| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
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| ASIANAM 60A | INTR ASIA AMER ST I | LIU, J.M. | (Same as History 15C/Soc Sci 78A) The course provides an interdisciplinary survey of the history, social organization, and cultural representations of Asians immigrating to the United States prior to World War II. Topics to be discussed include: early globalization, immigration patterns, the impact of Asians on the emergence of the notion of nonwhiteness in the American race relations, community development, institutionalized racism and resistance. This course is open to all students and meets the Multi-cultural VII-A general education requirement. It is also the first of a three-quarter introductory sequence that is mandatory for students who want to major or minor in Asian American Studies. If you are not majoring/minoring in Asian American Studies, the sequence can be used to fulfill the Social Science general education breadth requirement. |
| ASIANAM 110 | ASIANAM/AFAM NOVELS | RADHAKRISHNAN, R. | This course will be an attempt to understand and appreciate the common and the different ways in which concepts such as “race,” “ethnicity,” “hyphenation,” “assimilation,” “minority,” “citizenship,” “color,” “gender,” “sexuality,” “visibility,” “nationality,” “citizenship,” “language and silence,” “America,” “history,” “remembering,” “forgetting,” and “double-consciousness” play themselves out in the context of the African-American novel and the Asian-American novel. With an even balance on fictional and theoretical texts, I hope to focus, with your help of course, on issues such as narrative and subject formation, subjectivity as both aesthetic and political, identity as both individual and collective, the relationship between literature and politics, theory and practice, and the politics of representation and signification. Against the backdrop of history and theoretical thought about these themes, we will analyze a few selected novels and examine how they construct themselves both as literary and as political texts. Some of the questions that we will be exploring are: What is the relationship between literary movements and political movements? What is the role of the intellectual and the artist in political struggle? How do “minority” artists and writers create their own traditions? As “double-conscious” works, how do the novels of African-America and Asian-America intervene between Africa and America, between Asia and America? How is “America” signified into existence in these works? What articulations are possible between nationalisms and diasporas? What is the relationship of these novels to movements such as Realism, Modernism, Postmodernism, Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality, and theories of Gender and Sexuality?
Here are some of the texts and the authors we will be conversing with: The Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois), Against Race and The Black Atlantic (Paul Gilroy), Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison), The Woman Warrior (Maxine Hong Kingston), No-No Boy (Frank Chin), Beloved (Toni Morrison), Dictee (Theresa Hak Kyung Cha), Native Son (Richard Wright), and essays by David Palumbo-Liu, Lisa Lowe, bell hooks, Anthony Appiah, Lindon Barrett, Hortense Spillers, Abdul JanMohamed, and Frantz Fanon.
EXPECTATIONS AND REQUIREMENTS: Be there with your heartmindandsoul. Be prepared with the assigned readings. 1 take home (and bring back) exam, 1 short paper and 1 long paper.
SEE YOU SOON.
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| ASIANAM 111 | ASIAN AMERCAN LABOR | FUJITA-RONY, D. | This course will explore the history of Asian Americans and work from the nineteenth century to the present. Topics of discussion will include migration, colonialism, family, social organization, work culture, and activism. Requirements will include a five-page paper, a midterm exam, a final exam, and regular participation in section.
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| ASIANAM 114 | ASIANAM FILM&VIDEO | MIMURA, G. | (Same as FlmSt 130/Soc Sci 179) “Asian American” and “Film and Video” may strike many as mutually exclusive terms, as Asian Americans are still only vaguely associated with films in the popular imagination, and more often as exotic background or obstacles to be overcome than as protagonists of the storyline. Indeed, the recent surge in mainstream depictions of Asian Americans – most prominently, Wayne Wang’s Joy Luck Club (1993) – seems to have materialized out of nowhere, and subsequently has been lauded as the inaugural moment of a new “minority” cinema. Yet Asian Americans have been present in Hollywood – on-screen, behind the camera, and in technical production – since the earliest days of the silent film era at the turn of the century. Further, Asian Americans have been active participants in the development of independent film and video since the late 1960s, most often against the grain of Hollywood’s culture industry.
