| 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 construction and transformation 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. This course will provide students with critical thinking skills to understand concepts such as nationalism, colonialism, immigration, citizenship, and representation and how these issues frame the debates of inclusion, exclusion, and equity. |
| ASIANAM 100W | RSCH METH/FIELD RES | VO, L. | Explores various research methodologies for Asian American Studies combining theoretical knowledge with field research. Goals: conduct field research about immigrants and refugees from Asia. Topics vary: migration and labor, assimilation and cultural preservation, cultural expressions in the diaspora. |
| ASIANAM 114 | ASIAN AM FILM&VIDEO | 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, dramas and short stories, for example Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist novel, Le Ly Hayslip's memoir When Heaven and Earth Changed Places and David Henry Hwang's drama, M. Butterfly. 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. We interrogate the strengths of each medium and the spatial and temporal capabilities of the cinematic medium. |
| ASIANAM 150 | BOLLYWOOD FILM | SHROFF, B. | This course examines how the global reach of popular Hindi-language cinema of India referred to as Bollywood film creates new representations of nationalism and national narratives. Increasing travel, changing modes of life and material expansion even within India and within the Indian diasporas have generated transnational and international movements of people, media and commodities and Bollywood is a major player in these movements and markets. From 1990s, spectatorial pleasure is invested in the new consumer society and normative values like extended family are represented within lavish sets and locations and story lines reach out to affluent Indians residing in the diaspora, now seen an integral part of the nation left behind. The masculinist space of nation as represented in older films is transformed as gender and sexuality intersect with social categories of class and particularly caste and religion. As an increasingly transnational and global product, recent Bollywood cinema articulates the conflict between neo-liberal values and old normative traditions. We examine how Bollywood cinema reconstructs femininity and masculinity, gender and sexuality, and family identities in ways that attempt to challenge patriarchal, caste-based and nationalist discourses. However most Bollywood films ultimately reaffirm class, caste and especially gender hierarchies. As a counterpoint to Bollywood's conventions of gender production, we analyze independently produced films that deploy the language of Bollywood, but contest its conflicted messages, especially in terms of gender and nation. |
| ASIANAM 151D | VIET AMER STUDIES | STAFF | This course will explore the major issues affecting Vietnamese Americans in the United States. The seminar covers a wide range of topics starting with the Vietnam War to refugee migration to acculturation issues. Contemporary subjects for discussion include the challenges of transnational marriage, mixed-race identity and political representations. Students will be expected to develop their critical thinking skills not only by learning about specific issues but also by making important connections among them. The scholarship on Vietnamese American community is rather limited, so more needs to be recorded and documented about their history. Toward this end, a major component of this course is an oral history each student will complete with a Vietnamese American elder. Students are trained in oral history methodology and will conduct and process (transcribe, translate, and index) one oral history interview to donate to Viet Stories: Vietnamese American Oral History Project, which will be archived in the UCI Libraries Orange County & Southeast Asian Archive Center. |
| ASIANAM 200B | CONTEMP ISS ASAM ST | FUJITA-RONY, D. | This course explores the intersections between Asian American Studies and other interdisciplinary fields that take up questions of difference and oppression. The readings (and hopefully discussion) will reflect on the fields that established themselves around the same time as Asian American Studies and with which it is traditionally allied institutionally (African American, Chicana/o, Native American, gender and sexuality) as well as areas of scholarship that are still emerging but are no less urgent (including but not limited to ecocriticism, disability studies, critical refugee studies, migration and diaspora, transnational labor, the transpacific, and surveillance). Our purpose will be to examine how these concepts inform contemporary Asian American Studies as well as, more broadly, how they impact the study of race, gender, sexuality, and difference within the US and globally. |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | SHROFF, B. | |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | WU, J. | |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | VO, L. | |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | LEE, J. | |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | FUJITA-RONY, D. | |
| ASIANAM 290 | DIRECTED RESEARCH | STAFF |