Against Invisibility: Asian America/s, Collective Memory and the Public Humanities

Catalog description

Asians have been living in North America since the 1600’s but four centuries later Asian Americans are still virtually invisible in the narratives that define the nation. What spaces are available to resist invisibility? The seminar will focus on ways in which Asian Americans have used vernacular photography to archive collective memory, resist state surveillances, assert subjectivity, and narrate alternate histories. We will learn to read photographs in their shifting contexts produced in the internment or refugee camp, collected in a family album or used to prove immigration status) and think about the politics of photography in Asian American narratives.