The course seeks to restore some sense of this rich history by introducing selected media (documentary, fictional, experimental) and readings offering an array of viewpoints. While we will consider the formal aspects of media production and criticism, the focus will be on the politics of cultural representation, organized around such concepts as gender, sexuality, and class, as well as race and ethnicity. Also, while the majority of the work here is “Asian American” in a strict sense, we will be reviewing works from Asian Canadian and Asian British artists and critics. Indeed, several of the texts address issues that extend beyond the geopolitical, imaginary boundaries of the US or other nation-states. To this degree, the course will examine the changing realities of Asian diaspora communities – that is, of Asian subjects as they (we) become “global citizens” increasingly dispersed throughout the world system.
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| ASIANAM 141 | ASIAN-AMER PSYCH | STAFF | (Same as Psych 174) This course is designed to facilitate an examination of the current research and literature on the cultural, societal, historical, and political influences on the psychological well-being and make-up of Asian Americans. Included in this in depth, critical overview are contextual issues surrounding Asian American psychological experiences, such as key historical and political issues; race and culture; racism and discrimination; worldviews, values, and beliefs; cultural conflicts; minority status; and the immigration experience. "Person" issues will also be explored, self-concept, self-identity, personality, interpersonal relationships, sexuality, and gender roles. The interface of between Asian Americans and major social institutions, such as the education system, the workplace, and mental health services, will also be examined. |
| ASIANAM 150 | RELIGIOUS TRAD ASAM | MAZUMDAR, S. | This course is an introduction to the religious traditions of Asian Americans. It examines how religious beliefs and practices affect the lives of Asian Americans. It focuses on the transplantation of religious institutions, the establishment of sacred spaces such as churches, mosques and temples, the celebration of significant religious holidays and the socialization of children into their religious identity. It also analyzes the importance of religion in life cycle rites such as birth, marriage and death, and the role of religion in the structuring of gender relations and family.
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| ASIANAM 151D | VIET AMER EXPER | PHAM, D. | (Same as Soc Sci 178D) An introduction to the study of the Vietnamese in America from the exodus of this new group of Asian American from Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War to their resettlement in the United States. Topics such as wars and revolution in Vietnam, the different waves of Vietnamese refugees, admission and resettlement, adjustment to new life, the Vietnamese community, Vietnamese American literature and poetry etc. will be discussed. Final grade will be based on a term paper, midterm, and final exam.
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| ASIANAM 151K | FILIPINO/AMER EXPER | FUJITA-RONY, D. | (Same as History 152A/Soc Sci 178K) This course will explore the history of filipina/o Americans in the United States with particular focus on the twentieth century. Major topics will include colonialism, labor, migration, family, and culture. Requirements will include a five-page paper, a midterm exam, a final exam, and regular participation in section.
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| ASIANAM 164 | RACE & URBAN SPACE | VO, L. | Race and Urban Space L. Vo
(Same as AAS 164/Social Science179, Lec B/ Environ E100U, Lec A (Policy, Planning and Design)
The course will examine how ethnic and racial processes shape and structure interactions in urban settings, such as schools, housing, employment, and public spaces. Our discussion will focus on how human geography is transforming the cultural and social organization of the metropolis. Additionally, it examines the ways in which the political economy and gender intersect in the “post-industrial city.” The emphasis will be on the United States, with comparative attention to the international impact of globalization and postcolonial forces. We will also interrogate the formation of power relations and inequalities as well as public policies to address these issues and the forms of resistance that arise in urban spaces. The course requirement is a research paper, special project, and final.
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| ASIANAM 171A | COMPAR INTL MIGRAT | LIU, J.M. | (Same as Sociol 179) This course examines international migration within the common context created by globalization and Western colonialism and differences resulting from diverse national experiences.
