Monstress Aesthetics, Asian Vengeance

UG - Undergraduate

MONSTRESS AESTHETICS, ASIAN VENGEANCE.
From the longstanding revenge concocted by the
wrongly convicted teen girl of Park Chan-wook's
Lady Vengeance (2005) to the "nightmare of a
woman" in poet Dorothy Chan's Revenge of the Asian
Woman, the desire for and cost of revenge haunts
Asian women and femmes in poetry, prose, and film.
In response to extreme and patterned racial and
gender violence, vengeance becomes a motivating
force for Asian women and femmes seeking justice
when the state or systems in place cannot provide
a reparative answer. Rather than debate the
morality of vengeance as a response to racial and
gender violence, this course looks at the ways in
which vengeance as affect moves, activates,
agitates, and subverts notions of appropriateness,
respectability, and other feminized values
specifically attributed to Asian women and femmes.

We will look at text and media that dance between
sardonic humor to blood, guts, and gore (it's
revenge, after all). We will apply affect and
critical race theory from Sianne Ngai and Ann
Anlin Cheng to readings that may include Han
Kang's The Vegetarian, Vivek Shraya's Revenge of
the Racoons, Marjorie Liu's Monstress, Larissa
Lai's Salt Fish Girl, Isabel Yap's Never Have I
Ever alongside viewings of the acclaimed Lady
Vengeance (2005), Faster, Pussy Cat! Kill! Kill!
(1965) and the popular anime Hell Girl (otherwise
known as Jigoku Shojo: Girl from Hell). By the end
of the class, students will make an art object and
write a response to the question, "What does Asian
women and femme vengeance look and feel like?" Not
for the faint of heart.