Asian Pacific American Studies... Courses
Fall 2010 Courses
Survey Courses
AMST / ENAM 3180: Introduction to Asian-American Studies
Sylvia Chong
TR 2:00 - 3:15
Monroe Hall 110
The historical experiences of Asian Americans--a broad, panethnic category inclusive of Americans with roots in the Philippines, China, Taiwan, Japan, North and South Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and more--shed light on issues of immigration, citizenship, education, war, labor, and assimilation which have affected all Americans to differing degrees. This "multi-media" cultural history will draw heavily on American visual and popular culture to situate, visualize, and define Asian Americans at various historical moments against and alongside African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and white Americans. Some of these moments involve intense conflict and division, while others gesture towards camaraderie and affiliation. This class will be neither a simplistic celebration of ethnic pride and diversity, nor a condemnation of American history as singularly oppressive, although we will acknowledge both these strands. Rather, the eclectic materials of this class will replicate the heterogeneous history and make-up of Asian America, and establish Asian America as a relationship with itself and with America, rather than a thing to isolate and analyze.
This is an introductory course that assumes no prior knowledge of Asian American history. During the semester, we will concentrate on developing close reading skills for visual, cinematic and textual materials. We will engage with a number of primary texts from various genres, spanning the mid-19th century to contemporary times. While obviously not an exhaustive overview of Asian Americans in American cultural history, we will try to touch upon a diverse range of historical moments and cultural and political issues, so as to gain insight into the interconnectedness of multi-ethnic America. Tentative list of texts: The Coming Man, The Four Immigrants Manga, Bontoc Eulogy, Continuous Journey, History and Memory, Flower Drum Song, Who Killed Vincent Chin, Sa-I-Gu, Perfume Dreams, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.
Theory / Comparative
Note: Because APAS theory courses also serve as requirements for other majors and often have other pre-requisites, it is strongly recommended that you contact the professor before enrolling in the course. If you have already taken an eligible theory course that you need to count towards your major, you may substitute an APAS elective for your theory requirement with the APAS Director's permission.
AAS 1010: Introduction to African-American and African Studies I
Roquinaldo Ferreira
TR 12:30 - 1:45
Wilson Hall 301
This introductory course surveys the histories of people of African descent in Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean from approximately the Middle Ages to the 1880s. Emphases include the Atlantic slave trade and its complex relationship to Africa; the economic systems, cultures, and communities of Africans and African-Americans in the New World, in slavery and in freedom; the rise of anti-slavery movements; and the socio-economic systems that replaced slavery in the late 19th century.
ANTH 3010: Theory and History of Anthropology
Prista Ratanapruck
TuTh 11:00AM - 12:15PM
New Cabell 345
This course will provide a survey of anthropological theory from the late 19th-century up to the present. We will explore a diverse range of anthropological approaches developed over the course of the century, including: 19th-century evolutionism, Boasian cultural anthropology, British structural-functionalism, French structuralism, British symbolic anthropology, American cultural materialism and neo-evolutionism, later American cultural anthropology, feminism, and post-colonial and post-modern theories. We will be concerned to understand these approaches not only as theoretical frameworks for understanding other cultures, but also as cultural and historical productions, in themselves. The discussion session is obligatory. This is a required course for anthropology majors.
SOC 3410: Race and Ethnic Relations
Milton Vickerman
MW 2:00 - 3:15
New Cabell Hall 345
Introduces the study of race and ethnic relations, including the social and economic conditions promoting prejudice, racism, discrimination, and segregation. Examines contemporary American conditions, and historical and international materials. Instructor permission required.
