Photograph by Mengyu Dong
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Note from the author I am particularly interested in exploring how Victorian ideals of the ideal child relate to trauma among people of color, namely Korean Americans, who do not grow up meeting such standards. As Cathy Park Hong states in Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning:
The alignment of childhood with innocence is an Anglo-American invention that wasn’t popularized until the nineteenth century. Before that in the West, children were treated like little adults who were, if they were raised Calvinist, damned to hell unless they found salvation. William Wordsworth is one of the main architects of childhood as we sentimentalize it today. (69-70)
This Anglo-American idea of children, which Hong reveals stems from the British Romantic era with William Wordsworth, illuminates how both British and American whiteness has created standards of what it means to be a child (i.e., polite, Christian, and white) and how those children who do not fit all those standards are deviant and demonic. In the Victorian Literature Graduate Seminar, taught by Lori Lefkovitz in the fall 2022 semester, we also discussed how Victorian texts, such as Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and most significantly Freud’s works on psychoanalysis and psychosexual development in children (e.g., Civilization and its Discontents and Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality), also illustrate Victorian standards of ideal children that are influenced by the Romantics (i.e., quiet, Christian, and white).
Hong’s exploration of her alternative childhood experience in the midst of the “menagerie of white children,” as well as Koh’s and my childhoods, reveal the harmful racialization of Korean American children face under the “model minority” myth that haunts most Asian Americans from childhood and beyond across generations. Erin Blakemore claims that the “model minority” myth stems from the 1950s and has created “a racial group that somehow rose above prejudice and bias to become one of the [U.S.]’s most hardworking and high-achieving demographics.” Blakemore also states, “The myth is rooted in the nation’s historic mistreatment of people of Asian descent—and its shadow still looms over Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders."
As Stacey J. Lee also explains in Unraveling the “Model Minority” Stereotype: Listening to Asian American Youth, Stacey J. Lee, through a case study of Asian American students at Academic High School (anonymized): “While some of the students achieved model minority success and were headed for elite universities, others struggled to pass their classes. Asian American students had varied understandings of race and racism, different types of relationships with non-Asians, and different responses to the model minority stereotype” (120).
Mia Tuan expounds upon the model minority stereotype in Forever Foreigners or Honorary Whites?: The Asian Ethnic Experience Today: “As far as racial positioning goes, Asians’ designation as “model” minorities, the best of those in the “racial other” category, says it all—all “racialized other” groups are not equal in the eyes of whites” (8). In turn, Blakemore, Lee, and Tuan as scholars; Koh, Hong, and Lee as memoirists and poets; and me as a student and instructor show how the ideas that Asian Americans are not discriminated against, experience very little trauma, and are somewhat overrepresented in higher education are false claims based on the harmful “model minority” stereotype.
In Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White, Frank H. Wu writes:
I am fascinated by the imperviousness of the model minority myth against all efforts at debunking it. I am often told by nice people who are bewildered by the fuss, “You Asians are doing well. What could you have to complain about anyway? Why would you object to a positive image?” To my frustration, many people who say with the utmost conviction that they would like to be color blind revert to being color conscious as soon as they look at Asian Americans, but then shrug off the contradiction. They are nonchalant about the racial generalization, “You Asians are all doing well,” dismissive in asking, “What could you have to complain about anyway?,” and indifferent to the negative consequences of “a positive image.” (40)
In this passage, Wu reveals how the model minority myth is a racist and harmful notion that dismisses Asian Americans’ encounters with discrimination and masquerades as a beneficial association that depicts Asian Americans as competent. However, similar to how Black feminists have fought against the “strong black woman” stereotype that has caused many non-Black people to believe Black women are invincible and beyond human (as Washington Post writer Courtland Milloy explores in “Black women have had enough”), the model minority myth is a harmful depiction because it poses Asian Americans also as invincible and beyond human. In turn, this discourages these racialized groups from seeking mental health assistance, as it has done for Koh’s parents and grandparents, Hong during her younger years, and myself when I took time off from my undergraduate studies at Princeton University due to burnout.
Unit 1: The Child and the Romantics
In this class, we shall explore the standards of childhood that were developed by famous Romantic writers like William Wordsworth, as Cathy Park Hong cites, and how such standards have caused alienation for those children who do not fit within them.
Learning Objectives
Analyze poetic devices in Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience to understand his ideas of childhood, and how these ideas influenced other Romantics’ ideas of childhood
Use Hong’s passage on Blake and childhood (from Minor Feelings) as a mode to implement critical race theory (CRT) in our understanding of childhood and the Romantics’ ideas of childhood
Readings (primary):
William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience, 1794 (excerpt)
Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, 2020 (excerpt)
Readings (secondary):
Ann Wierda Rowland, Romanticism and Childhood: The Infantilization of British Literary Culture, 2012 (excerpt)
Vocabulary
Key word | Definition |
childhood | the period during which a person is a child (Oxford Languages) |
infantilize (infantilization, noun) | treat (someone) as a child or in a way which denies their maturity in age or experience (Oxford Languages) |
Romanticism | a movement in the arts and literature that originated in the late 18th century, emphasizing inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual (Oxford Languages) |
Unit 2: The Child and the Victorians
In this class, we shall take what we learned from the Romantics and their ideas of childhood and how the Victorians, who wrote in the literary era right after the Romantics, adapted and went against the Romantics’ idea of childhood.
