I chose the cultural texts that I chose because these are some of the texts that I discovered

through my research or that Professor Lewis shared with me personally. The most significant of
the texts is the book now Hulu original – Little Fires Everywhere. This book embodies just about
everything that this class aims to teach you: otherness, erasure, liminality, hybridity,
borderlands, and stereotypes among others. More than anything else I listed in my syllabus, I
felt that this book needed to be required reading. I also feel that the show should be required
as well but I wasn’t sure if asking students to watch 8 hours of content was reasonable for a
2,000 level course. In any case, the book wrestles with heteronormativity in terms of raising
children, relationships, motherhood, and sacrifice. It’s one of my favorite books if you can’t tell
and I feel it is a must read for anyone studying diversity or humanities in general.

I want my students to watch the film Fruitvale Station as well. I think it is a great film that
captures the life of an ordinary man who was shot by police without over glorifying his story
nor stereotyping black Americans. Also in light of recent news regarding the murder of Ahmaud
Arbery in Georgia, I feel it is of utmost importance for students to get a sense of what it’s like to
be on the other side of the issue - the human side. Too often we get wrapped up in the “facts”
of these types of stories and we quickly jump to conclusions of yes the black man deserved to
get shot or no the black man was innocent and the cops were racists. Fruitvale Station delivers
a human story before the movie climaxes with a reenactment of what actually happened. It lets
you have the full story without pushing you to one side or another.

This brings the course into the Code Switch discussion on Coronavirus and xenophobia. This is a
fantastic episode that sets aside the health impacts of covid-19 and instead focuses on the
cultural impacts of the virus’s association with Asian Americans. The course then keeps the hits
coming with the Vietnamese Boat People Podcast that ties in with Vincent Than Nguyen’s work.
The podcast is a collection of real stories from people who lived through the diaspora of
Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Again, I want to emphasize the humanity of these cultural
texts over the surface level trope: these stories aren’t about me because I’m not “blank”. Oh
but they are about you because you’re human and your humanity demands that you know of
these stories so that you might help in preventing them from happening again.

I then wanted to take a break from the “realness” of the course and dive into some fictional
fun: monsters. This was one of my favorite modules so I kept it pretty much the same with the
addition of The Last Of Us. Aside from being an amazing game from a playability point of view,
it’s also an amazing story that is more “unlikely companionship” than “survivalist gun party”. I
honestly will never understand the unlimited ammo to fight hordes of zombies trope that we so
love. The Last Of Us more often than not pits you against a group of zombies with a couple
arrows and 6 bullets. The story deals with this critical question: is the survival of many worth
the sacrifice of ones humanity? I’m in no way requiring students to play the entire game for the
class because that would be ridiculous so the video provided should be enough. But I mean you
should.
After having fun with monsters, I felt it was appropriate to dive back into the heavy stuff with
the topic of Arab Americans. I loved the fragmentation in the Julie’s piece so I kept it. The short
film about hip hop in Lebanon was something I stumbled upon a couple years ago and it has left
an impact on me ever since. I’m a musician and music lover and I firmly believe that music has
the power to do much more than entertain. This video proves that. What better way to unerase
than by making statements through music? We too often take for granted our freedom of
speech in America. Imagine living in a country that wouldn’t think twice about killing you for
what you said. Now imagine rapping about it in their face. Heroes indeed don’t always wear
capes.

This leads me into my final module: Cancel Culture. This was one topic I feel needs to be
addressed in a humanities course and too often is not. In my research, I often found this as the
main weapon used against any and all postmodernist thought. I also found it extremely
disturbing that the people that were being cancelled were often part of the very culture that
cancelled them. A house divided cannot stand and the liberal house is certainly divided. To
begin the module, I am having students read a great piece analyzing how we criticize. I think it
ties in quite beautifully with the course as this course is mostly about how to criticize cultural
texts using different academic theories. I also felt it was a necessary piece to include after
watching Lindsay Ellis bash away at one of my favorite childhood movie series: Transformers.
Without getting too into it, I watched every video she did and learned a lot. I love the way she
taught these complex academic theories through the easy to understand Transformers movies.
It still doesn’t mean I don’t find Transformers an awesome series for what it is: amazing camera
work and CGI used to create a visual spectacle roller coaster ride. I bring this up to reinforce my
point that when criticizing, it is important to separate art from the artist. In other words, just
because you don’t like Michael Bay as a person does not mean that his ability to shoot an action
sequence isn’t amazing. Similarly, just because you don’t like Natalie Wynn as a person does
not mean that her ability to construct an argument isn’t worth understanding.