ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES PROGRAM

Description: Introduction to Asian American Studies surveys major themes in the field through engagement with a variety of material from a wide range of disciplines, including scholarship, comedy, film, cartoons, music, dance, reality television, visual art, and public protests. The purpose of this course is to introduce students to some of the major conversations and approaches of this interdisciplinary field. Students will delve into the development of Asian American Studies as a discipline through an overview of the history of racial formation, migration, settler colonialism, U.S. militarization, gender/sexuality, politics of representation, detention, incarceration, and political mobilization.

Description: “Asian America” is a composite of ethnic communities formed by migration between the regions of “Asia” and the "Americas." But how did these disparate groups come to become known as “Asian America”? In this course, we will explore the histories of various Asian American communities (e.g. Chinese American, Japanese American, Korean American, Filipina/o American, Indian American, Native Hawaiian communities). Our readings will begin with the pre-World War II Asian American experiences of exclusion and community establishment. We will then consider how it is that these different communities became known as an Asian American “community,” especially through the experience of the Second World War. Finally, we will read stories of post-1960s migrations and the ideological and material divisions that have emerged in Asian America. Cross-listed with HIST 214.

Description: In this course, we will try to survey the various ideologies, movements, and communities that make up what is called ‘Chinese America.’ We will do this through some texts that I have chosen that I think represent the field of Chinese American studies. Some of these texts are fictional, others are historiographical, and still others are sociological. By reading these texts, we might gain a sense of how internally diverse, if not divisive, ‘Chinese America’ is and yet how this term ‘Chinese America’ is still used as a coherent term of political mobilization. Throughout the class, students will write weekly reflections; there will also be a short midterm paper and a longer final essay.

Description: Refugee Aesthetics is a survey course that examines histories of racialization, war, forced migration, nation-state formation, humanitarian aid, and resettlement alongside questions of the politics of aesthetics, ethics of representation, and social justice. Students will explore how refugee aesthetics is broadly defined, performed, and contested through maps, graphic novels, films, textiles, performance art, theatre, visual art, music videos, and religious iconography. The course will offer students theoretical and creative practice-based frameworks of analysis to address historical and contemporary issues on refugees.

Description: TBD

Description: This course is situated at the intersection of theoretical, cultural, medical, and commercial online discourses concerning the burgeoning GCS-related surgeries (Gender Confirmation Surgery) presented online and conducted in Bangkok, Thailand. Using “Trans,” and Critical Race Theories, we will discuss the cross-cultural intersections, dialogues, refusals, and adaptions when thinking about medical travel to Thailand for gender/sex related surgeries. We will examine Thai cultural/historical conceptions of sex and gender, debates concerning bodies and diagnoses, and changes in presentations of sex/gender related surgeries offered online. Asian American Studies, medical discourses, and an archive of web images offering SRS surgeries to Thailand produced by Thais for western clientele will serve as axes for investigating this topic.

Description: This upper-level undergraduate/ graduate seminar examines relationships between language, race and ethnicity in the contemporary United States. It pairs major theoretical concepts from linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and critical race and ethnic studies to examine ethnographic case studies about identity, subjectivity, racism, and institutions. The course will focus on language use among Asian Americans but also examine language practices by Latinos and Blacks by comparison. Topics include: language in media; bilingualism in schools and workplaces; the English Only movement; social media activism; names and naming; colonialism and postcolonialism; and transracial formations. Students will also be asked to apply course concepts to analyze relevant contemporary issues, including presidential malapropisms; controversies about place names and sports team names/ mascots; the 2018 elections; racial crossing and passing; and Yellow English today.

Description: The 20th century has been marked by upheaval and consequent migration for the people of the Korean peninsula. As a result of these migrations, substantial communities of ethnic Koreans exist in Central Asia, China, Japan, the United States and Canada, South America and Europe. How and why did Koreans go to these places? What kinds of communities and identities did they construct? How do these Koreans fit into the history of Korea, particularly in the context of a country divided into two opposing states? How do they fit into the history of their host countries? By examining the histories of ethnic Koreans outside the Korean peninsula, we will examine issues of migration, diaspora, race relations, and colonialism. We will also take a fresh look at modern Korean history by examining how these “overseas Koreans” view and relate to the history and ongoing politics of their divided homeland.

Description: In this course, we will try to reflect on ‘social movements’ that are deemed to be ‘Asian American’ by investigating what they are and what social and political effects they may have had. The class material features texts that I have assigned, which mostly focus on the ‘Asian American Movement’ in the Third World Liberation Front and its aftermath. Students will also explore the effects of a social movement deemed ‘Asian American’ in a final project.

