| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
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| ASIANAM 60A | INTR ASIA AMER ST I | LIU, J. | (Same as Hist 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 100W | RSCH METH/FIELD RES | LIU, J. | |
| ASIANAM 110 | SO&SO ASNAM CLT EXP | KATRAK, K. | This course includes literary readings, visual and expressive materials that represent the cultural fabric of South and South Asian American lives. We explore issues of ethnicity and how national and ethnic identities shift with diasporic locations. Issues of belonging, multiple language usages (English and other native languages), sexuality, food practices, musical innovations, and movement vocabularies in dance are explored. Readings include essays on diaspora, novels, short stories, and poems by Bapsi Sidhwa, Jhumpa Lahiri, Agha Shahid Ali among others. We also view documentary films on traditional and contemporary dance and musical practices by South and South Asian Americans. Requirements include class presentation, in-class-writing, midterm and final.
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| ASIANAM 110 | ASAM LIT MUTIRACIAL | STAFF | This course situates Asian American literature and culture in the broader framework of racial formations in the United States, addressing a range of themes fundamental to the study of the topic: interracial and cross-cultural contact, immigration and transnationalism, identity politics and stereotyping. We will not only study the work of Asian American writers, but also the ways Asian Americans have been portrayed in the U.S. cultural imaginary from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. Rather than understanding Asian Americans as belonging to a discrete, self-defined racial category, the class offers a comparative approach that examines the political, legal, and economic structures that shape the social experiences of Asian Americans in relation to other racial groups. We will explore how cultural production by and about Asian Americans has been crucial to the constitution of American national identity for over a century. The objective of this course is for students to think critically about the relationship between race and culture in comparative, multiracial contexts. |
| ASIANAM 110 | ASAM WRITERS:ETHNIC | KATRAK, K. | This course explores the work of selected Asian American writers in the English language. Our study analyzes the politics of location and how locations impact ethnicities. Writers’ identities are negotiated along issues of race, gender, language, nationality, and crucially in our contemporary time, geography. Our study, which uses a historical perspective, includes recent South Asian American writers, as well as second and third generation U.S. citizens of Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, and other ethnicities. We will study writers such as Joy Kogawa, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Maxine Hong Kingston among others. Requirements include class presentation, in-class writing, midterm and final exams. |
| ASIANAM 114 | MINORITY US CINEMA | MIMURA, G. | (Same as FlmSt 130 and AfAm 113) By the late 1960s, people of color began to appropriate and transform media practices in response to historically persistent patterns of racism. Inspired by decolonial struggles in the Third World and radical antiracist movements in the United States, these artists and activists made interventions that were collaborative, self-sustaining and historically unprecedented in their diversity of content and form. Alongside the production of creative and documentary works, they established media collectives and centers that continue to function as vital institutions for training, funding, distribution and exhibition. The course examines this historical emergence and development of independent cinemas by people of color, their theoretical stakes and cultural-political significance. It focuses on African American, Asian American and Chicano/Latino film and video production since the late 1960s, as well as their struggles to establish and maintain grassroots and institutional resources. |
| 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. | (Same as Sociology 139) 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 analyses 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. Students will required to do three reaction papers on the assigned readings (15% of the grade) and in-class writing assignment (15%) as well as take a midterm (30%) and a final exam (40%). |
| ASIANAM 150 | ASIANAM POP CULTURE | STAFF | (Same as Flm&Mda 130) Do Asian Americans have a stake in popular culture? Why and how? Since the 1960s, Asian Americans have been producing distinct and exciting popular cultures that challenge racism, create new experiences of leisure, and advance democratic values. We will examine the relationship between Asian Americans and popular culture in several areas: image culture, popular music, high and low fashions, street cultures, and shopping malls. Grading is based on the following: attendance and participation 20%, midterm 40%, and final 40%. |