ENCR 4500: Feminist Theory
Susan Fraiman
TR 2:00 - 3:15
Bryan 312
An introduction to American feminist criticism and theory. This course pairs novels and other works by women with theoretical essays in order to contrast diverse feminist approaches. I expect to explore such themes as looking/voyeurism, mother-daughter relations, mobility/migration, incarceration/escape, and conflicts/commonalities among women. We will also broach such theoretical issues as how to narrate the development of feminist theory, the contributions of queer theory, the logic of canon formation, the meanings of third-wave feminism, and the way gender intersects with other axes of identity/analysis (race, sexuality, class, etc.). Possible primary texts (still very tentative) include Jane Eyre, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, The Well of Loneliness, Zami, Mona in the Promised Land, a contemporary film, and a popular romance. Probable theorists include Laura Mulvey, Susan Stanford Friedman, Chandra Mohanty, and Judith Butler, among a great many others. 5-page paper, 10-page paper, and a final exam. Please contact me in advance if you would like to be put on my waiting list.
Electives
This is not an exhaustive list, but is based on the course descriptions posted by the instructors. If you have taken a course that deals with Asian American culture, history, or issues, that is not on this or previous semesters' lists, please contact the APAS Director for permission to list that course as an APAS elective.
Note: Classes marked SEMINAR, mostly at the 4000 and 5000 level, will fulfill the seminar requirement for APAS electives.
AMST 2001: Formations of American Cultural Studies
Daniel Chavez and Sylvia Chong
TR 12:30-1:45
New Cabell 340
This course introduces students to the broadly interdisciplinary field of cultural studies. As a way to understand culture in its many forms Ð everyday life, historical memory, literary and political imaginaries Ð the collective writings of intellectuals such as Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Antonio Gramsci, Paul Gilroy and many others have been of great use in the critique of disciplinary forms of knowledge. And the interdisciplinary, and increasingly transnational, field of American studies has provided unique perspectives on region, nation and globe that challenge the divides among culture, society, politics and economy. Lectures and discussions take shape from the dialogues between transatlantic cultural studies and American studies and effectively map the social formations of the United States and beyond. The material for this course will include critical theory, social history, literature, film, art and music, and may include works by W.E.B. Dubois, Carlos Bulosan, Anzia Yezierska, Nella Larsen, Elaine Brown, David Henry Hwang, Gloria Anzaldua, Janice Radway, Tony Kushner, and Jhumpa Lahiri.
AMST 2500: Language in the U.S.
Ashley Williams
TR 9:30 - 10:45
Wilson Hall 140
Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. is not (and never has been) linguistically homogenous: from dying and revitalized Native American languages to newly arrived immigrant languages, from regional and social dialect variation to innovation among adolescents and Hip Hop, the American language situation is diverse and changing. This course invites students to investigate this not-quite-melting-pot variety both through readings in current research and through small-scale field research. Topics covered in the course will include the origins and distinctions of American English, language controversies such as Ebonics and the English-Only movement, research in language attitudes and discrimination, topics in bilingualism and education, plus the latest studies in language issues involving different ethnicities, genders, sexualities, ages, and social classes.
In this course we will pull material from a variety of sources (including films, literature, the media, and recent studies), and will employ a variety of approaches (linguistic, anthropological, sociological, historical, and more) as we investigate and debate what is uniquely "American" about the language situation in the United States.
ANTH 3155: Everyday Life in America
Frederick Damon
MWF 10:00-10:50
Taking a production and exchange orientation to society, this course uses anthropological models to analyze aspects of the US experience in North America and its extension into the world. The models will be drawn from the anthropological analysis of exchange, rites of transition, sacrifice and mythology. The course will be organized in two parts. The first will provide a journalistic introduction to United States culture focusing on its financial/productive center, political institutions, and national ideologies. Anthropological, i.e. analytical, models will be reviewed as part of this introduction. The second part will examine the place of war, athletics, and movies in US culture. The collective readings of this second part are to be used by each student as a point of departure for his or her own research project and paper. Several short thematic and response papers will organize the first part. A research paper anchors the second part. Students must enroll in a section of 355D. Course Satisfies Second Writing Requirement. Anthropology majors or those in allied disciplines (e.g. History, American Studies)
EDLF 5000: Multicultural Education
Robert Covert
T 4:00PM - 6:45
T 12:30-3:15
Ruffner Hall G004A/B/C
Prepares students to deal with the increasingly multicultural educational milieu. Emphasizes the process of understanding one's own bias and prejudices and how they effect the school and classroom learning environment. Included are readings, class discussions, field projects, journal writing, and other methods of directed self explorations.
