Asian Pacific American Studies... Courses
Spring 2008 Courses
Survey Courses
Survey courses in APAS will not be offered until 2008-2009. If you need this course for graduation this year, please contact Sylvia for advising.
Electives
AMST 201B: Chinese American Language, Identity & Culture
Ashley Williams
TR 1700-1815
Historically, the identity of those who are ethnically Chinese and live in the United States has continuously evolved as they experienced both discrimination and acceptance. Language has often been an important part of this development--whether a monolingual Chinese immigrant, bilingual 2nd generation Chinese American, or English-speaking American-born Chinese, what language an individual speaks in a Chinese American community often places
him or her in a particular category. How exactly do identity and language influence each other, and how does culture change as a result? What makes someone identify as Chinese, Chinese American or American?
Pulling material from a variety of sources including films, literature, the media, and recent studies, we will employ linguistic, anthropological, sociological and historical approaches to investigate this intersection between identity, language, and culture. While we will focus primarily on the language and history of the ethnically Chinese in the U.S., we will also consider other Asian/ Pacific American groups, and student projects can also vary accordingly (and as such, this course makes no assumptions about students' knowledge of Asian/ Pacific American Studies, history, or
linguistics). By studying a combination of the social meanings, perceived expectations, and historical and contemporary presumptions involved in communities' and individuals' levels of language and identity, we will come
to a better understanding of what it means to be "American" in the context of today's multilingual/ multicultural society and current global political climate.
EDLF 555 Multi-cultural Education
Robert Covert
W 1600-1845
R 1600-1845
R 0930-1215
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.
ENLT 226 Indian and Indian-Diaspora Fiction
John Murphy
TR 1100-1215
Restricted to 1st and 2nd year students.
An introductory survey, this course provides a chance to gain essential skills in close reading and critical discussion of fiction. Its focus will be on the different paths that have been taken by Indian and Indian-Diaspora fiction in English since Independence from the British Empire in the aftermath of World War Two. The course begins with The Guide by R. K. Narayan, a founding father of Indian Anglophone fiction. It goes on to treat two novels that are paradigmatic for emerging Anglophone literatures around the world: V. S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. It concludes with novels from three recent authors whose work shows the ongoing strength of Indian and Indian-Diaspora fiction: Rohinton Mistry, Arundhati Roy, and Jhumpa Lahiri. The course's emphasis will be on the expressive possibilities of fiction and the ways it has given shape to imagination in the midst of a complex history. We'll do our reading from many points of view, but always with an eye toward understanding how fiction works at the fundamental level of the writing itself. Our meetings will consist of conversation, so it will be assumed that everyone will come prepared to contribute, whenever we meet. Other requirements include: daily quizzes, two essays, a group presentation, and a final exam.
ENLT 252 Contemporary Women's Texts
Susan Fraiman
TR 1230-1345
Restricted to 1st and 2nd year students.
An introduction to close reading and critical writing focused on recent works by women across a range of genres and ethnic cultures. In addition to novels and short fiction, we will also consider such narrative forms as memoir and film. Possible authors include Jhumpa Lahiri, Deborah Eisenberg, Katha Pollitt, Toni Morrison, Mira Nair, Gloria Anzaldua, Mary Gaitskill, Arundhati Roy, Alice Munro, Gish Jen, Buchi Emecheta, and others. Our discussion of these texts will address basic formal issues: modes of narration; the difference between "story" and "discourse"; the use of framing and other structural devices; the constraints of genre; the handling of images, tone, and diction. Likely thematic concerns include the effects of colonialism and migration on women; the relation of women and girls today to the legacies of second-wave feminism; depictions by women of such topics as growing up, growing old, marriage, diverse sexualities, racism, generational ties and tensions, violence, and work; meditations by women on globalization and a post 9-11 world. We will work not only on becoming attentive readers but also on learning to conceive and organize effective critical essays. This writing intensive course (three papers totaling 20 pages) satisfies the prerequisite for the English major as well as the second-writing requirement.
ENMC 351 Transnational Texts and Gender
Victoria Olwell
TR 1100-1215
This course examines contemporary literature and film from the combined perspectives of feminist and transnational literary theories. Focusing on such issues as decolonization, migration, work, violence, sexuality, romance, education, and social justice movements, we'll read literary works and watch films that contribute will help us to conceptualize transnational social and cultural formations. Literary readings will include works by Charlotte Bronte, Jean Rhys, Tsitsi Dengarembga, Marjane Satrapi, Zadie Smith, and Karen Tai Yamashita, and we'll watch at least one film, Ousmane Sembene's Moolaade. We'll ready theory by Chandra Mohanty, Franz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak, among others. Coursework includes several short papers, and a final exam. Our format will mix short lectures and discussion. Your class participation is crucial to this course. Really.
