ASIANAM Course Descriptions for 2023-2024

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Spring Course Descriptions
CourseTitleInstructorDescription
ASIANAM 53ASIAN AMER & RACEKIM, C.This course examines the racialization of Asian Americans in the U.S. from the mid-1800s to the present, with special attention to the role structural anti-Blackness has played in shaping the status and experience of Asian Americans.  How have Asian Americans been positioned in, and how have they positioned themselves in, an anti-Black racial order?  Topics to be covered include: Chinese “coolies”; the racial advancement strategies adopted by early Asian immigrants; Japanese American internment and the emergence of the “model minority”; the relationship of the Asian American Movement to the Black Power movement; the Los Angeles uprising of 1992; the politics of disposability around Hurricane Katrina; and cutting-edge developments in the fight over affirmative action in higher education.
ASIANAM 55ASAM & THE MEDIACHO, J.In American culture [1]. We will examine popular representations of and cultural performance and media productions by Asian Pacific Americans and Asians in the United States from the late-nineteenth century to the present. Our genres and forms may include film, television, news reporting, music and dance performance, zines and magazines, radio and podcasts. blogs, social media and web-hosted organizing. The course will also explore cases of different sites and communities of Asian Americans using communication and representation (local, national, global) in desire and imaginings of cultural citizenship. Because the grouping “Asian American” is inherently diverse and conditional, we shall situate our understanding of media in historical contexts of U.S.- Asia relations, immigration, political discourses and ideologies, accessible technologies and funding streams, social movements, and institutions and structures of mass media and “micro media industries [2].”
ASIANAM 111ASNAM, U.S. & WARFUJITA-RONY, D.
ASIANAM 138RACE & URBAN SPACEQUINTANA, I.This course takes the city as a starting point to understand larger social and political developments in the United States. Processes of segregation and exclusion have placed BIPOC people in the United States on the periphery of social, cultural and geographical power in the nation. We will explore how Indigenous peoples, Asian Americans, Latinas/os, and African Americans have navigated, created, and made sense of urban environments. Students will learn to interpret “space” for evidence of past and present social relationships, including how race intersects with gender, class, sexuality, and nation.
ASIANAM 151EJAPNSE AMER STUDIESCHING, K.This course introduces students to the histories and experiences of Japanese Americans in the United States. In addition to familiar historical narratives of the forced mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, we will examine early labor and immigration histories, Japanese American participation in activist movements from the Asian American movement in the 1960s to contemporary oppositions to U.S. detention centers, various regional perspectives in the Midwest and South, and the circuits of popular culture between the U.S. and Japan. Using an interdisciplinary approach, students will be exposed to various sources including traditional texts, documentary films, memoirs, government documents and other primary sources, and fiction.
ASIANAM 151HSE ASAM STUDIESFUJITA-RONY, D.Analyzes experiences of refugees and immigrants from Southeast Asia, which may include those from Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and the Philippines, as well as the experiences of later generations born in the US. Examines histories, communities, and identities.
ASIANAM 162ASIAN AMER WOMENQUINTANA, I.This upper-division undergraduate course is designed to introduce students to the study of gender in Asian American Studies, with a specific focus on women. Using intersectional frameworks, we will examine how Asian American women have experienced, challenged, and acceded to power.  Additionally, we will learn about individual Asian American women, whose activism and ideas help us to better understand the world and the choices we have in making it.
ASIANAM 168ANIMAL RIGHTSKIM, C.This course examines the moral, legal, and practical status of nonhuman animals in the contemporary U.S.  Topics to be covered include: theoretical debates about the moral status of animals; current knowledge about animal minds and emotions; modern industrial farming; the use of animals for scientific experimentation and human entertainment; the ethics of vegetarianism and veganism; divergent ideologies, strategies, and tactics within the animal liberation/welfare movement; the role of capitalism in furthering animal exploitation; the relationship between animals and ecological crisis; and the nexus of racism and speciesism.
ASIANAM 199INDEPENDENT STUDYWU, J.
ASIANAM 199INDEPENDENT STUDYVO, L.
ASIANAM 199INDEPENDENT STUDYQUINTANA, I.
ASIANAM 199INDEPENDENT STUDYLEE, J.
ASIANAM 199INDEPENDENT STUDYLEE, J.
ASIANAM 199INDEPENDENT STUDYKIM, C.
ASIANAM 199INDEPENDENT STUDYFUJITA-RONY, D.
ASIANAM 200CCOMM LEAD&SOC CHNGVO, L.This graduate seminar will introduce students to Asian American community leadership and social change nationally and in a transnational context. We will analyze shifting models of community organizing historically and the ongoing strategies of collective action from anti-colonial movements to electoral politics. Our approach will be to conceptualize how individuals, organizations, ideologies, and networks shape the formation of social change. Particular attention will be focused on the challenges of leadership and community building as it relates to resources, sustainability, and disruptions. This class is intended to assist students in developing their research and/or professional trajectories, so we will examine methodologies of documenting community leadership as well as the process of studying community-based cases. Students will complete a project that uses a critical and thematic approach to analyzing the intersections of identities, racializations, representations, and solidarities. There are weekly analysis assignments and a research project required for the course.
ASIANAM 201TRANS PACIFIC HISTWU, J.This course explores emerging scholarship that centers the Pacific and the crossing of the Pacific to bring into conversation Asian American, Pacific Islander, and U.S. histories of empire. How do these fields develop historiographically and in what ways do they overlap and/or contest one another? In what ways do they center islands and water and shift the way we prioritize continents in organizing history? How might we gender the study of the Trans/Pacific to deepen our understandings of Indigeneity, Migration, and Empire?
ASIANAM 290DIRECTED RESEARCHFUJITA-RONY, D.
ASIANAM 290DIRECTED RESEARCHWU, J.
ASIANAM 290DIRECTED RESEARCHVO, L.
ASIANAM 290DIRECTED RESEARCHQUINTANA, I.
ASIANAM 290DIRECTED RESEARCHLEE, J.
ASIANAM 290DIRECTED RESEARCHLEE, J.
ASIANAM 290DIRECTED RESEARCHKIM, C.
ASIANAM 291DIRECTED READINGWU, J.
ASIANAM 291DIRECTED READINGVO, L.
ASIANAM 291DIRECTED READINGQUINTANA, I.
ASIANAM 291DIRECTED READINGLEE, J.
ASIANAM 291DIRECTED READINGLEE, J.
ASIANAM 291DIRECTED READINGKIM, C.
ASIANAM 291DIRECTED READINGFUJITA-RONY, D.
ASIANAM 399UNIVERSITY TEACHINGKIM, C.
ASIANAM 399UNIVERSITY TEACHINGCHO, J.