COURSE DESCRIPTION:
For more than 50 years, the ideas, assumptions, and language of psychology have been central to American cultural life and increasingly influential in arenas as diverse as the criminal justice system, education, business, and politics. However, until recently, psychology was seen as a “one-size-fits-all” system; most psychological professionals and researchers were unaware of the ways in which cultural differences impacted notions of self, identity formation, childrearing, family relationships, and other aspects of human experience. Worse, they sometimes stigmatized the resulting differences as being “abnormal.”
This course examines the unique culturally influenced psychologies of various Asian-American groups from two main directions: students will explore the current research pertaining to Asian American psychology, and they will also examine mainstream psychological assumptions to evaluate their usefulness for Asian-American populations. Students will learn to think critically about identity formation, enculturation, assimilation and resistance, and racial and psychological normativity. They will also interrogate the ways in which other dimensions of identity, such as gender, sexual orientation, and class, affect various Asian-American experiences and psychologies.
Goals and Objectives:
By the end of this course, students will be able to identify the ways in which traditional psychological approaches have variously marginalized, ignored, and sometimes valorized Asian American experiences. They will recognize the relationships between aspects of Asian American cultural norms and the ways in which members’ identities and behaviors develop and are expressed. They will be able to describe current theories of cultural construction and explain the impact of those ideas on both identity and the field of psychology.
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TEXTS: Course packet
GRADING:
Class participation: 5%
Peer review: 5%
Reading quizzes and short writing assignments: 25%
Midterm: 15%
Final exam: 15%
3 reviews of assigned reading: 15%
Research paper: 20%
