| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| ASIANAM 52 | ASAM COMMUNITIES | VO, L. | Asian American Communities will introduce students to a range of social, cultural, economic, and political discourses concerning the formation and construction of Asian American communities. We will study the historical and contemporary developments of ethnic communities as geographical sites as well as analyze emerging communities as non-territorial social networks. We will discuss how these communities negotiate the spatial and social terrains of generational, ethnic, gender, sexual, class, religious, and ideological differences. Our discussions will examine theories about voluntary and involuntary communities, ethnic enclaves, ethnic economies, and race relations. Integral to this discussion will be issues of nationalism, colonialism, globalization, immigration, citizenship, politics, education, and representation and how these issues frame the debates of inclusion and exclusion. [This course was formerly Asian American Studies 60B/Social Science 78B: Introduction to Asian American Studies II. Students with prior credit for AAS 60B or SS 78B will not receive credit for taking this course.] |
| ASIANAM 110 | CONTEMP ASAM NOVEL | LEE, J. | It’s one thing to write books that no one reads, but what happens when the American reading public suddenly becomes interested? During the course of your lifetime, books written by Asian Americans have exploded into the publishing world. Since the blockbuster success of Amy Tan, publishers have been on a relentless quest to discover the next Joy Luck Club. This class examines how Asian American literature has responded to the increased interest from the publishing and reading worlds. The focus of the class for the rest of the term will be on how these narratives propagate or explode popular conceptions of what constitutes an “Asian American” story. A key interpretive issue for the class will be exploring how the novels balance the expectations of their mainly white readership with their individual explorations of what constitutes Asian American subjectivity, experience, and literature. Attention will be paid to formal structure, narration, and genre as well as how issues of race, sexuality, gender, and national identity are represented. |
| ASIANAM 111 | ASNAM US & WAR | FUJITA-RONY, D. | This course will focus on the relationship of Asian Americans to the United States, especially in terms of the impact of U.S. militarism abroad and at home. Requirements: a 5-page paper, journal entries, final exam, and class participation. |
| ASIANAM 114 | BRUCE LEE | MIMURA, G. | Bruce Lee was a martial artist, actor, teacher, pop philosopher, and one of the most dynamic superstars of the late-twentieth century. Supremely confident, intensely narcissistic, Lee was a consummate performer on-screen and in everyday life: his transnational experiences became the theater for the articulation of a richly postmodern, postcolonial identity. Starring in only five films, he nonetheless helped to transform two film industries, extend the reach of cinema as an international medium, and inspire and empower the less powerful throughout the world. Since his untimely death in 1973, Lee’s larger-than-life persona has proliferated and taken on new meanings, achieving the stature of a truly global icon. This course will examine Bruce Lee’s career in the contexts of the Hollywood and Hong Kong industries of the 1960s–70s, and track his influence in the history of cinema and other media. We will screen enhanced, subtitled (not dubbed) editions of the original Chinese releases of his Hong Kong films. It will also situate his work and identity––Hong Kong native, diasporic Chinese, Asian American––in relation to the social, cultural, political, and economic changes taking place in the United States and East Asia broadly. Collectively as a class, we will assess the significance and meaning of Bruce Lee’s myth and legacy today. |
| ASIANAM 151C | KOREAN AMER EXPER | CHO, J. | We will investigate the question how do Korean Americans influence the world, and how does the world influence Korean Americans? Our study will look at transnational factors that compel Korean Americans to work in global, local, material, and imagining arenas of the Korean “nation.” The first half of the course introduces affect through fiction excerpts, studies of pre-immigration racial identity, history of U.S.-Korea relations, and issues of religion, gender, and family, in connection to our core reading on Korean American students in the university. The second half examines contemporary racial formation, political organizing, adoptee social movements, and imagining the future of Korean American communities through emerging cultures. |
| ASIANAM 151H | SE ASIAN AMER EXPER | FUJITA-RONY, D. | This course will focus on the United States' long involvement in Southeast Asia in comparative context. Please note that the course not only will include the United States relationship to Southeast Asia but also will address the complex community formation of Southeast Asian Americans in the United States. |
| ASIANAM 166 | ASIANAM&RACE RELTNS | WU, J. | This course will explore how the racialization of Asian Americans is interrelated with the racialization of other social groups, such as African American, Latino/as, Pacific Islanders, and white Americans in the United States. In addition, the discussions, course materials, and presentations will analyze how these comparative racializations shape the real and imaged relationships between people of varying racial and ethnic backgrounds. |
| ASIANAM 167 | ASAM & AFAM RELATNS | LEE, J. | This comparative course will address the relationship of the Asian American and African American communities in the United States, with focus on the contemporary era Topics will include race, class, gender, labor, economic systems, political mobilization, community formation, civil rights, activism, and cultural expression. |
| ASIANAM 200B | CONTEMP ISS ASAM ST | VO, L. | This course examines the intersectionality between historical constructions, theoretical formulations, and political processes as it relates to the contemporary field of Asian American studies. This includes analyzing how the field has emerged across disciplines within the humanities and social sciences, including the conceptual, empirical, and methodological developments of Asian American Studies from an interdisciplinary perspective. We will contextualize and critique comparative discourses and studies regarding citizenship, culture, empire, justice, memory, space, and sexuality. Additionally, we will evaluate approaches to the study of Asians in America as well as the interconnections to Asians in the diaspora, |
| ASIANAM 201 | CROSSING BOARDERS | WU, J. | This graduate level course focuses on Asian American experiences to examine multiple forms of border crossings: geographical, racial, cultural, sexual, and gendered. Through readings and discussions, we will analyze how individuals negotiate, bridge, and exacerbate social differences. We also will analyze how state and community institutions regulate and discipline various forms of border crossings. This course will emphasize the importance of intersectional analysis and seeks to foster conversation between scholars and students of varying disciplinary and interdisciplinary orientations interested in global and local migration, race and ethnicity, as well as gender and sexuality. Through weekly readings and discussions, we will explore the following questions: How did im/migrants conceive of themselves and how were they perceived in terms of their ethnicity, nationality, and racial identities? In what ways did gender and sexuality define the migration and racialization processes? In turn, how did migration and ethnic/racial formation alter conceptions of gender and sexuality? Finally, what is the significance of im/migration for conceptualizing national identity, and how might transnational, diasporic or imperialist frameworks change the way we understand im/migration? |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | BALANCE, C. | |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | FUJITA-RONY, D. | |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | KIM, C. | |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | LEE, J. | |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | LEE, J. | |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | VO, L. | |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | WU, J. |