ENAM 3559: Cross-Cultures of Harlem
Sandhya Shukla
TR 9:30 - 10:45
Cabell 320
This course explores the cultural production, intellectual history and political movements that construct the globality of Harlem. Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, we cover the development of various ethnic and racial neighborhoods arrayed across regions of the area?Black Harlem, Jewish Harlem, Italian Harlem and Spanish Harlem?and the conflicts and intimacies inherent in their transformations over time. We inquire into the representation and life of Harlem through the lens of the navigation and contestation of difference. Considering migrancy, diaspora, nationalism, race and ethnicity, and class formation in comparative perspective brings the global into the local and effectively reimagines how "minoritized space" is made both materially and symbolically. We will consider works by Robert Orsi, Mat Johnson, Nella Larsen, Claude McKay, Toni Morrison, Ann Petry, Ernesto Quinones, Piri Thomas, Thomas Webber, and others.
ENAM 4500: Modern Love in the U.S.
Victoria Olwell
TR 11:00 - 12:15
McLeod 2008
Maybe love is eternal, but it's also historical and ideological. It's shaped by custom, law, and narrative, and it's central to the formation of private and public life alike. This course examines romantic love in U.S. prose fiction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Our literary readings will cross genres: romance, realism, modernism, pulp, and noir. In addition, we'll read primary texts of marital advice literature, medical writing, case law, and other non-fiction. We'll interpret our reading in light of historical changes in conceptions of love, based in factors including shifting economic conditions, changing legal and social conceptions of marriage, citizenship, and queer sexualities, and turn-of-the-century psychological models. We'll discern the connections between romantic love and ideas of race, gender, nationhood and empire. The course will likely include literary works by Helen Hunt Jackson, Frank Norris, Sui Sin Far, Willa Cather, Nella Larsen, Gertrude Stein, Zora Neale Hurston, and James M. Caine, among others. Your work for the course will be this: a short paper, a presentation in class, and a longer final paper. This is a seminar, so come ready to talk.
ENCR 4500: Violence and Representation
Mrinalini Chakravorty
MW 3:30 - 4:45
Cabell 235
This course will interrogate Fanon's assertions that the colonized find their freedom only through violence, and that decolonization is always a violent process, by considering the structuring dialectics between violence, the body, and postcolonial narratives of insurgency. If, for Fanon, decolonization is both literally and linguistically an adopted violence so that militancy against colonialism is an answer back in the imported language of destruction that the colonizer best understands, our goal will be to investigate the complex and shifting relations to violence/violation that postcolonial texts elaborate when they represent insurgent anticolonial practices. By looking closely at how postcolonial narratives represent insurgencies against power and their attendant violences, we will arrive at an analytic for addressing the technologies of pain, trauma, brutality, torture, and repression that conditioned regimes of colonial discipline and control. We will also consider the extent to which postcolonial texts appropriate an apparatus of violence in representing bodies in rebellion, while also articulating alternative visions of resistance and social change that specifically refuse the ethics of extremism. Our inquiry will draw from a critical discourse on corporeality (Foucault, Scarry), the nation (Fanon, Anderson) and gender (Butler, Spivak) to illuminate the peculiar charge in narratives of insurgency between the embodied politics of militancy and the body politic. Finally, the texts which we will be reading deal in some way with the problematic of form (how to represent the urgency of politicized violence as a condition of modernity), and in so doing reach beyond realist conventions to reflect aspects of the surreal, the grotesque, the spectacular, and the magically real. We will assess the efficacy of these forms, and their overwrought symbolism, in managing the economy between the public and the private, victims and perpetrators, masculinity and femininity, and whites and blacks, which structured the play of colonial violence itself. Over the course of the term, we will be reading writers as diverse as Roy, Coetzee, Ondaatje, Al-Shaykh, El-Sadaawi, and Rushdie, and viewing films such as The Terrorist, Bandit Queen, Three Kings, and The Battle of Algiers.
