Crossing Oceans

With the increasing globalization of culture, American literature has become a significant body of text for classrooms outside of the United States. Bringing together essays from a wide range of scholars in a number of countries, including China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the United States, Crossing Oceans focuses on strategies for critically reading and teaching American literature, especially ethnic American literature, within the Asia Pacific region. This book will be an important tool for scholars and teachers from around the globe who desire fresh perspectives on American literature from a variety of national contexts.

The contributors use perspectives dealing with race, feminism, cultural geography, and structures of power as lenses through which to interpret texts and engage students’ critical thinking. The collection is ‘crossing oceans’ through the transnational perspectives of the contributors who come from and/or teach at colleges and universities in both Asia and the United States. Many of the essays reveal how narratives of and about ethnic Americans can be used to redefine and reconfigure not only American literary studies, but also constructions of Asian and American identities.

Noelle Brada-Williams is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Jose State University. Karen H. Chow is presently a full-time English faculty member at De Anza College in Cupertino, California.

“A much needed collection, the first of its kind, Crossing Oceans places teaching as a central and significant social act, and specifically the teaching of American literature as an important transnational endeavor crossing Asia and the United States. Pedagogically strategic, critical and scholarly, the chapters, many by eminent academics, offer help to beginning teachers and spark fresh ideas and excitement for the veterans who work in the intercultural domain of international American Studies.” —Shirley Geok-lin Lim, University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of Among the White Moon Faces and Joss and Gold

“A smart and timely collection, Crossing Oceans situates the global debates in American literary studies in a series of Asian sites, illuminating in unexpected ways texts as well as issues surrounding race, identity, nation, and model minority. There is much here to reflect upon and learn form. The contributors’ insights will impinge upon our work for years to come in classrooms across Asia and the US.” —Amritjit Singh, Former MELUS President and co-editor of Collected Writings of Wallace Thurman