Learning Objectives
Analyze the connections between the Romantics’ and Victorians’ ideas of childhood
Synthesize a variety of Victorian works (fiction, illustrations, and essays) to understand how the Victorians understood childhood
Use critical fabulation to reimagine Romantic and Victorian ideas of childhood
Readings (primary):
Readings (secondary):
Vocabulary
Key word | Definition |
novel | a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism (Oxford Languages) |
critical fabulation | signifies a writing methodology that combines historical and archival research with critical theory and fictional narrative (Wikipedia, under “Saidiya Hartman”) |
Victorianism | a typical instance or product of Victorian expression, taste, or conduct (Merriam-Webster) |
Unit 3: The Child, Racial Alienation, and the Yellow Peril
In this class, we will extend on our previous two classes to see how racialized bodies, specially Asians, have been pathologized due to their misalignment with the standards of childhood and innocence, marking the origins of the racist cultural stereotype of the “Yellow Peril.”
Learning Objectives
Understand how Romantic and Victorian ideas of childhood exclude and alienate Asian and Asian American children
Connect how the alienation of Asian children and Asians in general have led them to be viewed and labeled as diseased
Readings (primary):
Readings (secondary):
Vocabulary
Key word | Definition |
alienation | the state or experience of being isolated from a group or an activity to which one should belong or in which one should be involved (Oxford Languages) |
Yellow Peril | (offensive) the political or military threat regarded as being posed by the Chinese or by the peoples of Southeast Asia (Oxford Languages) |
memoir | a historical account or biography written from personal knowledge or special sources |
Unit 4: Fear and Hysteria: European Pathologizations of Asian Bodies
In this class, we will look more broadly at the fear and hysteria in Europe surrounding Asian immigrants. We will look specifically at the England, France, and Germany too see how stereotypes and pathologizations of Asian bodies also reflected anti-Semitic sentiments and rhetorics of the time.
Learning Objectives
Use Breuer and Freud’s studies on hysteria as a lens to understand the alienation and pathologization of Asians in Europe
Compare the negative stereotypes of Asians in Europe with anti-Semitic sentiments of the time
Readings (primary):
Readings (secondary):
Vocabulary
Key word | Definition |
hysteria | an old-fashioned term for a disorder characterized by neurological symptoms often accompanied by exaggeratedly or inappropriately emotional behavior, originally attributed to disease or injury of the nervous system and later thought to be functional or psychological in origin (Oxford Languages) |
pathologize (pathologization, noun) | regard or treat (someone or something) as psychologically abnormal or unhealthy (Oxford Languages) |
anti-Semitism | hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people (Oxford Languages) |
Unit 5: Coming to America: Korean-Black Tensions and the L.A. Riots
In this class, we will move from Europe to the U.S. to understand Korean Americans’ positionalities among other racialized Americans. We will specifically focus on Korean-Black relations in Los Angeles and how such relations evolved before, during, and after the L.A. Riots of 1992.
Learning Objectives
Understand the differences between the Asian stereotypes in Europe and America
Analyze how Black and Asian Americans reclaimed racial stereotypes in order to support each other against white supremacy
Readings (primary):
Readings (secondary):
Vocabulary
Key word | Definition |
solidarity | unity or agreement of feeling or action, especially among individuals with a common interest; mutual support within a group (Oxford Languages) |
Black Power | a movement in support of rights and political power for Black people, especially prominent in the US in the 1960s and 1970s (Oxford Languages) |
Unit 6: Reconciliation: Yellow Peril for Black Power
In this class, we follow the aftermath of the L.A. riots and how Korean and other Asian Americans supported the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, one of the clearest origins of Korean-Black and Asian-Black solidarities.
Learning Objectives
Shift from Europe to America to understand the tensions between Asians and other racialized minorities
Contextualize the L.A. Riots of 1992 to understand the nuances of the event as they were at the time
Situate Korean Americans specifically within the context of Asian American identities and America as a nation
Readings (primary):
Readings (secondary):
Vocabulary
Key word | Definition |
L.A. Riots | major outbreak of violence, looting, and arson in Los Angeles that began on April 29, 1992, in response to the acquittal of four white Los Angeles policemen on all but one charge (on which the jury was deadlocked) connected with the severe beating of an African American motorist in March 1991 (Britannica) |
blackness | the fact or state of belonging to any human group having dark-colored skin (Oxford Languages) |
Unit 7: Further Reconciliation: Asians and #BlackLivesMatter
In this class, we will explore the Korean-Black and Asian-Black solidarities from the 60s and how they are the same as or different from the solidarity rhetorics of the 21st century between Asian and Black communities, specifically regarding the #BlackLivesMatter movement.
Learning Objectives
Conduct a comparative analysis of Asian-Black solidarities from the 1960s and 2010-20s
Evaluate how much Asian-Black solidarities have progressed/regressed based on analysis
Readings (primary):
Readings (secondary):
Vocabulary
Key word | Definition |
Black Lives Matter (#BlackLivesMatter, hashtag) | international social movement, formed in the United States in 2013, dedicated to fighting racism and anti-Black violence, especially in the form of police brutality (Britannica) |
Unit 8: Still Dirty: Asian Bodies, Anti-Asian Hate, and COVID-19
In this class, we will use all the what we have learned throughout the course as a lens to understand the discrimination and pathologization of Asian bodies amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
Learning Objectives
Use all previous course materials and discussions to understand the state of Asian American identity in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond
Create a list of actionable items that will allow the class to express support for the Black Lives Matter movement, and for the end of anti-Asian hate crimes related to Covid-19
Readings (primary):
Readings (secondary):
Vocabulary
Key word | Definition |
anti-Asian | opposed to or hostile toward the people or culture of Asia (Merriam-Webster) |
hate crime | a crime, typically one involving violence, that is motivated by prejudice on the basis of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or similar grounds |
Covid-19 | a respiratory disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, a coronavirus discovered in 2019 (Centers of Disease Control and Prevention) |
This syllabus was authored by Matthew Choi Taitano.I am particularly interested in exploring how Victorian ideals of the ideal child relate to trauma among people of color, namely Korean Americans, who do not grow up meeting such standards.