As part of your participation in this course I enjoin you to use any means necessary to attend the talk by Viet Nguyen, Thursday from 2-3:30pm in 451 Modern Languages (including requests to miss weekly meetings, should it come to that). I would be so, so happy to see my students there!
Personally, I'm of the opinion that graduate students should go to as many talks as they can, even those outside their field and department, in order to become better-rounded scholars.
In this case, however, the speaker works in areas relevant to the research interests of almost everyone in the course: multiculturalism, political theory, film.
Nguyen's book, Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian American (Oxford University Press) demonstrates how to fuse cutting-edge theoretical inquiry with fidelity to the literary texts on which it bears.
And it has particular relevance for our course, since he discusses both the handling of history in the postmodern novel and, more specifically, the literary technique of Jessica Hagedorn.
Nguyen will also be holding a brown-bag lunch for graduate students on Friday morning from 12-2pm for which you should show up if at all possible. Because he was a graduate student himself relatively recently, his advice is sure to be especially timely.
I also encourage you to attend the International Arts Society's screening of the Vietnamese/French film Xich Lo (Cyclo) on Friday at 7:30pm in ILC 120 (not Modern Languages Auditorium, as was previously the case). Director Tran Anh Hung (The Scent of Green Papaya)'s presentation of the Vietnamese War's after-image in contmporary Ho Chi Minh City would be a wonderful supplement to our class discussion on its own. Coupled with Nguyen's talk, it will prove richly rewarding, particularly in light of our discussion of Erendira
We will also be ending class early -- no break, alas -- on Wednesday to attend the Michele Serros reading. And we will do the same the following week to attend the Michael Palmer reading. Both of those, of course, will be held in the Modern Languages Auditorium at 8pm. It is crucial that you set aside the extra time needed to attend them, since they will be discussed in class and on this weblog.
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