Course Descriptions

Flags: Cultural Diversity in the U.S. and Writing 

Nostalgic images of the nuclear family in the United States present us with the picture of a father, mother, and biologically conceived son and daughter all living in a single family home. As a social institution, the family has experienced many changes in contemporary U.S. society. This course is designed as an introduction to alternative family systems in the United States contextualized in a Post-WWII framework. Asian Americans will serve as our central focus to survey the development of alternative families. The course addresses the historic, more traditional forms of Asian immigration and quickly moves into the ways globalization, transnationalism, imperialism/occupation, mixed race, modern reproductive technologies, and transracial adoptions complicate our understanding of the contemporary family. Examples include transnational Filipino families and caregivers, surrogate motherhood, and South Korean adoption beginning in the Cold War stretching to more contemporary practices in China. This course will incorporate interdisciplinary texts, media sources, and documentary films. A major topic of this course will be to analyze how issues of race and ethnicity inform identity. Additionally, we will explore the ways family formation is situated in history, politics, military engagements, and imperialism. Throughout the course we will also investigate how gender, kinship, and transnationalism intersect and shape our understanding of transracial and transnational families. Many people have different experiences with family formation and this course will examine them through an analytical and critical lens.Throughout the semester this course raises many questions. Examples include but are not limited to: What does it mean to be an immigrant? How are family structures complicated by larger global issues? How does transracial adoption change our understanding of what it means to be “American” or “Asian America?” This class provides a space to examine questions, interpret materials, exchange ideas, and gain an increased understanding of contemporary alternative family formation.

Flags: Cultural Divesity in the U.S. and Writing

What is “race,” and what does it mean to be “mixed”? How is mass media responsible for channeling fears, desires, and anxieties about “mixed” bodies? Why are “mixed race” bodies suddenly desirable and chic? Can one exist in two or more categories at the same time? How do people think of “mixedness” in the U.S., and how is it different in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Brazil? Why do people care so much? Why do categories matter? Isn’t everyone “mixed” somehow? Where do you fit in?

This course will give students the tools to critically respond to these questions via a comparative, historically situated study of the representation of "mixed-race" people in popular media. Major attention will be paid to special concerns for Asian American populations; it includes substantial attention to African American and Latino populations. Chiefly U.S.-centered, but with a large transnational comparative component analyzing “mixed” racial formation in: North America, Latin America, Caribbean, Brazil.

Instructor:  Eils, C            Areas:  -- / A

Unique #:  35050            Flags:  Cultural Diversity; Writing

Semester:  Fall 2013            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  AAS 314            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: This course is about the power of narrative and representation in twentieth- and twenty-first century Asian American literature. We will read a variety of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama, paying particular attention to questions the texts raise about the responsibilities – and privileges – of storytellers and audiences. To do so, we will approach the course readings from various cultural, historical, and formal perspectives, putting the texts into conversation with, for example, postcolonialism, US legal history, feminism, and popular culture.

As a class, we will also consider how the cultural productions we study create and animate understandings of “Asian American,” a category inclusive of myriad national, social, and legal histories and relationships, as well as experiences shaped by citizenship, class, gender, and sexuality.

This discussion-driven course has been designed with both English majors and non-English majors in mind. The critical writing and analytical reading skills we will develop will help students succeed in upper-division courses in many majors across campus, including English.

Tentative Texts include No-No Boy by John Okada; The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston; M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang; Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn; Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri; The Book of Salt by Monique Truong, and selected short stories, poems, and critical texts available in a course reader including work by Hisaye Yamamoto, Don Lee, Louis Chu, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Frank Chin, among others.

Requirements & Grading: short critical responses (30%); in-class reading responses and participation (10%); two 3-4-page critical essays (15% each); final 5-7-page essay (30%). Students will have the opportunity to revise major writing assignments based on instructor feedback.

For Asian American studies majors only. Supervised, student-derived research in Asian American studies. May be repeated for credit when the research projects vary.

Prerequisite: Rhetoric and Writing 306 and consent of the director of the Center for Asian American Studies.

Restricted enrollment; contact the department for permission to register for this class.

This interdisciplinary course explores the histories, cultures, and experiences of im/migration to the U.S. by examining cultural productions (literary and visual narratives and texts) alongside legal discourses (legislation, federal court cases, legal scholarship) and historical analyses.  Informed by critical race theory, ethnic studies, and cultural studies scholarship, we will pay particular attention to the tensions between the legal discourses and practices that seek to regulate and manage im/migrants and the cultural productions that expose and articulate the limits and contradictions of the law.  Some questions we will consider through the semester include: What are defining encounters that have shaped im/migrant lives and cultures?  How do cultural studies inform our understanding of what it means to be an im/migrant under U.S. law?  How have im/migrants challenged notions of U.S. nationhood and legal regimes? 

We will begin by considering what is at stake in looking at cultural and legal texts together within a comparative ethnic studies frame.  The course then examines the closing and opening of U.S. borders to regulate the entry of im/migrants, giving particular attention to the case of Chinese Exclusion—the first racially/ethnically based prohibition on immigration.  We will also pay close attention to the relations between capitalism/labor and nation.  The course concludes by considering questions of naturalization and the limits of citizenship, particularly in light of recent “crises” over immigration.

