6 credits| Prof. Arnika FUHRMANN
This course analyzes Southeast Asian literary texts in translation and inquires into modes of apprehending personhood and collective in the region. We begin with the premodern epic Ramayana in its Southeast Asian versions, proceed to study works from the colonial period such as Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s short stories, and conclude with the analysis of contemporary works such as Philippine novelist Gina Apostol’s Gun Dealer’s Daughter. How do these texts envision polity, individual, and collective? What topics does Southeast Asian literature foreground during the region’s colonial periods? How does contemporary literature contend with constraints of political expression, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity in the present? Drawing on primary texts, supplemented by film, video, and photography, as well as selected theoretical texts, this course will introduce students to a rich world of thought in Southeast Asia. “Reading Southeast Asia” engages students in the exciting study of primary texts, while also focusing on developing approaches for the study of the region.
Assessment: 100% coursework.