First thing: My class is in danger of being canceled due to low enrollment. This is a little disheartening. Still, I am pressing ahead with my syllabus for Filipino American Arts, in which we will be reading, viewing, analyzing, discussing Filipino Art as it addresses different periods of Filipino and Filipino American history, as well as current issues. This class is challenging to put together because it is multidisciplinary. Moreover, it’s lecture, discussion, and studio/workshop.
Whereas the course I am teaching now is also multidisciplinary, this is true mainly for the material I teach. As for what I assign, that is all writing, albeit multigenre, and more loosely based in discussions of culture. As well, my current course is hardly “academic,” in terms of reading and discussing critical writing about the creative work.
I am loving having access to Project MUSE, and I believe I have access to JSTOR as well, though I haven’t figured out yet how to remote access the latter.
I am looking forward to teaching Marlon Fuentes’s Bontoc Eulogy. In a big way, I am looking forward to this. I am also looking forward to teaching Dino Ignacio’s Maritess vs. the Superfriends. Discussions of the OFW are made more interesting these days when considering Arnel Pineda, and most certainly Manny Pacquiao, who makes Tiger Woods money.
Some lit and art on deck: Lysley Tenorio’s “Save the I-Hotel,” which inserts into a very masculine SF activism around the Manongs and the I-Hotel a discussion of queer sexuality. Michelle Cruz Skinner’s In the Company of Strangers. Bino A. Realuyo’s (Philippine National Book Award winning!) The Gods We Worship Live Next Door. I am looking for short fiction about the Comfort Women. I also have contacted the curator of the current Tabi-Tabi Po exhibit about contemporary articulations of indigenous/folklore in Filipino American visual art.
I am frustrated with how difficult it is to find publication and/or video/DVD of Filipino American playwrights’ plays. Plays I would love to find so I can decide whether to teach: Francis Tanglao-Aguas’s When the Purple Settles, which sounds enticing because it is described as a Flip n Hip-hopera. I would also love to teach Jessica Hagedorn’s and Han Ong’s Airport Music. I would love to find all of the above, as well as Hagedorn’s Three Vampires and Most Wanted (or what I have been calling Andrew Cunanan: The Musical) in my university library.
So those are a few issues I have for now.
Sounds like a wonderful class! Syllabus prepping can be both exciting and a virtual headache. Too much planning ahead leads to too much hand wringing, at least for me. I hope you get the enrollment. I’m incredibly curious as to what OFW materials you’re implementing since I’m doing a large research project on OFWs. Also, totally random question but essential to said research, are you or anyone you know familiar with Filipino (not FilAm) opera? Wish I could take your class.
Don’t know if you are up for suggestions but here are some that have worked when I was helping faculty get enrollment up as Chair a few years back: Make some provocative posters (something with exciting art or challenging questions displayed in unique way) and post them in areas where 1) students gather regularly & 2) departments likely to feed into subjects in your class; ask the chair of your department to send out emails, or authorize you sending one, to other departments about the course and its content and ask if it can be put on other department’s listservs, and if it is not too late get it cross-listed as much as possible. These things usually help. Don’t be afraid to ask people to spread the word in their classes either, especially in your department.
I’m sorry your class may get canceled. I’m sure you’re not the only teacher in the world that’s had to face this dilemma. Quick question: Would Pacquiao be considered an OFW? Yes he does most of his work in countries that are not the Philippines, but he would he still fall into the overseas worker category, considering his home still is in the PI? This I’m just curious about.
if i were anywhere in the state of california, i would take your class! the syllabus meditation alone is an education…
i’ll be sending enrollment energy your way, in hopes that the requisite number of students sign up. they’ll never regret it!