ENAM 382 / ENMC 382 Asian-American Fiction
Caroline Rody
TR 0930-1045
Recent decades have witnessed a surge in literary publications by Asian Americans as well as the development of a lively body of scholarship on Asian American literature as a cultural phenomenon and as a literary tradition. This course will introduce students to the field, presenting a range of twentieth-century fictions by authors of enormously diverse backgrounds, immigrants or their descendants from countries including India, Pakistan, China, Korea, Vietnam, Japan, and the Philippines, who have made North America their home and English their primary literary language. These will include authors such as Carlos Bulosan, Frank Chin, Jessica Hagedorn, Gish Jen, Maxine Hong Kingston, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chang-rae Lee, Bharati Mukherjee, John Okada, Bapsi Sidwha, Gish Jen, and Karen Tei Yamashita. We will also view a film or two and read critical articles. Requirements: active class participation, group leading of class discussion, short paragraph essays, a short and a long paper, final exam.
ENMC 482 / ENAM 482B Contemporary Ethnic American Women Writers
Caroline Rody
TR 1230-1345
In this advanced seminar, we will read intensively the work of just five great contemporary writers: Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston, Louise Erdrich, Grace Paley, and Karen Tei Yamashita. Reading two novels or multiple stories by each, we will have an opportunity to think together about developments in these writers' art and in their thematic preoccupations, the latter of which include rewriting histories of women, families, ethnic groups, cities and regions, the United States, and the larger world. Students will need to bring to the class a love of reading fiction and a commitment to collective engagement with writing. Requirements will include energetic participation, the leading (in pairs) of one discussion, several short response essays, a short paper, and a final seminar paper.
Theory
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.
ANTH 301 The History And Theory Of Anthropology
Mieke Brand
TR 1100-1215
Designed for students majoring in anthropology, this course reviews the history of anthropology from the late 18th century to the present. It explores both the development of theory and the discipline's experience in learning about the human condition in specific places across the globe. Mindful that anthropology is itself a social process, developing through certain times and distinctive to specific places, the course will consider both the discipline's generated content and the role proto- and contemporary anthropologists have played in their societies. Student must enroll in one of the discussion sections, 301D. These sections will be partly devoted to considering assigned class readings and lectures in a seminar format; but they will also be organized so that specific sets of students will focus on anthropology's contributions to the understanding of specific regions of the world, the Americas, Euro-Asia, Africa, and the Indo-Pacific. One question to be addressed here is how we make the discipline's contributions relevant to our roles as citizens of the world. Sets of students will also be responsible for reading and producing a collective critical review of the biography of a distinctive contributor to the record of anthropology, e.g., Morgan, Malinowski, Benedict, Leach. This course meets the second writing requirement.
ENCR 482 Violence and Representation
Mrinalini Chakravorty
TR 1700-1815
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, Al-Shaykh, Djebar, Salih and viewing films such as The Terrorist, Bandit Queen, and The Battle of Algiers.
PLPT 302 Modern Political Theory
George Klosko
MW 1300-1350
Studies the development of political theory from the Renaissance through the nineteenth century.
PLPT 420: Feminist Political Thought
Lawrie Balfour
T 1530-1800
Despite the frequency with which "feminism" is invoked, reviled, or celebrated in public discourse, there is little agreement about what precisely the term means. This course will not provide a single, definitive answer; indeed, it is likely to generate more questions than answers. Our task instead will be to investigate the range and complexity of classic and contemporary attempts to think theoretically about gender. We will begin by problematizing the terms of our endeavor, asking what is meant by "theory," what makes a theory "feminist," and what makes it "political." In the second unit, we will explore the promise and limitations of liberalism, Marxism/socialism, and postmodernism as bases for feminist theorizing. The third unit of the course examines politics at the intersections of race, gender, class, and sexuality in the late 20th and early 21st centuries through the study of such issues as welfare reform, marriage, and pornography. The conclusion of the course invites you to develop your own conception of the future of feminist theory and practice.
SOC 341 Race And Ethnic Relations
Milton Vickerman
MW 1400-1515
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.
SWAG 381: Feminist Theory
Karlin Luedtke
TR 1530-1645
Feminist theory is a heterogeneous field with many theoretical frameworks and methodologies, emerging from various academic and political traditions. In this course, we will cover a range of available theories on gender, including liberalism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, and postmodernism. We will explicate the central tenets of each theory and explore how it applies to contemporary issues under debate, particularly those relating to the body, sexuality, and gender difference. In addition, we will analyze the importance and implications of race, class, and national differences among women. While this class provides an overview of historical foundations and contemporary trends in Western feminism, we also examine a variety of cross-cultural critiques of these theories. Restricted to SWAG majors & minors.
