Asian Pacific American Studies... Courses
Archived Course Lists
Spring 2009 Courses
Survey Courses
None available for Spring 2009.
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.
AMST 201B: Chinese American Language, Identity and Culture
Ashley Williams (amw9z)
TR 0930-1045
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.
ANTH 258 / SWAG 258: Anthropology of Reproduction: Fertility and the Future
Holly Donahue Singh (hd6w)
TR 1400-1515
In this course, we will study human reproduction as a cultural process. Among our central questions will be: how do gender, class, race, and religion shape reproductive ideals and practices around the world? How do difficulties in reproduction, ranging from infertility and pregnancy loss (miscarriage) to natural disaster and political upheaval, impact those ideals and practices? Our ethnographic examples will come from around the world, but will emphasize South Asia and the United States. We will examine the perspectives of both men and women and situate local examples within national and global struggles to (re)produce the future.
ENAM 317 / ENMC 317: Contemporary Ethnic American Fiction
Caroline Rody (cmr8v)
TR 1230-1345
This semester's theme will be Contemporary Interethnic Fiction. In the wake of the globalizing changes that have made the U.S. a multi-diasporic society, contemporary fiction is increasingly animated by a drive toward encounter across multiple ethnic differences and an ironic consciousness of imbrication in a hybridized culture, even amidst persistent, acutely felt failures of social justice and longing for reparative cross-ethnic dialogue. This course will consider how an interethnic impulse shapes contemporary novels, from its deepest psychic structures and literary ambitions; to its social vision and conceptions of history and identity; to its patterns of literary borrowing and influence; to its competing tonalities of wariness and hope, ambivalence and desire; to aspects of its aesthetic form - including narrative structures, plots, characterizations, and uses of language(s).
An exciting feature of this course will be the appearance of novelist Karen Tei Yamashita at UVA in late March; two of her novels will be read in advance of her talk and class visit. Other writers may include Leslie Marmon Silko, Gus Lee, Maxine Hong Kingston, Grace Paley, Lore Segal, Galina Vromen, Jiro Adachi, Philip Roth, Jonathan Safran Foer, Bharati Mukherjee, Bapsi Sidwha, and Chang-Rae Lee. We will also read theorists of race, ethnicity, globalization, and cultural hybridity. Students are expected to be very active class participants; to write several brief compositions, a short paper, and a long paper; and with a group, to lead a class discussion.
ENGN 482B / ENMC 482B: Ethnic American Drama
Lotta Lofgren (llc8c)
TR 1230-1345
This seminar celebrates the richness, diversity, passion, and sophistication of contemporary ethnic American drama. We will read plays by African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and Native American dramatists. We will examine their shared concerns and their cultural particularities, and explore how all groups negotiate traditional dramatic forms and even fundamental definitions of theater to express their own visions. Our work with these plays will challenge old methods of interpretation and our own cultural assumptions. We will try to understand how these plays are and are not uniquely American by examining the plays themselves and reading a selection of theoretical works. We will explore some of the political challenges to and ramifications of ethnic American drama. We will read plays by David Henry Hwang, Ntozake Shange, Thomson Highway, Maria Irene Fornes, Suzan-Lori Parks, Wakako Yamauchi, Cherrie Moraga, William Yellow Robe, and others.
ENLT 226: Migrant Fictions
Mrinalini Chakravorty (mc5je)
MW 1400-1515
Salman Rushdie has written that, "Migration offers us one of the richest metaphors of our age." Taking Rushdie's claim as our starting point, this course explores the complexity of the metaphor of migration through the study of a diverse body of Anglophone novels that specifically fictionalize experiences of migration. Contemporary literary imaginings of migration are framed equally by the utopian possibilities as well as the dystopic material realities that define a uniquely migrant modernity. On the one hand, migrant cultures are seen to elide national boundaries, enable cultural encounters, and collapse fantasies of a homogeneously cohesive national narrative. In this sense, an emergent literary aesthetics of migrancy seems to celebrate flexible forms of belonging in the world: as hybrid, metro-sexual, transcultural, nomadic, cosmopolitan, multi-lingual etc. On the other, the migrant figure, liminal and ever shifting, also represents the collective phantasms of modernity working out their own scenes of inequity and exclusion. In this second sense, the migrant imaginary is also a political one concerned with those axes of belonging and non-belonging - as citizen or alien, patriot or traitor, legal or illegal, native or naturalized - that continue to stratify our societies.
Our study will take seriously these various historical, social, and literary figurations through which recent seminal texts of world literature represent migration. We will begin with the premise that the migrant perspective is an important one in the context of new English literatures because the metaphors of journey, unrootedness, mobility, dispossession, and exile that frame it are useful to understanding the complex situation of our present world. In order to have a sense of the global scope and relevance of the topic, we will read a range of novels that focus exclusively on stories of migration. Among others, we will read works by Desai, Kureishi, Selvon, Aidoo, Kincaid, Selvadurai, Coetzee, Ali, Rushdie and Smith.
