Chinatown USA

This course looks at the construction of "Chinatown" -- as historic reality, geographic formation, architectural invention, and cultural fantasy -- in the heart of America. We will study novels, plays, films, and photography that focus on or use Chinatown as a central backdrop -or even as a conspicuous absence -- in ways that highlight the complex relationship between material history and social imagination when it comes to how America incorporates, or fails to digest, its racial or immigrant "others".