| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|
| ASIANAM 60B | INTR ASIA AMR ST 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 101 | GLOBAL DIASPOR&RACE | LIU, J. | Same as SOC SCI 177A. We are living in an age of intensive globalization and the diasporic movements of people. Thanks to technology the “global village” has become a reality. The near and the far have imploded into one another. A new global economy dependent on flexible capital has redefined the parameters of global labor and commodity production. The ideology of free trade seems to have transcended the sovereignty of nations and nation states. We now have multinational and transnational corporations that rely on outsourcing as the most profitable mode of production. But even as globalization is taking place as if it were a fait accompli (a done deal), there is furious resistance to globalizations from many perspectives. There is the suspicion that globalization is increasing the gap between rich and poor. In addition, there are gross disjunctures among the economic, the political, and the cultural versions of globalization. Despite the so-called tearing down of walls and boundaries in the name of a global worldliness, the policing of borders continues unabated; and racism and ethnocentrism and xenophobia are on the increase. Globalization seems to work on behalf of the interests of the developed nations and at the expense of the developing nations who are condemned to play a chronic game of catch-up. The diasporic movement of people across the globe presents a parallel picture. As a result of movements, the very definition of home is changing rapidly as immigrant populations renegotiate the relationship between their original homes and their present locations. As they become citizens in their new locale, they are also subjected to racialization, minoritization, and cultural alienation. Issues such as multiculturalism, multilingualism, ethnic hyphenation, fusion and hybridity, assimilation and naturalization, identity politics, loss of authenticity, and the politics of representation take on a very special charge in the context of the diaspora. Just as in the context of globalization, here too, disjunctures and discontinuities play a crucial role as diasporic populations attempt to reconcile the history of their past with the history of their present. As they endeavor to translate their displacement into an emerging sense of belonging, diasporic subjects reconceptualize the relationship between individuality and collectivity, between the personal and the political, between the private and the public. |
| ASIANAM 114 | ASNAM LIT/FLM ADAPT | SHROFF, B. | This course analyzes the historical context within which Asian American literary texts have been adapted into filmic texts.
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 re-title 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 which is 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 151F | SO ASIAN AMER EXP | 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 164 | GENDER&SEXUAL ASNAM | BALANCE, C. | This course examines how the analytics of gender and sexuality work within the contexts of Asian/Pacific America as well as maps parallels and divergences between Asian American and queer identity and discursive formations. We will study the various methodologies and frameworks eugenics, sexology, imperialism/colonialism, public health, kinship/belonging mobilized throughout U.S. popular history to analyze queer, Asian, and gendered bodies and sociality. This participatory course likewise focuses on cultural productions film/video, theatre/performance, and literature created by, for, and about queer Asian/Pacific Americans. Course assignments include: weekly reading responses and journal entries, group presentations, and final writing portfolio/creative project. |
| ASIANAM 200A | THEORY&METH ASAM ST | LIU, J. | |