Making the Human: Race, Allegory, and Asian Americans (Asian American Studies Today) - Softcover

Sugino, Corinne Mitsuye

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1978839693 ISBN 13: 9781978839694

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2024

Synopsis

From the debate over affirmative action to the increasingly visible racism amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Asian Americans have emerged as key figures in a number of contemporary social controversies. In Making the Human: Race, Allegory, and Asian Americans, Corinne Mitsuye Sugino offers the lens of racial allegory to consider how media, institutional, and cultural narratives mobilize difference to normalize a white, Western conception of the human. Rather than focusing on a singular arena of society, Sugino considers contemporary sources across media, law, and popular culture to understand how they interact as dynamic sites of meaning-making. Drawing on scholarship in Asian American studies, Black studies, cultural studies, communication, and gender and sexuality studies, Sugino argues that Asian American racialization and gendering plays a key role in shoring up abstract concepts such as “meritocracy,” “family,” “justice,” “diversity,” and “nation” in ways that naturalize hierarchy. In doing so, Making the Human grapples with anti-Asian racism’s entanglements with colonialism, antiblackness, capitalism, and gendered violence.
 

About this title

About the Author

CORINNE MITSUYE SUGINO is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Center for Ethnic Studies at The Ohio State University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of Asian American studies, rhetorical theory, cultural studies, and media studies.

Edition details

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1978839693
• ISBN 13: 9781978839694
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 212