Description: Asian Americans in Chicago is a theatre and performance course focusing on issues of immigration, resettlement, gentrification, community building, and activism. Students will conduct and analyze oral histories of Asian Americans living in Chicago and develop a staged performance with the instructor. Through a theatre and performance studies based approach, students will learn theories of embodiment, affect, and materiality to explore the ethics of representation, memory, and subjectivity. The course will also cover methods in ethnographic, oral history, and archival research. *No prior performance experience is required.

Description: Asian Americans and Popular Culture surveys a history of Asian/American race relations, experiences, and subject formation in the United States from the 1800s to the present day through cultural production. Students will study how Asian Americaness is performed, caricatured, and re-imagined through popular culture including film, comics, television, theatre, music, literature, public protest, sports, and social media. The course will offer language that allows students to analyze and develop creative work to respond to and re/frame debates on the politics of representation, exoticization, cultural appropriation, transnationalism, hybridity, and U.S. immigration laws.

Description: Asian American religions are often confused with Asian religions in the U.S. At times this situation produces confusion about how to talk about the everyday religious practices of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders themselves, including those who claim to be nonreligious. I have assigned texts that will help us to parse what Asian American and Pacific Islander religions are. The crux of this course will be student projects conducted over the quarter on one practice in the community of their choice exploring the question of what Asian American and/or Pacific Islander religion might be.

Description: This class excavates contemporary Asian American literature by reading a range of texts structured around the concept of the archive. Given the obstacles to creating a coherent “Asian American archive,” our exploration will be defined as much by the absences, gaps, and contradictions of the archive as by what is found “within” it. By exploring archives as receptacles of histories and memories, as a process of assemblage, and as geneses for fictional counterarchives—this course encourages us to think about the importance of textual origins.

Description: This course looks at America's perceptions of Asians by comparing American mainstream media’s portrayal of Asians in comparison to Asian filmmakers’ portrayal of Asians. In particular, this class surveys case studies of Asian American icons to see differences in the perspectives and approaches by American mainstream media compared to Asian filmmakers. In doing this, the class investigates issues of representation and misrepresentation in mass cultural stereotypes of Asians to show how they have been rooted in confusions surrounding cultural differences between Asians and Asian Americans. The course presents Hollywood films; mainstream Asian films, independent works as well as other visual media.

Description: What is ‘Asian America’? Can you put it on a map? Does it even exist? These questions address the problem of referring to ‘Asian America’ as if it were a space and a place, even though it is difficult to locate it. The technical word that might be used for this conundrum is geography, the literal writing of the earth. In this course, we will explore some contemporary ways that ‘Asian America’ has been imagined and lived in as a space, including in ways that include the ‘trans-Pacific,’ urban hubs and suburbia, refugee communities, and indigenous sovereignty. Students will reflect on weekly readings and work toward a final project to be submitted at the end of the term.

Description: This course is composed of two parts. The first is an introduction to foundational works of 20th-century Asian American literature. We will begin with the newspaper stories of Sui Sin Far and Hisaye Yamamoto, continue with works on labor by Carlos Bulosan and Peter Bacho, and conclude with Maxine Hong Kingston’s genre-defying The Woman Warrior. The second part is a study of contemporary texts: Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker, Jhumpa Lahiri’s short stories, Aimee Phan’s We Should Never Meet, and Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange.

Description: What is the China in Chinatown? How is it different from a town in China? As a class, we will explore this question together through case studies of different Chinatowns throughout the world, along with supplementary material I will assign to parse those cases. In this sense, our inquiry will be global, although we will ask what that might mean too. Each student will choose one Chinatown in one city from somewhere in the world and ask: what is the China in this Chinatown? This project will be conducted in the stages of proposal, class fair presentation, and final submission.

Description: This course situates relevant political discussions in the Vietnamese American community within a historical context. The class will discuss historical issues of anticommunism, refugeeism, community policing and ostracization, and conclude with contemporary issues relating to the Trump Presidency. The course engages these topics by situating these Vietnamese American discussions within a history of war and migration. The course will provide students with a history of the Vietnam War, Vietnamese refugee migration to the United States, and how these refugees formed their communities in America. Students will be appraised of the literature on forced migration, diaspora, memory, oral history, and community politics. The course aims to give students insights on the historical and political fabric that makes up Vietnamese America.

Description: Performing Asian Diaspora Foodways weaves community engagement, artistic practice, culinary musings, and scholarly texts to center food as a site of investigating histories of colonialism, U.S. militarization, war, and globalization. This performance-based seminar will examine how Asian America is consumed and produced through food to grapple with structural inequality and relations of power of race, class, gender, sexuality, and citizenship. Students will connect with local Chicago-based chefs, restaurateurs, grocery store workers, and artists. The course will draw on documentary films, novels, cooking shows, artworks, ethnographies, and community-based projects.