Post-Identity, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Winter 1999), pp. 104-122.