Requirements

Attendance and Participation in class and on Blackboard website: 10%

Collaborative Presentations: 10%

Accompanying paper on presentation material (4 pages): 10%

Paper 1 (5 pages):  25%

Peer Review and Major Revision of Paper 1: 10%

Paper 2 (7-8 pages): 35%

Possible Texts

Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America

Maxine Hong Kingston, Chinamen

Fae Myenne Ng, Bone

Chang-Rae Lee, Native Speaker

Josefina Lopez, Real Women Have Curves

John Mraz and Jamie Vélez-Storey, Uprooted: Braceros in the Hermanos Mayo’s Lens

Films

Frieda Lee Mock, Maya Lin: A Strong, Clear Vision

Stephanie Black, H-2 Worker

Robert Kenner, Food, Inc.

Robert Rodriguez, Machete

Additional book chapters, articles, and legal primary source documents.

Upper-division standing required. Students may not enroll in more than two AMS 370 courses in one semester.

Flag(s): Writing, Cultural Diversity

Flag: Cultural Diversity in the U.S.

This course will examine the history of American empire, and the migrations and immigrations produced by that history, from a comparative and transnational perspective.  The course will pay particular attention to the expansion of American influence in Asia, as well as Asian migration to and from the United States, and the issues of race, gender, class and national identity that arose as a result of those movements.  We will also examine how the history of empire have changed and challenged notions of citizenship and belonging, often expressed in racialized and gendered terms.

Flag: Cultural Diversity in the U.S.

This course examines the South Asian diaspora in United States. We will focus on Americans who trace their descent to India, Pakistan or Bangladesh. While studying the history and culture of South Asian America, we will discuss globalization, transnationalism, migration, assimilation, formation of a diaspora, discrimination, and gender and sexuality, all major themes in Asian American Studies. The course is arranged chronologically and thematically. We will start in the early twentieth century following the journey of the first South Asian migrants to arrive in California. The second part of the course will focus on the effects of the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act. Topics covered include economic and social reasons for immigration, adaptation to American life, cultural and religious assimilation, changing family structures, and discrimination and exclusion. We will end the semester by discussing South Asian American life in the twenty-first century.

This class examines U.S. history from the perspective of Chinese who were the first targets of racially defined immigration restrictions. As such, Chinese have played key roles in the evolution of U.S. immigration restrictions, their enforcement, limits regarding citizenship; permanent residency, and the underlying racial ideologies and conceptions of national belonging.

This course offers an overview of the history of Chinese in America with an emphasis on Chinese American identity and community formations under the shadow of the Yellow Peril. Using primary documents and secondary literature, we will examine structures of work, family, immigration law, racism, class, and gender in order to understand the changing roles and perceptions of Chinese Americans in the United States from 1847 to the present.

Partially fulfills legislative requirement for American history.

Texts:

Kwong and Miscevic, Chinese America; excerpts from _Island_, _Chinese American Voices_, _Longtime Californ'_,

Grading:

Midterms on lectures and assigned texts. Research paper on Chinese American history.

How and when do cities burn? The modern US city has seen its share of urban unrest, typified by street protests (both organized and spontaneous), the destruction of private property, looting, and fires. Interpretations of urban unrest are varied: some describe it as aimless rioting, others as political insurrection. Most agree that the matter has something to do with the deepening of racism, poverty and violence. This course takes a closer look at the roots of urban unrest, exploring a range of origins: joblessness, state violence, white flight, the backlash against civil rights gains, new immigration and interracial strife. Urban unrest is often cast as an intractable struggle between black and white, yet this course examines the ways in which multiple racial groups have entered the fray. Beyond race and class, the course will also explore unrest as a mode of pushing the normative boundaries of gender and sexuality in public space. Course material will draw from film, literature, history, geography and anthropology.

Required Texts:

The majority of readings will be available as pdf on Blackboard. Students must acquire the following texts:

Robert F. Williams, Negroes With Guns

Robin D.G. Kelley, Yo Mama’s Dysfunctional: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America

Dan Georgakis and Marvin Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution

Robert Gooding Williams eds. Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban Uprising

Grading:

Attendance:                                                                                                                                                      

15%

Participation:                                                                                                                                                   

10%

Three Reflection Papers and re-writes [4 pages each] (worth 15% each):

45%

Final [TBD]                                                                                                                                                           

30%

Racism preoccupies virtually every aspect of U.S. society: culture, law, politics, economies. Yet U.S.-based scholars have offered surprisingly few comprehensive theories or definitions of what, exactly, racism entails and where it comes from. This course examines the few theories/definitions of racism across several fields: anthropology, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, gender/sexuality studies. During the second half of the course, we turn our attention to anti-racist activism, particularly within people of color and immigrant communities. How have these anti-racist efforts measured up to existing scholarly theories of racism? Or do they instead produce new theories and definitions of their own?

For Asian American studies majors only. Supervised, student-derived research in Asian American studies. May be repeated for credit when the research projects vary.

Prerequisite: Upper-division standing, Rhetoric and Writing 306, and consent of the director of the Center for Asian American Studies.

Restricted enrollment; contact the department for permission to register for this class.

Supervised internship in community, civic, or government organization or program that facilitates the economic, political, and social development of the Asian American Community. Prerequisite Upper-division standing and consent of the director of the Center for Asian American Studies.

Restricted enrollment; contact the department for permission to register for this class.