Transpacific Speculative Fiction: Imagining Asian Pacific Futures

Catalog description

How do transpacific writers and poets imagine the future? In this course, students are introduced to key narratives, aesthetics, themes, and social concerns of speculative fiction and poetry by Asian diasporic and Pacific Islander authors. We begin the course by interrogating how the Asian/American figure emerged in the Western science fiction imaginary at the turn of the twentieth century. Then, we explore how Asian and Pacific diasporic writers envision different versions of the future to reflect on social dynamics of racism, labor, war and forced migration, queerness, and environmental contamination.