| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|
| ASIANAM 60B | INTRODUCTION TO ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES II | LIU, J. | Same as Soc Sci 78B. This class will cover the major issues affecting Asian Americans in the post-World War II era, particularly in regard to race, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality. Topics will include labor, immigration, colonialism, community formation, public policy agendas, political participation, education, and cultural production. The requirements will be a mid-term, a final exam, and participation in discussion section. |
| ASIANAM 110 | FILIPINA/O AMERICAN LITERATURE | FUJITA-RONY, D. | This class will introduce students to the field of Filipina/o American literature through examining personal narratives, fiction, poetry, and other forms of literary expression. Themes will include nationalism, migration, community, and family. Requirements will include a 5-page paper, midterm, final, and active class participation. |
| ASIANAM 110 | ASIAN AMERICAN WRITING LIFESTORIES: DISCOV CULTUR HERITAGE | YAMADA, M. | Same as Eng 105 and LJ 103. This course will focus on heightening an awareness of your cultural heritage(s) through reading about the history of your own particular culture(s) and writing about them filtered through your own experiences. You will be recovering personal memories and collecting and retelling family stories. You will begin by collecting fragments of images, memories, dreams and stories, a mixture of Asian (or other) and American cultures that you have been exposed to throughout your lifetime. Through interviews, you will collect stories from your parents, grandparents, and other members of the family and people who share your common background.
In addition to personal writings, you will collect materials that are connected in some way to your personal or family past, photographs, meaningful documents, stories told to you in your childhood, recipes of favorite foods, etc. Some research will be involved. Your personal stories will be put into historical/cultural/social context through research of your ancestral past. You may be collecting visual images of periods long past as well as myths and tales. You will explore the “signs of the times” by researching popular media and historical writings.
Information will be shared by discussion in class of assigned readings, lectures, possibly guest speaker, student presentations and audiovisual materials when available. |
| ASIANAM 111 | CHINESE DIASPORA | CHEN, Y. | Same as History 152. The Chinese diaspora is one of the most important and largest diasporas. It has also become one of the most visible and most significant forces in the age of accelerated globalization, economically, socially, and politically. This class explores various waves of Chinese immigration to different parts of the world at different times. In an attempt to investigate fundamental issues concerning all diasporas, it will compare overseas Chinese settlements with groups such as the Jews, and it will also place the development of the Chinese diaspora in the context of globalization. The class will also discuss its unique characteristics, especially its contributions to China and other countries.
Topics include: the meaning of diaspora, modernity, the relationship of Chinese diasporic communities with China and their countries of residence, the transformation of the meanings of “Chinese-ness” and circumstance that have engendered such transformation.
Midterm. Final exam. |
| ASIANAM 114 | ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE & FILM ADAPTATIONS | SHROFF, B. | Same as ArtH 101, CompLit 143, Eng 105. This course analyzes the historical context within which Asian American texts have been adapted into films. There is a vast body of Asian American Literature but very few texts have been adapted to cinema since issues of audience and market are primary considerations. A historical context demonstrates how representations of Asian Americans have changed from the stereotypical images in the 1920s to self-representations by Asian American writers and filmmakers in contemporary times. We analyze different literary genres such as novels and dramas and short stories, for example Jhumpa Lahiri's novel, The Namesake, Le Ly Hayslip's memoir When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, David Henry Hwang's drama, M. Butterfly and Philip Kan Gotanda's drama, The Wash. Cinematic adaptations/versions of literary texts sometimes retitle and reconstruct texts as suitable for a mass audience such as Heaven and Earth directed by Oliver Stone, and others such as Hot Summer Winds directed by Emiko Omori based on two Hisaye Yamamoto short stories, Seventeen Syllables and Yoneko's Earthquake. We employ literary and film theory in reading the novels and plays to analyze language, structure, characterization and historical representation. We also discuss how the literary form translates into a visual medium, and the modifications of story/plot and characterization for the screen--for instance, how dramas lend themselves to screen adaptation more easily than do novels. We interrogate the strengths of each medium such as the scope of the fictional framework, and the spatial-temporal capabilities of the cinematic medium. |
| ASIANAM 114 | ASIAN AMERICAN & HOLLYWOOD | WILLIAMS, J. | This course will address a number of questions relating to the intersection of Asian American cultural production and the American film industry. For example, how has the circulation of “oriental” stereotypes in American cinema mirrored larger political movements in American culture? In what ways have Asian Americans both participated in and strategically subverted these stereotypes? What are the particular psychological or sociological effects of cinematic stereotypes, as opposed to those in circulation through print or even still photography? This course will begin with an examination of Asian American stereotypes from the very beginnings of film in the late 19th century (Edison’s films on the Filipino insurgency following the Spanish American War), and end with a more recent look at Asian stereotypes in a satirical period piece in an era of postmodern capitalism (Justin Lin’s comedy on the effort to find a replacement for Bruce Lee). Throughout the course we will pay close attention to the efforts of various Asian Americans to work within the American film industry as well as those who choose or are forced to work outside it. |
| ASIANAM 137 | ASIAN AMERICAN LABOR | FUJITA-RONY, D. | Same as Hist 152. 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. |
| ASIANAM 151 | SOUTHEAST ASIAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE | SHROFF, B. | Same as SocSci 179. In this class we analyze the South Asian American experience through literary, sociological and cinematic representations through selected readings. South Asian countries include India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan among others. India is the largest land mass and has the highest output in terms of literary and cultural expressions, hence, many of the readings are by Indian Americans. One key question posed in the class will be to examine the experience of South Asian immigrants as one of multiple belongings, that are complicated connections between the culture of the U.S. and the homeland. Regular travel to the homeland and extended family networks of South Asians create multi-layered realities in which a tension between tradition and modernity is continually negotiated and questions of home, belonging and assimilation become slippery terrain of debate and doubt. Within specific contexts of class, ethnicity and gender we discuss how the diverse texts represent complex negotiations of identities must be negotiated. We explore interrelated themes such as ethnicity and multiculturalism; relationships with the homeland--both the adoptive country and the ancestral home(s); the distinct identities of immigrant, citizen, expatriates, conflicts between first and second generation immigrants and issues of religion and caste, in the diaspora. Readings include Chandra Mohanty, Zainab Ali, Jhumpa Lahiri and Anannya Bhattacharjee among others. |
| ASIANAM 164 | TRANSNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN SEXUALITIES | SHAH, P. | Same as WS 189. In this course, we will approach the broad issue of “Asian American Sexualities” through the rubrics of gender, diaspora and globalization. How are ideas about “normal” and “perverse” sexualities crafted through the experiences of immigration, cultural accommodation, and diasporic nostalgia? How do notions of Asian American sexuality articulate with other constructions of gender, sexuality and race in the U.S. and abroad? How does gender shape the narratives and possibilities of sexuality? How does the movement of capital and people in today’s globalized world both create spaces for “alternative” sexualities while simultaneously closing off other forms of sexual subjectivity? The course will be roughly divided thematically by “gender performance,” “diasporic desires,” and “globalization and citizenship.” Furthermore, while reading broadly we will also focus on two “case studies”: Martin Manalansan’s study of Filipino gay men in the diaspora and Gayatri Gopinath’s study of queer subcultures in the South Asian diaspora. Course requirements include discussion questions and response essays, a midterm, and a final paper. |
| ASIANAM 171A | COMPARATIVE INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION | LIU, J. | Same as Soc 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. |
| ASIANAM 200B | CONTEMP ISS ASAM ST | VO, L. | |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | MIMURA, G. | |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | FUJITA-RONY, D. | |