This course will introduce both a variety of writings and media by Asian North American authors and some critical issues concerning the production and reception of Asian American texts. Working with a variety of genres, we will be asking questions about the relation between literary forms and the socio-historical context within which they take on their meanings, and about the historical formation of Asian American identities. (ENGL-LOA, ENGL-PST)

Full details for AAS 2620 - Introduction to Asian American Literature

The common perception of ethnicity is that it is a natural and an inevitable consequence of cultural difference. Asians overseas, in particular, have won repute as a people who cling tenaciously to their culture and refuse to assimilate into their host societies and cultures. But, who are the Asians? On what basis can we label Asians an ethnic group? Although there is a significant Asian presence in the Caribbean, the category Asian itself does not exist in the Caribbean. What does this say about the nature of categories that label and demarcate groups of people on the basis of alleged cultural and phenotypical characteristics? This course will examine the dynamics behind group identity, namely ethnicity, by comparing and contrasting the multicultural experience of Asian populations in the Caribbean and the United States. Ethnographic case studies will focus on the East Indian and Chinese experiences in the Caribbean and the Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, and Indian experiences in the United States.

Full details for AAS 3030 - Asians in the Americas: A Comparative Perspective

The term AAPI is often used as a U.S. demographic category for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, but what brings these disparate groups together? This course explores the interrelation between East Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas as geographies and ideological imaginaries shaped by power struggles and empire. How have U.S., Japanese, and other empires structured the exchanges, intimacies, transformations, and tensions linking peoples across the Pacific, Asia and the Americas? What are the social, cultural, political, and economic reverberations of colonial invasions, hot wars, cold war, migrations, and racial formations? How does thinking about and critiquing imperialism inform what we mean when we say AAPI? Drawing on visual media, fiction, poetry, historical documents, speeches, and more, this course will track the relationship between the personal and political and ask what subjects emerge from competing imperial modernities. (ENGL-GLS, ENGL-LOA, ENGL-PST)

Full details for AAS 3674 - AAPI and Empire

Across twentieth-century history, race and war have been dynamic forces in shaping economic organization and everyday livelihoods. This course will approach labor and working-class history, through a focus on global war as well as 'wars at home.' Racial and warfare events often intersect-in the histories of presidents and activists, business leaders and industrial workers, CIA agents and police, soldiers and prisoners, American laborers abroad and non-Americans migrating stateside. In this course, we'll consider how race and war have been linked-from the rise of Jim Crow and U.S. empire in the 1890s, to the WWII 'Greatest Generation' and its diverse workplaces, to Vietnam and the civil rights movement, to the Iraq wars and immigrant workers, to debates about what has been called a 'military-industrial complex' and a 'prison-industrial complex'. (HIST-HNA)

Full details for AAS 3885 - Race and War in History: Workers, Soldiers, Prisoners, Activists

This course focuses on three major and interrelated themes within Filipino/Filipino American history: war/empire, labor/migration, and culture/imaginaries. How do we account for the overwhelming number of Filipinos in nursing, domestic work, and the U.S. military? How do filmmakers, visual/theatre artists, and writers continue to remember the oft-forgotten history of U.S.-Philippine relations? In what ways have diasporic and immigrant Filipinos as well as Filipino Americans created their own culture as well as engaged with their counterparts in the Philippines? By reading historical and sociological texts alongside popular cultural texts and artistic examples, this course considers the politics of history, memory, and cultural citizenship in Filipino America. (ASIAN-SC)

Full details for AAS 4050 - Critical Filipino and Filipino American Studies

Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for AAS 4950 - Independent Study

Individualized readings and research for graduate students. Topics, readings, writing requirements, and the number of course credits to be determined through consultation between the student and the faculty supervisor.

Full details for AAS 7200 - Directed Graduate Individual Study

Independent study course in which a small group of students works with one member of the graduate faculty. Topics, readings, writing requirements, and the number of course credits to be determined through consultation between the students and the faculty supervisor.

Full details for AAS 7300 - Directed Graduate Group Study