Transnational
Courses on Asia and the Asian diaspora outside of America, focusing on the modern period (1800s-present)
ANTH 362 Cinema in India
H.L. Seneviratne
M 1400-1630
A discussion of the history, sociology and aesthetics of the popular Indian film. The non-popular or the "art" film is briefly discussed. The course is conducted in a seminar format. In addition to participation in discussing assigned readings, all students make presentations on selected films.
HISA 303: Twentieth Century South Asia
Neeti Nair
TR 1400-1515
History has been the unfortunate ground on which many of South Asia's fiercest political battles have played, and continue to play themselves out. This course considers a few of the key debates that have animated twentieth century South Asia. These include debates on the nature of anti-colonial nationalism; the shape of a free India; the founding principles of the states of India, Pakistan (West and East), and Sri Lanka; the independence of Bangladesh; and the legacy of colonialism on democracy, development and militancy in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. We will also consider how recourse to certain interpretations of "history" influences the crafting of policy and politics. The course is structured chronologically, beginning with a study of colonialism in early twentieth century India and ending with the challenges of deepening democratization, and unequal development in many of the countries that comprise South Asia. There is no standard text book for the course. Chapters from books and journal articles will be made available on toolkit. Films will also be used. This course is reading intensive. 200 pages of reading will be the average per week. Prior coursework in South Asian History/ Studies is not a prerequisite, but will be an asset.
HISA 312: Women and Power in South Asia
Richard Barnett
TR 1530-1645
This course addresses women's roles, means of using power, statuses, and contributions, during four millennia of South Asian history. With emphasis on the modern, but with relevant background in Indian mythology, classical history and literature, medieval Islamic chronicles, autobiographies, and eyewitness accounts, we will examine original sources, politically-driven tracts, social science studies, fictional works, and secondary material on the following issues: origins, persistence, and revision of socially and religiously constructed gender identities; autonomy vs. dependence, security vs. risk, oppression vs. liberation typologies; medieval and modern women as political actors and exemplars; female infanticide, self-immolation of widows, and bride-burning; education, health and workplace; conflicts between Western and Asian feminisms; and women power brokers in what is now India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. No previous acquaintance with South Asia, or with history, is assumed. Evaluation will rest on class discussion (33%), two presentations, one oral, one written, of individually-assigned readings (34%), and three quizzes (33%).
HIEA 100B Critical Approaches to Colonialism and Imperialism in East Asia
Aaron Moore
M 1530-1800
This course is designed to introduce commonly-used critical approaches in the study of imperialism and colonialism, but in the context of East Asia. Students of modern colonialism and imperialism will quickly discover that an understanding of these phenomena outside of the Western European colonial context is essential to their studies. Serious students of East Asia will undoubtedly realize that colonialism and imperialism are some of the most important topics in the modern history of the region. By the end of this course, students should be able to discuss issues central to the study of colonialism and imperialism using examples from East Asia, and begin thinking about whether models drawn from the European experience should be changed to fit a broader perspective. The course begins with an examination of Japanese and Chinese empire building in the Early Modern era, followed quickly by the appearance of aggressive Western colonial forces (including Russia) in East Asia during the nineteenth century. East Asian nationalist movements, economic, and domestic industrial transformations will provide the basis for a discussion of the uneven development across the region. Thematic sessions include: collaboration and resistance, ethnography and anthropology, imperial identities, the "temptations" of colonial modernity, postcolonial identities, and prewar and postwar geopolitics. Theoretical readings will accompany works of history and some primary source material, averaging about 200 pages per week. For some weeks, a film will also be assigned. Grading will be based on 1) class presentation (15%), 2) a 3-5 page midterm book summary (20%), 3) class participation (15%), and 4) an 8-10 page final paper (50%).
