MARVELS AND MONSTERS: Unmasking Asian Images in U.S. Comics, 1942-1986 The William F. Wu Collection At NYU Fales Library & Special Collections

Presented In Collaboration With The NYU Fales Library & Special Collections
Exhibition runs May 26-August 19, 2011

Opening Reception and Talk with William F. Wu and Curator Jeff Yang
Thursday, May 26, 2011
6:00PM-8:00PM
Location: The Tracey/Barry Gallery, Fales Library & Special Collections
70 Washington Square South, 3rd Floor
Photo ID required for building entry
Gallery hours: 10am-5pm

Kindly RSVP by May 24: apa.nyu.edu/ | apa.rsvp@nyu.edu | 212-992-9653

Curator: Jeff Yang
Co-Curator: D. Daniel Kim
Installation Design: Public Assembly

Over four decades that included some of the most turbulent times in our nation’s history, science fiction author and cultural studies scholar William F. Wu painstakingly gathered an archive of comics distinguished not only by its size and reach, but by its scope: It is perhaps the world’s only, and certainly the largest, collection of comic books featuring images of Asians and Asian Americans. The exhibition Marvels and Monsters: Unmasking Asian Images in U.S. Comics, 1942-1986 draws from this important collection, recently donated with the help of A/P/A Institute to the NYU Fales Library & Special Collections.

The pulp phantasmagoria of Wu’s archive isn’t just a treasure trove for fans of graphic fiction, it’s also a unique and fascinating look at America’s evolving racial and cultural sensibility � showing how images that began as racist and xenophobic propaganda during times of war and nativist unrest have coalesced into archetypes that in many ways still define America’s perception of Asians today.

“When I began this collection, it was because I realized that popular culture reaches virtually everyone,” says Wu. “These iconic images — good and bad — can have real-world effects on people’s perception of themselves and those around them.”

Marvels and Monsters takes the most potent and indelible examples of such images from the thousands in Wu’s collection, and organizes them around the archetypes they reflect and sustain � The Alien, the Kamikaze, the Brute, the Lotus Blossom, the Guru, the Brain, the Temptress, the Manipulator � while placing them within both a historical context and a discourse with contemporary Asian American writers and creators.

For more information, visit apa.nyu.edu/