American Studies Association Conference Panel - “Moving Bodies Towards Wonder: Asian American Aesthetics from Anger to Action”

American Studies Association
Sat, November 11, 12:00 to 1:45pm
Panel discussion: “Moving Bodies Towards Wonder: Asian American Aesthetics from Anger to Action”
Hyatt Regency Chicago, New Orleans, Ballroom Level West Tower

This event is for registered conference attendees only. For more information or to register for the conference, visit American Studies Association website.

Chair: Valerie Soe, San Francisco State University
Panelists: Mila Zua, Oregon State University
Laura Kina, DePaul University
Anita Chang, Independent Scholar
Valerie Soe, San Francisco State University

Abstract
The impulse to give in to despair, anxiety, pain, and anger hinders the ability of many of us to effectively respond to the increased inequities, challenges to civil liberties, and the illegal and unethical restrictions proposed by the current administration. Whereas such negative feelings can immobilize and stultify, wonder moves bodies towards action. As Sara Ahmed points out, “Wonder is what energizes the very hope of transformation, the very will to politics.” This roundtable looks at the ways in which Asian American aesthetics of dissent are involved in creative labors and affective productions which seek to un-learn and un-feel dominant epistemologies borne from hetero-patriarchal modernities, globalizing forces, and institutional aporia. How can we induce wonder and movement through a pedagogical engagement with visual culture? What can Asian American aesthetics of dissent in particular teach us about the wondrous affects and pleasures of transgression, undisciplinarity, and resistance? Bringing together activists, makers, curators, and educators, this roundtable explores the unmaking of the anger and pain through Asian American bildungsroman narratives, aesthetic genealogies, queer futurities, and critical cosmopolitanisms in film and visual arts. Mila Zuo examines the “cinematic aesthetics of wondrous pain” in her short experimental film, “Carnal Orient,” and the Asian American queer film, “Spa Night.” Jason Coe explores Ang Lee’s coming-of-age films in order to investigate other possibilities of global modernities through alternative masculine subject formations. Valerie Soe investigates how an instance of conflict at San Francisco State University’s College of Ethnic Studies reveals the need for a counternarrative to the fraught and dangerous times we are entering. Anita Chang looks at “critical cosmopolitanism” as a way of thinking through difference and interconnectedness in teaching transnational cinemas. Laura Kina’s discusses her work as a curator and editor to explore the importance of historicizing failure in engendering queer political and artistic dissent oriented toward the future. The goal of the roundtable is to discuss the critical relationships between everyday resistances, pedagogy, and visual arts. What new socialities and publics are forged through an aesthetic engagement with wonder? How can Asian American creative praxes of dissent help us imagine a more hopeful and inclusive future, even as Trump’s presidency threatens to hurtle us back to the the exclusionary racialized histories of the past? What tools can we as scholars, artists, and educators use to make the leap from anger to action?