What is an Independent Study?

 You may have heard of the term “independent study” before, and may be wondering what it means. An independent study is not, like it may sound, quiet time in your schedule for you to get your homework done. It is an undergraduate- or graduate-level self-designed course in which you create your own syllabus and assignments under the guidance of a professor whom you request to be your advisor. 

Pros:

There are so many pros to doing an independent study. One of the exciting aspects of it is how it is self-designed with guidance from the professor, and since it is self-designed, you can hone in on your interests with the course theme. Sometimes independent studies give the opportunity to create a portfolio paper in a dedicated space that is honed in on those interests. Independent studies allow students to take a class on a topic that may not be offered otherwise.  Through researching specific scholarship of your own interest, this is a great chance to create a portfolio paper you may not have been able to write if the class is not offered. Doing an independent study is a little bit like creating your own class. Through such a level of freedom, you can explore what interests you for a whole semester. 

Sofia: 

I took an independent study on grief in queer young adult literature. Already my favourite area of interest, the independent study allowed for her to explore such a specific topic and how grief in queer literature varies throughout a specific form of children’s literature, that is, adolescent or young adult literature. After already taking a class on queer adolescent literature, I felt drawn to the older end of the spectrum of children’s literature, and focusing on both a specific age group and topic truly shows the range that can occur even in such a specific genre. Focusing in on a small area allows for variances to illuminate the various aspects of queer young adult literature. Learning more about a specific area of children’s literature and its nuance allowed me a chance to explore a narrowed interest that may not have the opportunity to be offered within our program. 

Ashley:

I am currently in the process of completing a two-semester independent study sequence of Asian American literary and cultural studies followed by Asian American children’s literature. The first independent study was beneficial because I learned how to independently go about researching and familiarizing myself with a field that I had never taken a course in. But I soon faced the challenge of reconceptualizing the role of the secondary sources that supplement the main texts. The critical scholarship that had been integrated into previous graduate seminars, in my mind, were important because the instructor deemed them so, but in these independent studies, I chose what was relevant to what I wanted to study. I was guided to understand that even core scholarship such as Immigrant Acts by Lisa Lowe was groundbreaking in its time but should not be conceived of as an unflawed foundation on which to build my current studies. Taking this concept into the second semester of independent study, which is ongoing, I am currently oscillating between attempting to develop a comprehensive familiarity of the children’s literature field and creating an original contribution to the conversation in the form of a final paper.There is no way that I will ever fully understand every article published in this field, and so I must develop a general understanding and then zero in on the scholarship that is most relevant to my thesis. I am moving away from merely criticizing the texts I read to highlighting what is productive in them. While I've gone back to the drawing board many times, the chance to keep exploring has been an enjoyable process. As my advisor would say, none of my reading and research is ever wasted! I feel confident that the threads of the ideas I have come up with will intertwine into a strong contribution to the area of Asian American children’s literature by the end of my M.A. career. 

Cons: 

However, we do want to warn you of some of the difficulties that we’ve faced in our experience with independent studies. As the student with the course concept, you have to find a professor whose research is similar to that which you want to study, or who is willing to guide you through a field that may not be their expertise. Additionally, you have to create your own syllabus, which includes the main texts you will read, what secondary materials can complement those texts, and what assignments you will produce as a result of the course. Some struggles, successes, and advice about that journey can be found in Ashley’s earlier blog post about “A Graduate Student’s First Attempt at Summer Research.” During the course of the semester, you are responsible for keeping up with the syllabus you create, and since your meetings with the professor are one-on-one, there’s no hiding what you didn’t read! You also do not benefit from the contribution of classmates. All of this is compounded in our current virtual learning environment, in which Zoom fatigue is a barrier to lively and generative conversation.  

Our overall experience:

Overall, we can both agree that we had fantastic experiences in our independent studies. It is important to emphasize here that what you put into an independent study is what you will receive. We both experienced a push to become our own scholars and advocate for ourselves and what we wanted from our classes, and therefore our professors knew what to give in our learning experience. Putting in the time and energy produces rigorous conversations (verbal or written) to create an interesting final paper. Independent studies are intellectually challenging, and therefore, incredibly rewarding -- we figured out what contribution we can make to the field of literary studies. 

Independent research has been an irreplaceable opportunity to create a focused, well-researched paper to contribute to our portfolios (one of two culminating project options for English MA students at SDSU). We both grew as scholars, developing self-motivation and time management skills. It can be difficult to study alone and not have fellow classmates to reach out to, so we both agree that we learned to be productive and self-sufficient scholars. We highly encourage undergraduate or graduate students to take an independent study as part of their academic journeys.

Aesthetics of Cicada by Shaun Tan

This semester, San Diego State University is offering an “Aesthetics of Children’s Literature” graduate seminar taught by our very own director, Dr. Joseph Thomas Jr. Of course, I signed up for it as soon as I could, hoping to get answers to the simple question of “what makes certain texts better than others?”  – only to be told that such explanations would not be given. Instead, we discussed Terry Eagleton’s concept that “part of what we mean by a ‘literary’ work is one in which what is said is to be taken in terms of how it is said” (3). Our goal this semester would be to look at how things are said – the technique or methodology that goes into the final product. As we wrapped up our fourth class session, heads heavy with the discussion of six published articles, Dr. Thomas urged, “Go find out what your aesthetic values are!”