PLAP 3700: Racial Politics
Lynn Sanders
MW 11:00 - 11:50
Minor Hall 125
Examines how attributions of racial difference have shaped American Politics. Topics include how race affects American political partisanship, campaigns and elections, public policy, public opinion, and American political science. Prerequisite: One course in PLAP or instructor permission.
Transnational
ANTH 3630: Chinese Family and Religion
John Shepherd
TR 12:30-13:45
This course will introduce students to anthropological analysis of the traditional Chinese forms of the Chinese family and popular religion, and their modern transformations. Topics to be covered include the dynamics of Chinese marriage and domestic life, gender roles, the religious underpinnings of Chinese family life in ancestor worship and the Chinese cult of the dead, marriage rituals, and the cult of filial piety. The forms of temple worship, the interaction of the Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian traditions, and the shamanic tradition will also be covered. Finally, attention will be paid to the changing role of the family and religion in 20th- and 21st-centuryChinese life.
ANTH 3700: Contemporary India
Ravindra Khare
M 2:00 - 4:30
An anthropological discussion of selected changing aspects of and issues in India since independence, with a focus on interdependently transforming Indian modernity and traditions in the (a) changing social organization; (b) leaders, caste politics and Indian democracy; (c) social inequalities, Indian modernity and the middle class; (d) religious diversity, religious rituals and politics; and (e) India in the Indian Diaspora.
ANTH 5529-001: Anthropology of Buddhism
Nicolas Sihle
M 3:30 - 6:00
This new seminar is an examination of Buddhism in contemporary societies, primarily in Asia, from an anthropological perspective. The organization of the course will be primarily thematic, and comparative: we will focus on certain key themes (such as monasticism, complex religious fields, gift and exchange, ritual, religious texts, gender, the state, modernity, globalization...) and, for each of those, analyze comparatively a selection of ethnographic studies based on Buddhist traditions ranging from Sri Lanka, Thailand and Burma to Tibet, parts of Nepal, China and Japan. Interested students are encouraged to consult the instructor in advance in order to discuss particular thematic or theoretical interests. Course meets Second Writing Requirement.
EAST 3055: Social Movements in Modern East Asia
Ellen Fuller
TR 5:00 - 6:15
New Cabell Hall 224
HIEA 2031: Modern China: Road to Revolution
Bradly W. Reed
MW 11:00 - 11:50
Gilmer Hall 190
This course is about the revolutionary transformation of the world's oldest empire into the world's largest socialist state. It is about the people, personalities, and events that have given Modern Chinese history its dramatic and sometimes tragic tone. It is also about the social, political, and cultural currents that lay beneath these more visible manifestations of change and the profound effect these forces have had on the Chinese people.
Following a brief consideration of the political and social institutions of the last imperial dynasty (the Qing, 1644-1911), we will examine the interaction of foreign aggression and domestic social crises that led first to the fall of the imperial order and the establishment of a Republic in 1911 and then to the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. The final month of the semester will then be devoted to the post-'49 era under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a period that has been described as the most thoroughgoing attempt at revolutionary social transformation in world history. We will close with a look at the post-Mao reform era and the issues facing China today after nearly a century of revolution.
Weekly reading assignments, drawn from a survey textbook (R. Keith Schoppa, Revolution and its Past, 2nd edition) as well as other secondary and translated primary sources, will average about 150 pages. Grades for the course will be based on a mid-term exam (30%), a final exam (30%), a ten-page essay (30%) and attendance and participation in discussion sections (10%).