HIEA 402A The Cultural Revolution in China
Bradly Reed
M 1300-1530
In 1966, Mao Zedong launched his last great mass campaign by calling upon the youth of China to "practice revolution" and rebel against established authority. The tumultuous response to Mao's summons opened a ten year period in which political and social order were nearly destroyed and countless lives were ruined. With the death of Mao in 1976, a movement that had begun as an effort to keep China firmly on the path to socialism was thus brought to a close amid fear, apathy and doubt as to the legitimacy of the Communist Party and the revolution which it had led. This seminar attempts to get at the meaning and significance of the Cultural Revolution by examining it as a multi-faceted period that cannot be adequately understood through any single analytic framework. Through the reading and discussion of secondary literature and translated primary sources, we will consider a number of issues: the movement's political and ideological roots, the role and culpability of Mao, the significance of the Cultural Revolution as a youth movement, the causes of social violence, the impact of the movement on rural areas, and the influence that this "decade of violence" has had on Chinese government, society, and culture since the death of Mao. The seminar will consist of weekly readings averaging between 200-250 pages, discussions, and the completion of a substantial research paper of 20-30 pages. Evaluation will be based on the quality of both the seminar paper (50%) and attendance/participation in weekly discussions (50%). Although there are no prerequisites for this seminar, all students are expected to have read Mao's China and After, by Maurice Meisner prior to the beginning of the course.
HIEA 403 - North Korea/South Korea
Ronald G. Dimberg
M 1530-1800
This undergraduate colloquium will focus attention on the mid-twentieth century division of the Korean peninsula, why and how the division occurred, the consequences of division for Korean culture and society, post-division developments in the north and the south, and proposed strategies for re-unification. During the semester students will read such recent publications as The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950; The Korean Conundrum: America's Troubled Relations with North and South Korea; North Korea: Another Country; Crisis in North Korea. The Failure of De-Stalinization,1956; Inter-Korean Relations: Problems and Prospects, and Divided Korea. Toward a Culture of Reconciliation. Students will be prepared to discuss assigned reading material during the weekly meetings of the class, and will write critical reviews of three of the assigned books. The course grade will be based on participation in weekly discussions (2/3) and the review essays (1/3).
HISA 401A The Partition of India: Problems and Perspectives
Neeti Nair
W 1300-1530
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 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. One short essay of approximately 10 pages based on in-class readings 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, film, fiction 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. All other chapters from books, journal articles and short pieces of fiction will be made available on toolkit. This research seminar fulfils the second writing requirement. Permission of the instructor is required to register for the 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 midterm essay of 8-10 pages (20%), the presentation of research (10%) and the final research paper of 18-20 pages (30%).
JPTR 382/582 Modern Japanese Women Writers: Gender, Power & Sexuality
Michiko Wilson
W 1400-1630
This course is an introduction to the Japanese female literary tradition from the early 1920s to the present. Through lectures and open discussions, we will explore: (1) the themes and techniques of each literary text; 2) how each individual woman artist challenges and is challenged and shaped by Japanese culture and society; (3) surprising portrayals of Japanese women and men; 4) the institutions of marriage and the family; 5) their voices as cultural critics. This course also addresses several questions centered around the changing roles of and self-identity of Japanese women through an examination of their creative writings between 1920s-present: Are Japanese women as meek and voiceless as Hollywood movies and American media have traditionally portrayed them? Are Japanese women content simply being a mother and wife? How do they respond to the confinement imposed upon them by the family institution or to the political and emotional freedom given to them after World War II? How conscious are they of their gender? How do they balance gender and literary and other aspirations? Fulfills Second Writing and Non Western Perspective.
PLIR 203 Intl Relations Of East Asia
Leonard Schoppa
MW 1100-1150
An introduction to leading theories in the field of international relations with reference to major events in the history of diplomacy, war, and economic relations in the East Asian region.
PLIR 424 War and Peace In South Asia
Michael Krepon
M 1330-1600
RELI 208 Islam in the Modern Age
Aziz Sachedina
TR 1400-1515
RELI 208 will study the Muslim societies in the modern times to assess their success/failure in remolding their political/religious culture in order to become fully integrated in the international order that is founded upon secularism and modernism. The course will undertake to explore a public role for religion in general, and Islam in particular, in fostering democratic values that can accommodate a pluralistic nature of the religious and political societies in the Islamic world. That which characterizes the Muslim community is their devotion to the classical faith, Islam, with its legacy of rich past. The call for reformation of this classical heritage has been in the air for over a century. Yet, the beginning or the end of reformation is singularly difficult to observe in terms of a "new" political theology or a "fresh" pluralistic interpretation of Islam to have capacity for the changes that are sweeping Muslim societies. Islam and its people continue to grapple with the fact of Western hegemony through economic globalization and the support the West lends to their autocratic governments in suppressing their political and human rights. The course will evaluate political goals of Muslim governments in countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran, and whether these goals are congruent with the development of democratic institutions to further basic human rights.
SAST 250 Cultural History Of South Asia
Richard Cohen
TR 1530-1645
SAST 260 Bollywood Dreams: indian Cinema
Richard Cohen
MW 1400-1450
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.
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