| ASIANAM 150 | DEMOCRACY & MIN DIS | RADHAKRISHNAN, R. | (Same as ComLit 105, AfAm 118, WS 189) Is democracy the best game in town? Why and why not? Is it both the symptom and cure of our times? What is the relationship between popular sovereignty and democracy; between citizen rights and democracy? How are liberalism, the rule of the law, and democracy triangulated? Is democracy thinkable without the normativity of the nation state? What can we say about the linkages between democracy and identity politics, between democracy and the politics of representation, between democracy and multiculturalism, between democracy and the politics of recognition? How does democracy mediate between the need for distributive justice and the clamor for difference and heterogeneity? What are the different traditions of democracy and how do they mark and define “the political?” How is democratic hegemony different from other forms of control and organization? How do modernity and the democratic form of government constitute each other? How does democracy govern the relationship between East and West, between the so-called “First and Third” worlds; and how does it bear the symptomatic burden of a world that is structured in dominance? How does democracy name the human being as citizen and unpack her in terms of race, class, gender, and sexuality? Is democracy an ideology or is it a pure and neutral procedure? How do capitalism and democracy constitute each other? Most significantly, is democracy possible without an Us-Them divide, or a majority-minority divide? What is the tacit relationship among democracy, violence, and terror? These are a few of the questions that we will be raising in this course by way of readings in political theory, philosophy, literature, sociology, critical theory, feminist theories and theories of gender and sexuality. |
| ASIANAM 151K | FILIPINO/AMER EXPER | FUJITA-RONY, D. | (Same as Hist 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. |
| ASIANAM 164 | TRNSNTL: RACE/GEND | RADHAKRISHNAN, R. | (Same as WS 189, Af Am 128, and Eng 105) The purpose of this seminar is to lay bare the semantics of the prefix, “trans.” How is transnationalism different from multi-nationalism and inter-nationalism? Are there elite transnationalisms and subaltern transnationalisms? Is nationalism transcended or naturalized through transnationalism? What are the relationships among transnationalism, globalization, cosmopolitanism and diasporas? Who are the peoples of transnationalism and who are its heads of state? How is cultural transnationalism related to political and economic transnationalisms? How does transnationalism rearticulate the relationship between people and place, space and place, place and location, living and telling, knowing and acting, being and thinking? How are race, gender, and sexuality re-territorialized by the discourse of transnationalism? We will be paying particular attention to the concept of “scattered hegemonies” as developed by postmodern feminists in their complex endeavors to conceptualize transnationalism in conjunction with the emancipatory performances of gender and sexuality. We will also be focusing on the powerful contributions made by ethnic and critical race theorists to our understanding of the formation of contemporary subjectivity. Theories of space-articulations of location and subject-positionality, “post-ality”: how do these discourses function conjuncturally in the production of the “transnational being?” Is transnationalism an ideology; and if so, what sorts of political practices does it enable? Who are its subjects and agents? Who are the “we” under transnationalism? |
| ASIANAM 164 | ASAM & RACE RELATNS | VO, L. | (Same as Soc Sci 179) This courses moves beyond conceptualizing U.S. race relations as a black-white binary paradigm. We will analyze Asian American race relations and racialized interconnections with American Indians, Chicanos/Latinos, African Americans/Black Americans, and European Americans. We will also discuss how Asians Americans have historically been positioned in the U.S. racial hierarchy and study the complexities of their racialization as "perpetual foreigner"and "model minorities" in the contemporary period. Our discussions will focus on how economic, political, and cultural factors structure stereotypes, face-to-face interactions, and the formation of group identities. Additionally, we will examine how these conditions lead to real and perceived antagonisms between groups as well as the building of coalitions. We will investigate how Asian Americans have used their changing demographics and expanding resources to shape the dialogue regarding racial categorization, citizenship, immigration, and equity. The course grade will be based on two writing assignments and a take-home final exam. |
| ASIANAM 200A | THEORY&METH ASAM ST | FUJITA-RONY, D. | This class will introduce students to the role of theory and methodology in Asian American Studies. We will examine how Asian American Studies has been constituted as an interdisciplinary field of study in the last three decades, including the many interventions and contestations within the field that have transformed the discipline in recent years. Topics to be examined will include diasporic culture, political mobilization, narrative and memory, immigration, race, and gender. This introduction to Asian American Studies likely will be useful for students who are preparing for their graduate exams or investigating different dissertation topics, as well as for those who are writing dissertations or developing research and teaching fields for their future careers.
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| ASIANAM 201 | FAMILY & LIFE HIST | LEONARD, K. | |
| ASIANAM 202 | COMPRTV INTL MIGRTN | LIU, J. | (Same as Sociol 269) This course examines the development of international migration theory, the relationship of immigration to globalization, and the general economic integration of migrants by comparing the experiences of Asians, who represent either the largest or second largest source of migration to the three main countries of permanent settlement: Australia, Canada, and the United States. The topics to be covered include: the characteristics of diasporas, factors underlying immigration policies, approaches to multiculturalism, ethnic community formation. |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | MIMURA, G. | |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | FUJITA-RONY, D. | |