| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|
| ASIANAM 60A | INTRODUCTION TO ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES 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. |
| ASIANAM 100W | RESEARCH METHODOLOGY FOR ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES | FUJITA-RONY, D. | This seminar will introduce students to a range of key methodological issues in Asian American Studies. The readings are organized around questions, approaches, and critiques that will help students develop skills in qualitative research and analysis, as well as examine how researchers have studied the community transformations, economic realities, and political changes that shape social relations. We will gain a critical understanding of some of the theoretical, empirical, and ethical challenges posed by scholarly research in the humanities and social sciences. Students are required to complete a fieldwork research project with accompanying paper, short writing assignments, and a presentation. |
| ASIANAM 110 | ASIAN AM WRITERS: ETHNICITY AND THE POLITICS OF LOCATION | KATRAK, K. | Same as Eng 105, Comp Lit 105. 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. Writer’s 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 a take-home final essay. |
| ASIANAM 110 | ASIAN AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS: AUTO/BIOGRAPHICAL FICTIONS | KATRAK, K. | Same as Eng 105, Comp Lit 130. This course explores the multi-dimensional facets of autobiography as literary form, and the literary expressions of this form by Asian American writers. We analyze the interstices between telling the truth of one’s life as conveyed in memoir, and in autobiographical novels. Personal stories are contextualized within their author’s cultural and political histories. Just as there is no one way of representing and recreating history, so there are many ways, points of views, and perspectives in recounting a life.
We discuss the interplay of autobiography with memory, and how new diasporic locations for immigrants influence looking back on the past. Such memories inspire the literary production of autobiographical stories along with the assertion/erasure of ethnic identities. Selection of literary texts includes a memoir by Meena Alexander, and Maxine Hong Kingston, as well as innovative recreations of autobiographical fictions in Joy Kogawa’s novel, Obasan, and multi-genre autobiographies in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s, Dictee, and Denise Uyehara’s Maps of City and Body. Our study also includes representations of family and personal history on videos about the Japanese-American internment, and about the struggles of recent immigrants in making a home in the U.S.
Course Requirements: Attendance and participation, Class presentation, in-class Midterm, and a take-home final essay. |
| ASIANAM 110 | HOME AND AWAY: CULTURE, THEORY, LITERATURE | RADHAKRISHNAN, R. | Same as Eng 105, WS 189, AfAm 118. Is home a literal place, a territory, a state of mind? What does it mean to be "at home," and how does such a feeling of security relate to "being at home in the world?" How do Home and the World replicate each other; or, do they? Is home a sovereign and normative space, or is it a space of non-discriminating, ever inclusive belonging? Can some one's home become some other's exile? Can home be the function of a regime such as Nationalism? What is the relationship between having a home and enjoying the privileges of citizenship? How do race, gender, immigration, ethnicity, and sexuality determine what is home and what is exile? What happens when one leaves one's home and lives elsewhere? Can there be divided homes characterized by "double consciousness?" During these times of intensive diasporas, movements of peoples-goods-and ideas across boundaries and borders, how does home become a mere location, and location acquire the significance of home? Is a home more natural than a mere location? Are homes natural or are they imagined constructs? With these questions in mind, we will be analyzing a number of texts, some fictional and some theoretical, as they traverse home and away in an infinite series of arrivals and departures.
Format: A combination of lectures, discussions, and class presentations. 1 take home examination, 1 short paper, and 1 long paper.
Texts: THEORIZING DIASPORA, Eds. Anita Mannur and Jana Evans Braziel, Blackwell, Maxine Hong Kingston, THE WOMAN WARRIOR, Amitav Ghosh, THE SHADOW LINES, Gloria Anzaldua, BORDERLANDS, Jhumpa Lahiri, THE NAMESAKE. |
| ASIANAM 111 | PACIFIC RIM, CHINA & CHINESE AMERICA | CHEN, Y. | Same as Hist 152. The Pacific Rim is becoming a most visible and most important center of economic and socioeconomic activities of the world. This class seeks to understand the historical development of an important segment of the Pacific Rim: the growing Sino-American interactions. It will trace the roots of that development back to the 19th century so that we can better appreciate the scope of such interactions today. Topics include the following: the initial contact between China and America before the 20th century and its significance; China's struggles in trying to remain relevant in early 20th-century world affairs and in dealing with its internal problems; turning points late in the 20th century; China's current economic, political and social interactions with the United States; the implications of such interactions for individuals, especially Chinese Americans; the changing meaning of being Chinese and American. Recent discussions of the Pacific Rim have not paid adequate attention to its historical roots; they have tended to focus either on the cultural or economic aspects. In this class, we will try to combine the economic and cultural perspectives in an effort to have historically grounded understanding of this significant phenomenon. One short paper and one research paper. |
| ASIANAM 114 | COMPARATIVE MINORITY CINEMA | MIMURA, G. | Same as Film Studies 130. 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 150 | FOOD AND IDENTITY | CHEN, Y. | Same as Hist 190. The course uses food as a vehicle for understanding changes in both the U.S. since the early twentieth century and ethnic/immigrant communities and individuals. While trying to measure the transformation of the nation, we will take a look at the issues under discussion from both global and local perspectives. In so doing, we will take a close look at individual cuisines and communities, such as Chinese Americans and their culinary traditions. We will also investigate the impact of ethnic food on ethnicity. Topics will include the following: national and individual identity, cultural authenticity, social memory; perceptions/representations of food in the public sphere; food activities in the private sphere; myths and science about food; consumption patterns and volumes; and research methodological issues. A research paper; small projects. |
| ASIANAM 150 | RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS OF ASIAN AMERICANS | MAZUMDAR, S. | Same as Soc 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 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. |
| ASIANAM 151H | SOUTHEAST ASIAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE | VO, L. | Same as Soc Sci 178H. More than one million refugees and immigrants from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam have settled in the United States, with large communities in existence throughout California. This course provides a comparative overview of ethnically, culturally, and historically diverse peoples, who were forced to relocate as refugees and immigrants. We will analyze their resettlement processes, economic adaptations, educational experiences, and social conditions. Our focus will be on their individual voices and experiences in order to understand how they construct their identities, negotiate cultural challenges, recreate communities, and engage in acts of resistance. We will use an interdisciplinary approach, drawing upon theoretical frameworks and scholarship from anthropology, cultural studies, education, history, literature, political science, psychology, social work, and sociology. Course grade will be based on a research project, a community-based assignment, and a take-home final exam. |
| ASIANAM 161 | RACIAL & ETHNIC COMMUNITIES | LIU, J. | Same as Soc Sci 175B. This course will examine different conceptions of how racial and ethnic communities are formed and maintained as well as the conditions that enable these communities to continue to exist. Contemporary Chinese, Korean, South Asian, and Khmer communities will be looked at to determine the applicability of these varying conceptions. Although the focus is primarily on various Asian American communities, comparison to African American and Latino communities will be made when appropriate. |
| ASIANAM 200A | GRADUATE SEMINAR - THEORY & METHODS | 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. |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | MIMURA, G. | |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | FUJITA-RONY, D. | |