Cicada by Shaun Tan

Emboldened by the challenge, I reread a picture book that had shocked me with its content a few weeks prior: Cicada by Shaun Tan. During the first read, it was easy to see the thin varnish of the cicada protagonist, which glossed over a forthright tale of the difficulties of Asian American assimilation into the American workforce. The parallels were clear: the diminutive, hardworking, unacknowledged main character is cast as subhuman, denied resources and a living wage, and endures it all without complaint. All of these observations deal with the book’s content, an aspect much too easy for me to home in on given my concurrent independent study work reading Lisa Lowe and James S. Moy.

Yet in class, Dr. Thomas had lectured on the two outlooks currently dominating literary criticism. The direction that most critics are taking is that in which texts are studied ideologically. When analyzing, they ask, “How does the text’s content reflect the culture in which it was written, and what would modern ideology have to say about it now?” Clearly, this is the methodology I used to examine Cicada on my first read, hastily drawing a conclusion from Tan’s personal ethnic background and eagerly impressing my own interpretation onto the cicada’s journey to molting. I hadn’t considered the other outlook, the one our graduate seminar emphasizes, which is a focus on the aesthetics of texts. Scholars using this lens would ask, “What makes a text pleasurable and beautiful?” Throughout this semester, this complex question will become my own. Therefore, I decided to test it out right away. Equipped with a few articles’ worth of information, I tackled Cicada once again to extract its aesthetic features. 

Pages 1 and 2

Pages 3 and 4

First, the artwork. Aside from a double-page spread at the beginning and three at the end, most of the spreads are split with the text on the left and a full-page image on the right. Most of the color is made up of shades of gray that never quite turn into black. This provides a strong contrast for the main character, the cicada, who is green aside from his gray suit. The cicada himself stands at half the height of humans, stretching to reach the elevator button but just small enough to fit into the office wall space he calls home. While he is always just off-center in each page, humans are always in the periphery: either walking away, turning their backs, or – in the one case a human is looking at the cicada – headless. As he goes to the roof to molt his office body and emerge as a red, winged insect, the cicada casts aside the whole narrative that he had just built. No text is needed here, for the striking visual of the red distinctly marks a rebirth and shedding of the discrimination that his green, suit-clad body had endured. Truly, the story could have been conveyed through the artwork alone. But it is not. Somehow, the narration is necessary.

Pages 22 and 23

The text itself is bland on the surface – even the cicada seems apathetic about his situation as he describes being overworked, beaten by coworkers, and ostensibly walking to the roof to commit suicide. It’s not so much that the message is hard to understand; rather, the delivery itself is short, clipped, and direct. Subject-verb agreement is rare, if both subject and verb even make into the sentence. Tiny and centered, the isolated lines connote a loneliness that elides the question of whom the cicada is telling this story to, despite his informative tone. Each page of text has three lines, followed by the mantra “Tok Tok Tok!” which makes the visual image of a quatrain. Each line has no more than two periods in it, one of which is always at the end of each line. After reading the haiku above the book details in the back, one is led to wonder if the text is made up of haikus with the “Tok Tok Tok!” added at the end, but the syllables do not match up. 

A discreet haiku

Pages 29 and 30

It is not until the very end of the book, in which a double-spread of text on a white background separates the “Tok Tok Tok!” from the three lines that always proceed it, do readers understand that it is a laughing sound. The emotionless, drab tone that had characterized the text is revealed to be the result of the “Tok Tok Tok!” sapping away all emotion into itself. On a second read, the cicada is reenvisioned as unbothered by his horrible work conditions because he himself reflects upon it with a laugh. Those three syllables obliquely contain disdain, jubilance, and an air of superiority. The cicada gets the last word and the last laugh.

Being unfamiliar with poetry and art makes approaching picture books with an aesthetic eye difficult. Yet Cicada’s direct language and underwhelming illustrations easily lent itself to a fruitful analysis. I could see how information-rich the images are, while extracting the necessity of the text for its visual impact and the change of tone that occurs between a first and second read. As I continue searching throughout the semester to figure out what makes a text aesthetically pleasing, I can add “unapparent, buried tone” and “color contrast” to my list as a result of studying Cicada by Shaun Tan.

- (AN)

Works Cited

Eagleton, Terry. How to Read Poetry. Yale University Press, 2013.

I Love You So Mochi by Sarah Kuhn

On my first day in the NCSCL office, I did what any avid reader would do: pull book after book off of the shelves in search of something that would fill the next seven hours “productively.” Sarah Kuhn’s I Love You So Mochi was an instant eyecatcher, a bright splash of pink amid book spines in varying shades of blue and black.

For this Vietnamese American, the title’s mention of mochi and the cover’s gorgeous background of cherry blossoms evoked a further attraction: a sense of affinity with the novel. As I read the dust jacket flap, I was introduced to one of the novel's most intriguing aspects – its juxtaposition of relatable Asian American teenage experience with unexpected subversions of the expectations that are imposed upon that identity. 