HIEA 2072: Modern Japanese Culture and Politics
Robert P. Stolz
MW 1:00 - 1:50
Nau 211
This course is an introduction to the politics, culture, and ideologies of Modern Japan from roughly 1800 to the 1990s. It investigates the processes of Japan's experience as a modern nation-state and its historical consequences. We will pay special attention to the complex interplay between Japan's aggressive participation in global modernity and its simultaneous assertion of cultural particularity. This will help us understand the important tension between a modernity based on constant change and the lure of an unchanging cultural essence characteristic of all modern societies, in the Japanese case often expressed in an ambiguous understanding of its place in the modern world, especially in relation to Asia and "the West."
HIEA 2101: Korea, 1870's - 2010
Ronald G. Dimberg
MWF 1:00 - 1:50
Ruffner Hall G004A
HIEA 2101 will cover the history of Korea from the 1870's through the first decade of the 21st century. During the course of the semester we shall discuss the consequences for Korea of the end of the traditional East Asian order in the late 19th century, the characteristics and consequences of the period of Japanese colonial rule, the divergent routes followed in the north and the south following liberation in August of 1945, developments within the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, relations between the two countries, and prospects for reunification. Reading material will include The Making of Modern Korea; Korea: A Religious History; Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood; Creative Women of Korea; and excerpts from such books as Inter-Korean Relations: Problems and Prospects and Korea at the Center. The course grade will be based on two essays (25% each) and two one-hour examinations (25% each).
HIEA 4501: Seminar in East Asian History: Japan in the 1930s
Robert P. Stolz
Mo 6:00 - 8:30
Nau 142
Major Seminar for history majors (non-majors by permission only). Although our focus in this class will be the relatively short period of the 1930s, our themes will range from nationalism, global capitalism, imperialism, Marxism, modernism, culturalism, and fascism. Using both theoretical and primary readings, in our discussions we will try to understand this decade as a Japanese inflection of a global crisis: of capitalism, of political liberalism, of internationalism, and so on. Reading loads will vary greatly depending on the difficulty of the texts. At the end of the course you will be expected to produce a significant research paper on a topic from our class. No knowledge of Japanese required.
HIEA 4511: Colloquium in East Asian History: North Korea and the Rise of the Kim Dynasty
Ronald G. Dimberg
Mo 3:30 - 6:00
New Cabell Hall B029
In HIEA 4511, North Korea and the Rise of the Kim Dynasty, students will consider the lives and careers of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, Great Leader and Dear Leader respectively of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). During the semester students will read about and reflect upon the process by which the elder Kim achieved his status and the circumstances leading to the designation of the younger Kim as successor and heir. During weekly class sessions students will address such issues as the division of the Korean peninsula; the background of the elder Kim as a guerrilla fighter in Manchuria; the extent to which the DPRK is a ÔStalinist' state; the meaning and significance of juche and Kimilsungism; the cults of personality surrounding the elder and younger Kims; the effects of Kim policies on the people of North Korea; the upbringing, education and preparation of the younger Kim, etc. Students will read between eight and ten books during the semester, including The Partition of Korea after World War II; The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950; Human Remolding in North Korea; and Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era. In addition to participating in weekly discussions students will write critical review essays of two books on the reading list. The course grade will be based on regular participation in weekly discussion (2/3) and the average of the review essay grades (1/3). Students must receive the permission of the course instructor to enroll.
HISA 1501: Introductory Seminar in South Asia: Pakistan: Islamic Frontier
Richard Barnett
W 3:30 - 6:00
New Cabell Hall 245
This course is an excursion into the study of history as a way of thinking. It is also an introduction to a nuclear-armed nation under enormous stress, facing important social, political, economic, and ideological challenges. The course will examine aspects of society and politics in Pakistan, while allowing us to sharpen our historical awareness and polish our writing and debating skills. The course subtitle refers not only to a geopolitical convention, but perhaps more importantly, to the struggle within the conscience that Pakistanis are experiencing.
