The 'Oriental' Detective: Reading Race and Masculinity in Contemporary Asian American Crime Fiction
This paper will investigate the creative and political possibilities crime fiction holds for engaging in the diverse field that makes up the Asian American experience by examining the ways in which contemporary Asian American writers utilise the genre as a means to redirect our critical attention toward alternate generic, gendered, and racial epistemologies that cannot be accounted for within normative Western conceptions of knowledge.

The central research initiative that propels this paper is a provocative redefinition of crime fiction as a white male medium; and, by interrogating the myriad ways that Asian American authors have self-reflexively contravened the narrative models that entrap Asian American representation, this paper endeavours to problematize ideas of categorisation pertaining to genre, as well as to illuminate alternative methodologies for understanding Asian American historical, ethnographic, and cultural realities by challenging and transforming contemporary approaches to masculinity and Asian ethnicity.

Email the organisers to register: daniel.abdalla@wadham.ox.ac.uk and zachary.seager@pmb.ox.ac.uk
Date: 11 June 2020, 16:00 (Thursday, 7th week, Trinity 2020)
Venue: Zoom, Rothermere American Institute
Speaker: Harriet Stilley (University of Edinburgh)
Organising department: Rothermere American Institute
Organisers: Zachary Seager, Daniel Abdalla
Organiser contact email address: daniel.abdalla@wadham.ox.ac.uk
Part of: American Literature Research Seminar
Booking required?: Required
Booking email: daniel.abdalla@wadham.ox.ac.uk
Audience: Public
Editor: Sadie Slater