The novel depicts Kimi Nakamura, an American high school senior whose painting talent has guaranteed her early admission to a prestigious art school. The stereotypical Asian American parent’s distaste for any non-STEM/medical field career would seem to be the main conflict in the story, but it is not. Rather than disappoint her parents, this accomplishment is a great source of pride for her Japanese-born, American-educated mother, who is only recently able to pursue her own dreams to be a famous Asian American artist. Her fourth-generation Japanese American father runs a restaurant that “features ‘the best of Japanese, American, and Japanese American comfort food’” (23). But even with supportive parents, whose careers convey a well-balanced blend of Japanese and American identity, Kimi is completely uninspired to paint. When she receives a plane ticket to Japan from her estranged grandparents, she leaves her problems behind to explore her motherland. Kimi teams up with a (cute) aspiring doctor whose knowledge of the sights of Japan help her figure out what she wants to do with her future. As Akira takes her to different locations such as a bamboo forest, a temple, and a pug cafe, Kimi finds the courage to face the problems she had wanted to leave in America. And alongside her, the reader learns much about Japanese culture, customs, and sights.

What I appreciated the most about this novel was that Kimi experiences Japan as a tourist. Kimi knows very little Japanese. Her lack of etiquette knowledge makes for an embarrassing commute and immediately strains her relationship with her grandmother. She recognizes immediately the disjuncture between nature and nurture in identity formation: “It strikes me how discombobulating it is to be in a place where so many of the faces look like mine, but where I clearly don’t belong” (51). Even so, Kimi’s actions expose readers to Japanese interpersonal relations: small bows as greetings, use of last names with strangers, and even slang for cluelessness.

I Love You So Mochi’s treatment of language is one of its most striking aspects. Kimi is fortunate that her grandparents and Akira speak English well despite never leaving Japan, but they mix Japanese terms of assent such as “hai” (80), “sou da ne” (102) and filler words like “eto” (81) and “ano” (106) into their otherwise English conversation. Akira even describes “gairaigo––loan words. There is quite a bit of Japanese-style English” (100). The reader can easily pick up Japanese vocabulary without a dictionary, and nothing comes off as overtly didactic.

Additionally, food – be it shrimp burgers from Japan’s McDonald’s, a secret stash of limited-edition Snickers, or peanut butter and chocolate mochi from her father’s restaurant – helps Kimi find common ground with the people she wants to get to know and experiment with what is unfamiliar.

This novel is a delightful journey through a young girl’s search for her own identity in the land of her heritage. Her sketchbook accompanies her everywhere she goes, and her descriptions of clothing provide insight into her moods, values, and dreams. With each deepening relationship, Kimi investigates how determination, culture, and her own family’s history shape the future she wants for herself. Readers will delight with each step Kimi takes, whether running from deer, strolling with her crush, or towards her real passion.

- AN

New Graduate Assistant

Hello!

My name is Ashley Nguyen, and I am a first-year M.A. student studying English with a specialization in Children’s Literature! I’m pictured below with my new favorite novel, I Love You So Mochi by Sarah Kuhn. Stay tuned for a review soon!

As a brand-new grad student, this first blog post would be the perfect place to test out my elevator pitch... but nailing down what my research interests are has been the biggest challenge of my educational experience thus far. If I am to emerge from these two years of post-baccalaureate education with some degree of expertise in a field, which should it be?

I’ve never had the opportunity to take a course in Asian American literature, but as a Vietnamese American and an avid reader, a literary study of Asian American culture definitely intrigues me. I’m particularly interested in the voices of American-born teenagers with Asian heritage and would like to study further the identity explorations that occur when leaving a native land to "return to” or visit a motherland. I’m grateful to have many knowledgeable professors who can guide my studies and I look forward to the research to come!

As a Roman Catholic, I seek ways to orient my research towards understanding how literature encounters, grapples with, and utilizes depictions of good and evil. As I discovered in my undergraduate honors seminar, there is room in the field of Children’s and Young Adult Literature for exploring – and attempting to challenge – binary notions of morality. Under the guidance of a wonderfully encouraging professor and honest feedback from my four peers, I produced “Devious Dichotomies: Explaining the Fascination with Disney Villains.” This thesis drew from Serena Valentino and Liz Braswell, two Disney-published authors, to contrast their recent interpretations of villains in the Disney movies Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Sleeping Beauty (1959). I found that Valentino’s attempt to spotlight the villain’s backstory only indicted other characters as new villains, while Braswell’s novels rewrite the heroines into young women with traits admirable in modern times such as leadership, bravery, and agency. In both authors’ writings, the protagonist’s sense of justice prevails and the evil character is still vanquished. I conclude that the good versus evil binary is indisputably what makes Disney thrive, and to challenge it would destroy Disney’s magical ability to make viewers believe in their own happily ever after.

I’m truly grateful for the opportunity to explore my interests through my studies here at SDSU and even more so to be a Graduate Assistant at the NCSCL. I would love to engage in conversation about any of the topics I mentioned or anything else to do with this wonderful field. I look forward to sharing with you about the National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature at San Diego State University!

-AN