No previous acquaintance with South Asia is assumed or required. Texts and assignments:
Owen Bennett Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm (2003); Stephen Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan (2004); Oskar Verkaaik, Migrants and Militants: Fun and Urban Violence in Pakistan (2004); Christophe Jaffrelot, ed., Pakistan: Nationalism without a Nation? (2002); Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution (1994); Brillig Books, #7 Elliewood Avenue, have photocopied articles. There will be no exams. Evaluation will rest on class discussion (25%), oral presentation of written work (25%), plus three closely-edited essays of two, four and eight typed pages, at intervals (50%). Successful work in this course satisfies the College's second writing requirement. Readings average 100 pp./week.
HISA 2003: History of Modern India
Neeti Nair
TR 2:00 - 3:15
Gibson 211
A survey course, major topics include conflict and accommodation in the Indo-Islamic world; change and continuity under colonial rule; competing ideas on the shape and substance of a new India; and the Partition of the subcontinent in 1947. This course is the first of a two-semester sequence: in the spring we will focus on Twentieth century South Asia. The following textbooks will be available in the bookstore: Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy and Ramachandra Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field: the Indian History of a British Sport. Other required readings consisting of primary and secondary sources will be placed on collab. Films will also be used. Course requirements include attendance and active participation in class (15%); a book review (20%); a midterm exam (25%); and a final exam (40%).
HISA 4501: Seminar in South Asia: The Partition of India: Problems and Perspectives
Neeti Nair
W 1:00 - 3:30
Nau 241
The Partition of India has been the defining political misstep in 20th century South Asia, confounding centuries of fluid identities in one sweeping irreversible decision. In this course we examine the texture of life in pre-Partition Punjab, the United Provinces (UP) and Bengal; detail the denouement in political negotiations that culminated in Partition; consider the violence that became constitutive of Partition; and mark the enormous consequences of the international boundary line separating India from Pakistan and later, Bangladesh. Films, fiction and a range of primary and secondary sources will be used. A five page proposal will be due for the mid-term. The final essay of 18-20 pages will be a research paper drawing upon a range of primary sources like the Transfer of Power volumes, contemporary newspapers, collections of correspondence, memoirs, Partition literature etc. The following books will be available for purchase at the bookstore: Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the demand for Pakistan, Cambridge University Press, [1985], 1994; Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, Oxford University Press, [1990], 2006; Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar, The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories, New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. All other chapters from books, journal articles and short pieces of fiction will be made available on collab. This research seminar fulfils the second writing requirement. Permission of the instructor is required to register for the course. Prior coursework in South Asian Studies/ History will serve as a prerequisite for this course. The reading load will average 200 pages a week. Course requirements include active participation in discussions (20%); weekly one-page position papers (20%); a short proposal of 5 pages (10%), the presentation of research (10%) and the final research paper of 18-20 pages (40%).
JPTR 2990: Modern Japanese Women Writers
Michiko Wilson
W 2:00 - 4:30
New Cabell Hall 320
PLCP 3610: Chinese Politics
Brantly Womack
MW 3:30 - 4:45
Gibson 341
PLCP 3630: Politics in India and Pakistan
John Echeverri-Gent
TR 11:00 - 12:15
Gibson 141
PLCP 3640: Women and Politics in South Asia
Rina Williams
Tu 2:00 - 4:30
Pavilion VIII 103
SAST 3300: The Pleasures of Bollywood: Melodrama, Realism, Mythos
Geeta Patel
W 2:30 - 5:00
New Cabell Hall 325
Archive of past semesters' APAS courses
Because APAS is still developing as a program, its course offerings are constantly in flux. Please look at these listings of past courses to get a sense of what classes typically count towards the APAS minor.
|