Topics to be examined include immigration’s relationship to globalization, different theoretical approaches in understanding immigration, specific patterns of immigration, issues related to transnational and diasporic perspectives, assimilation and multiculturalism. Specific attention will be paid to immigration to Australia, Canada, and the United States, the largest immigrant receiving nations both in the past and present, and to Asian migrants, who played a significant role in defining race/ethnic relations in all three nations and comprise significant components in contemporary immigration to all three nations since World War II. This course meets the Multi-cultural VIIA general education breath requirement.
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| ASIANAM 190A H | ASIANAM HONORS I | VO, L. | The Honors Seminar in Asian American Studies provides an opportunity for outstanding students to develop their research skills through an intensive study of a topic that is of special interest to them. This three-part seminar sequence is designed to allow undergraduates to pursue field research and complete an honors thesis on a topic of their choice under the guidance of the Department of Asian American Studies faculty members. Research projects can involve a combination of library research, historical research, literary review, cultural analysis, exploratory ethnographic interviews, participant observation, or systematic data collection. The first part of this seminar sequence will introduce students to a range of key methodological issues in Asian American Studies. Prerequisite: Students must qualify and be approved in order to be in the course. See: http://www.hnet.uci.edu/aas/undergrad/honors.php
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| ASIANAM 200A | THEORY&METH ASAM ST | MIMURA, G. | This course examines major theoretical and methodological issues in Asian American Studies. Topics include the social construction of race and identity, the intersection with class, gender and sexuality, and qualitative approaches to research. It will also serve to introduce students to AAS faculty and their work. Prerequisite: graduate standing. |
| ASIANAM 201 | CRIT THRY WORKSHOP | RADHAKRISHNAN,R. | So, is humanism "dead?" What comes "after?" How does one determine and respond to the longue duree of humanism? Even if humanism were not "over," is it time to superannuate humanism with a sheer act of theoretical will? Is there a good humanism and a bad humanism? Is it possible to salvage and sustain the good incarnation and eradicate the bad one? Is humanism a worldview, an ideology, an ethico-political blueprint?
Is humanism universal, planetary, anthropocentric, unavoidably Eurocentric? What is the sexuality and the gender of "the human?" What are the fraught connections between humanism as epistemology and humanism as cultural politics? How does Humanism deal with problems of Selfhood and Alterity? Does Humanism participate in the brutality of a world structured in dominance, or does it seek a way out of the geopolitics of nevenness? How does the "human" dangle between Ontology and Epistemology, between Truth and Power, between everyday phenomenology and the density of specialist discourse? Assuming that there is a post-humanism, how is such a "post-ality" a measure both of the post-structural and the post-colonial? These are a few of the questions that will constitute our agenda for this seminar. Starting with an in depth reading of Edward Said's posthumously published book, Humanism and democratic Criticism, we will revisit a number of important debates that have shaped the historicity as well as the temporality of humanism over the last 100 years. Here are a few voices that will resonate through the seminar: Martin Heidegger (Letter on Humanism), Jean Paul-Sartre (humanism, Existentialism, Marxism), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Humanism and Terror), Michel Foucault (selected readings), Louis Althusser (The
Humanist Controversy), Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth), Judith Butler (Precarious Life), and others. I hope that by the end of the seminar we will all have, with a little help from one another, a sophisticated awareness of what it means to reject or accept humanism in "our own times."
Format and Requirements: Passionate participation, class presentations, 1
short paper and 1 long paper |
| ASIANAM 201 | FAMILY & LIFE HIST | LEONARD, K. | The graduate seminasr begins with an overview of family and life history methods, theories, and issues. Then we read xeroxed articles and relevant books for 5 or 6 weeks, while students begin preparing research papers of limited length (10 pages) based on oral interviews with an individual or individuals. In the final weeks, students present drafts of their work for discussion. |