ENGL 370 - Transnational Literature

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

This course focuses on literary works and cultural networks that cross the borders of the nation-state. Such border-crossings raise questions concerning vexed phenomena such as globalization, exile, diaspora, and migration-forced and voluntary. Collectively, these phenomena deeply influence the development of transnational cultural identities and practices. Specific topics studied in the course vary from year to year and may include global cities and cosmopolitanisms; the black Atlantic; border theory; the discourses of travel and tourism; global economy and trade; or international terrorism and war.

Topic for 2026/27b: Asian Literature in English. This course introduces students to the history of Asian literature written in English. While Asian literature in English rose to prominence in the latter half of the 20th century, in the wake of myriad national independence movements in Asia, its development is inextricable from 19th-century British and American colonial histories. Beginning here, we first examine the literary implications of British colonialism in the Indian subcontinent, Hong Kong, and the Malay peninsula, and American imperialism in the Philippine archipelago. We consider how the novel and short story genres—forms first arising in Western Europe several centuries earlier—have been reconfigured by preexisting regional literary traditions in Asia. Turning to the post-independence era, we engage the literary debates surrounding national allegory, writing in English versus Asian vernaculars, cultural hybridity, the sociolinguistic articulation of “Global Englishes,” and contemporary Asian globalization. While the majority of this course’s writers come from nations with long histories of English-language writing, such as India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, and Malaysia, the expanded circulation of Asian Anglophone literature in the contemporary world-literary marketplace means that we also engage writers from Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and elsewhere. Throughout this course, we reflect on how the porous boundaries of Asian literature in English complicate other literary archives and interpretative frameworks linked to postcolonial studies, world literature, transpacific studies, and Asian American literature. Texts may include Tash Aw’s We, the Survivors, Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke, Gina Apostol’s Insurrecto, Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day, Llyod Fernando’s Scorpion Orchid, Sonny Liew’s The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, Pitchaya Sudbanthad’s Bangkok Wakes to Rain, Glenn Diaz’s The Quiet Ones, Hoa Pham’s The Other Shore, Ninotchka Rosca’s State of War, Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan, and Hwee Hwee Tan’s Mammon Inc. Alden Sajor Marte-Wood.

This course satisfies the REGS requirement for the English major.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS