syllabus materials

Hi, I've looked more into the sexuality articles I mentioned in class today and think they'd be great for the next class:

1) Looking for My Penis - Richard Fung. Examines emasculation of gay Asian American males in pornography

2) The Joy Fuck Club: Prolegomenon to an Asian American Porno Practice, Darrell Y. Hamamoto. Hypersexualization/eroticization of Asian American women in porn.

3) Creating, Curating, and Consuming Queer Asian American Cinema, Ji Han and Marie Morohoshi. An interview w/ the director of the annual San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF).

FYI,
These 3 readings are all fairly short reads, about the same lengths as most of the chapters in our reader.

Also, here are the descriptions of the 2 books that look promising:

1) One Way or Another:

Contemporary Asian American artists––with a strong sense of being American and an acute critical consciousness of world matters––grapple with issues of identity in a way that sets them apart from their predecessors. Whereas many Asian American artists of a previous generation directly referred to an Asian sense of self in their works, it can be argued that younger Asian American artists only sometimes make reference to it or omit it entirely.

This creatively designed book focuses on recent works by seventeen Asian American artists born in the late 1960s and 1970s––including Patty Chang, Kaz Oshiro, and Jean Shin––to explore this pivotal generation of artists, the prevalent themes in their art, and the different ways they configure identity in their work. One Way or Another features examples of painting, sculpture, and video and installation art––many previously unpublished––and includes essays that discuss the shifting meaning of Asian America over the last decade and address the issues of mixed heritage and the emergence of an evolving Asian American identity in an increasingly globalized society.


2) Fresh Talk/Daring Gazes:

Fresh Talk/Daring Gazes chronicles the blossoming of Asian American art and anticipates the growing democratization of American art and culture. Pairing work by twenty-four contemporary Asian American visual artists with responses provocatively drawn from cultural critics, other artists, activists, and intellectuals, this book explores themes of geographical movement, the sexuality of Asian bodies, colonization, miscegenation, hybrid forms of immigrant cultures, the loss of home, war, history, and memory.
Elaine H. Kim's historical introduction charts the trajectory of Asian American art from the nineteenth century to the present, offering a comprehensive account of artists, major artworks, and major events. Commentaries by writers, artists, and cultural activists examine the work of visual artists such as Pacita Abad, Albert Chong, Y. David Chung, Allan deSouza, Michael Joo, Hung Liu, Yong Soon Min, Manuel Ocampo, PipoNguyen-Duy, Roger Shimomura, Carlos Villa, and Martin Wong. Prominent artists and critics such as Homi K. Bhabha, Luis Camnitzer, Enrique Chagoya, Gina Dent, Ellen Gallagher, Arturo Lindsay, Kobena Mercer, Griselda Pollock, Jolene Rickard, Faith Ringgold, Ella Shohat, Lowery Stokes Sims, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie offer thought-provoking reflections on each artist. Sharon Mizota's extended captions further elucidate the paintings, graphics, photography, installations, and mixed-media constructions under discussion.
As a set of dialogues, simultaneously visual and textual, Fresh Talk/Daring Gazes encourages the cross-cultural conversation that is shaping the emerging art of Asian Americans and of the United States in general. Alternately personal, intellectual, aesthetic, and political, these essays and the art they consider provide unique perspectives on both the past and the future of American art.

From the Inside Flap
"Godzookie Lives! Kim, Machida, and Mizota have opened up a whole new series of conversations on identity within a varied and distinguished group of artists and writers. And we get to eavesdrop. The artists are Asian American, the respondents are from all over the map, and the results are in turn scholarly, political, intimate, and provocative. This dialogic form, across cultures, across generations, brings a breath of fresh air to cultural studies."--Lucy R. Lippard, author of Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America

"This wonderfully rich collection is three big projects stuffed into one: critical essays that help us theorize and historicize the Asian American art of the past and present; a generous sampling of contemporary artworks, accompanied by provocative and informative captions; and a series of responses to the efforts of individual artists by a wide range of intellectuals and activists. Altogether, we discover Asian American art at the crossroads of history, theory, criticism, and practice. Scholarly and sassy, personal and critical, this book stakes out an emerging and exciting field."--Anthony W. Lee, author of Picturing Chinatown: Art and Orientalism in San Francisco

"This brilliantly original collection of essays and images overflows with experimental energy and ideas. Structured to foreground difference and to reflect theoretical, historical, and poetic perspectives, Fresh Talk/Daring Gazes radically redraws the cultural profile of Asian America."--Mark Johnson, co-curator of With New Eyes: Toward an Asian American Art History in the West

"Fresh Talk/Daring Gazes chronicles the coming of age of a distinct category in the American art scene. This paradigm-setting book collects together major voices in Asian American art and art criticism, literally acting as a visual and textual declaration that Asian American art has finally arrived."--Shu-mei Shih, author of The Lure of the Modern