| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|
| ASIANAM 60B | INTRODUCTION TO ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES II | FUJITA-RONY, D. | 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 100W | RESEARCH METHODOLOGY FOR ASIAN AM STUDIES | VO, L. | 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 technical skills in qualitative research and analysis, as well as examine how researchers have studied the demographic transformations, economic restructuring, 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. In addition, we will discuss "voice" which can refer to literal, direct forms of expression such as interviews, personal testimonies, and oral histories; and more broadly, as well to forms of symbolic representation such as photographs, videos, and other cultural texts. Students are required to complete a fieldwork research project, a presentation, and short writing assignments.
|
| 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 FICTION | LEE, J. | Same as Eng 105. the worn truism—“as California goes, so goes the nation”—holds water, then what does the fiction written by California’s Asian Americans suggest about the past, present, and future of the United States? What vision does California’s Asian American writers bring to other Asian Americans, to other Americans? And what do these works say about those of us who live in this state, arguably the most diverse in the world? Do we who live in California recognize the California represented in these stories? And is there a California that we’d rather not see? What is the “best” way to write fiction about California? These are some of the critical questions that we will pursue throughout the quarter. Reading both short story and novel, historical and contemporary, immigrant and “longtime Californ,” we will chart the cultural and cognitive map of Asian Americans writing in and about this wondrous geography. Readings will include novels and stories by Hisaye Yamamoto, Ronyoung Kim, Brian Ascalon Roley, Fae Myenne Ng, Karen Tei Yamashita, and Aimee Phan.
Alongside readings and class participation, students will be expected to post weekly blog entries, write one short paper (1200 words) and one longer paper (2100 words).
|
| 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 DOCUMENTARY PRACTICES | CHO, J. | Same as /FlmMda130. Our examination into Asian American documentary practices will be two-fold: First, begin with the elements and evolution of documentary film language and genres as a foundation for understanding how Asian American media artists utilize the mediums of film and video toward particular communication goals. We will also trace the movement of documentary subjects and techniques in the context of Asian Americans’ historical racialized representations and social roles in nonfiction films. As we view a range of works by and about Asian Americans, we will consider how various makers engage strategies for production style and content, targeting and reaching audiences, cultural meanings, multi-lingual communities, and aesthetic experimentation in evolving environments of technology and access, social movements, ethnic notions.
Course Organization: Class time will consist of lecture, film viewings, and discussion. Assignments include contribution to online class forum topics, readings and additional screenings for a take-home midterm. The final project calls for a group-based proposal for a short documentary project about Asian American lived realities. Students will pose their critical understanding of cinematic language and social meaning to the considerations and challenges a producer faces to prepare a realizable film. Proposal development includes preparing topic research, story goals, stylization strategies, logistical/copyright/budget factors, and audience & distribution plans typically required by individual donors, commercial funders and non-profit grant organizations.
|
| ASIANAM 142 | MUSLIM IDENTITIES IN NORTH AMERICA | LEONARD, K. | Same as ANTHRO 125Z. This course explores multiple identities of Muslims in North America, including African American Muslims and immigrants of many national origins. We explore religious, political, cultural, ethnic, and class differences among American Muslims, paying particular attention to recent efforts to mobilize and participate in American politics. The course involves a team research effort in the local communities.
|
| ASIANAM 150 | THE AMERICAN WAY OF EATING | CHEN, Y. | Same as History 152. The course explores the significance of food for understanding social and cultural changes. It will be focused primarily on American history and society since the early 20th century but will take a global comparative perspective at the same time. Topics will include how to apply different perspectives in our effort to appreciate the most basic part of our life, food; the relationship between the nation and national cuisine; representations of food as a window through which to understand society; nutrition; myths and science about food, and development of Chinese food in America. Mid-term and final. |
| ASIANAM 150 | MUSIC OF ASIAN AMERICA | BALANCE, C. | Same as Music 148. This course looks at music performed by Asians in America and considers how traditional and popular Asian and U.S.-based musics have played a role in creating the imaginative space we call Asian America. Rather than define what is “Asian American music,” this course seeks to present the diverse histories and styles (vaudeville, musical theatre, jazz, folk, hip hop, bhangra, karaoke, indie rock) that constitute musics of Asian America; explore the different venues (festivals, shows, film, performance, internment camps, protest rallies and criticism) where these musics are consumed and produced; and offer new listening practices. There will be required in-class and at home musical listening, a midterm exam, weekly journal entries, CD and performance reviews required throughout the quarter. |
| ASIANAM 151F | SOUTH ASIAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE | SHROFF, B. | Same as SocSci 178F. 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 151J | CHINESE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE | LIU, J. | Same as SocSci 178J. This course examines the factors that have contributed to diversity of experiences among Chinese who have been migrating to the United States since the nineteenth century. The emphasis on diversity does not mean the absence of any commonalities among Chinese Americans. Rather, it indicates that a fuller understanding of the experiences of Chinese Americans requires examining the differences as well. Topics to be addressed include the factors underlying the social construction of Chinese American identities, the fluidity of these constructions, and the institutional and personal ramifications of continuous identity formation on our changing perspectives of both Chinese and other Asian Americans. Examination of these topics will contribute to a general understanding of the nature of race and ethnicity in the United States, the social construction of identities among racial and ethnically defined groups, and the relationship of identity to political economic circumstances.
|
| ASIANAM 164 | GENDER AND SEXUALITIES OF ASIAN AMERICA | BALANCE, C. | Same as WmnStds 190. This course examines how the analytics of gender and sexuality work within Asian/Pacific American contexts as well as the parallels and divergences between Asian American and queer identity and discursive formations. It will utilize various methodologies such as psychoanalysis, ethnography, literary theory, visual cultures, sexology, sociology of deviance, and eugenics, in order to critically investigate sites of contemporary and historical Asian/Pacific American and U.S. popular cultures--literature, performance, journalism, visual art, theoretical and historical texts, and film/video. There will be a midterm exam, weekly journal entries, and a final writing assignment required throughout the quarter. |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | MIMURA, G. | |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | FUJITA-RONY, D. | |