ENMC 372: South Asian Film and Literature
Mrinalini Chakravorty (mc5je)
MW 1530-1645
This course will examine the politics of desire and dissent in South Asia through the intertextual lens of their representation in film and literature. That the violent and non-violent protest movements against colonialism in South Asia emerged through the management of bodies, sexuality, and gender, is well known. In our study of the overlay of visual and textual representations of social and political dissent, we will revisit questions about the relationship between aesthetic movements, national resistance, and the production of certain gendered cultural and social norms. Specific cinematic movements will be placed in dialogic relation to literary ones so that a new sense can emerge of how normative as well dissident sexual identities are consolidated through dominant fields of representation in the South Asian context. Spectacular moments of socio-political dissent will be framed for us by films ranging from the social realism of art house cinema to the absurd excesses of bollywood melodrama, to more contemporary hyper-realistic and diasporic films. Some of the directors whose work we will view include Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Ligy Pullapally, Mani Ratnam, and Santosh Sivan. Alongside these, we will engage with salient protest novels that represent South Asia in realist, modernist, surrealist, pulp, and magically real terms such as those by Rao, Desai, Rushdie, Roy, Sidhwa, Selvadurai. Historically, we will cover a lot of ground - considering moments of gendered socio-political unrest within the freedom struggle, the partition, and in postcolonial South Asia. In querying the ways in which desire, and certain limits posed on desiring bodies, propel economies of socio-political struggle in this region, this course aims to provide a nuanced understanding of the ways in which popular and literary culture have negotiated the restrictive binds of "tradition" and "modernity," "purity" and "abjection," "caste" and "outcast," that have become a commonplace shorthand in thinking about South Asian modernity. This course will require weekly attendance for screenings of long, fanciful, and at times, riveting, films.
ENSP 315 / MDST 315 / ARTH 368: New Media
David Golumbia (dg6n)
TR 1400-1515
First and foremost, this class will survey the variety of media objects that are often referred to as "new media." We will focus in particular on creative and cultural objects, paying special attention to those forms that appear to be most influential and/or popular today, including (1) games; (2) digital animation and special effects in feature films and television; (3) the web itself as a cultural medium; (4) new media art. Most of our time will be spent looking at examples of these forms and discussing their place as works of culture, art, and their relation to earlier related forms. A secondary theme of the class will arise from the new media criticism we will read, in which we will consider not just the question of the appropriate methods for new media criticism, but also try to understand what might be meant by the idea of new media itself. Media we will study include games like The Sims, Half-Life, and World of Warcraft; films like Transformers, AI: Artificial Intelligence, 300, Toy Story, and the Star Wars films; art by figures like ze frank, Yael Kanarek, jimpunk, jodi.org, Annie Abrahams, 0100101110101101.org, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Shelley Jackson, Nam June Paik and Bruce Nauman; and criticism by writers like Lev Manovich, Christiane Paul, Michael Rush, Mark Hansen, and Oliver Grau. Taught primarily via discussion with some brief lectures and student presentations. Two short papers and a final paper or project, which may be based in new media in consultation with the instructor. Prerequisites: one prior class in English, Media Studies, Art History, or an appropriate topic in another discipline, or permission of instructor. Open to second years and above.
ENSP 419 / MDST 419: Global Indigenous Media
David Golumbia (dg6n)
T 1700-1930
In this class we will look closely at the media productions of members of groups that we today know under difficult categorizations such as "aboriginal," "indigenous," "tribal," "First Nations," "Native Americans," and "Indians." We will look first and foremost at media created by members of these groups, and secondarily at media, literature and theory about them. Our attention will be double: we will look at these media objects to learn from and about them, and we will at the same time discuss what we find in this media tells us about the idea of modernity. We will look at media produced by indigenous cultures from around the globe, in hopes of seeing commonalities and differences in them. The class will focus mostly on feature and short films such as Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner), Ten Canoes, Smoke Signals, and Whale Rider, along with a selection of written texts (including works by writers like Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, Amos Tuotola, Yang Erche Namu, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Mahasweta Devi, Rigoberta Menchu, and others). We will also look briefly at new media and also visual art in the Kluge-Ruhe collection. Readings in the emerging area of media studies criticism of indigenous media and anthropology of media, including Media Worlds (ed. Faye Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin) and Global Indigenous Media (ed. Pamela Wilson and Michelle Stewart). Taught primarily via discussion. Presentations, short papers, and a longer final paper. Fulfills second writing requirement. Prerequisites: one prior class in English, Media Studies, Anthropology, or an appropriate topic in another discipline, or permission of instructor. Open to third years and above.
EDLF 555: Multicultural Education
Robert Covert (rwc3q)
W 1600-1845
R 1600-1845
R 0930-1215 (these are all separate sections of the same course)
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.
MUSI 426: Music in Asian America
Wendy Hsu (wfh7d)
TR 0930-1045
This interdisciplinary course explores the musical lives of Asian Pacific Americans (APA's) as well as the music by APA musicians in 20th and 21st century U.S. We will read ethnographic and historical studies of musical practices of APA's in jazz, hip hop, Taiko drumming, karaoke and Christian churches. We will also read criticism of Asian American musical representations such as Yoko Ono, Cibo Matto, William Hung, Jin, Mountain Brothers, Black Eyed Peas, Fred Ho, and Yo Yo Ma while analytically engaging with their music and image.
SOC 487: Immigration
Milton Vickerman (mv8d)
MW 1600-1715
A merge glance at any newspaper today will show that immigration is a "hot button" issue. Increasingly, one sees people of influence calling for restrictions on the entrance of illegal immigrants, restrictions on benefits to legal immigrants, and even the curtailment of legal immigration. While these sentiments reflect the social and political climate of the times, they are not new. Over a century ago, Americans expressed very similar sentiments--only, then, they were directed against Eastern Europeans, instead of blacks, Hispanics and Orientals. Thus, this course seeks to understand immigration in America by examining the racial and historical underpinnings on which it has been built. We will show that some basic sentiments have expressed themselves in several ways in different historical periods. Along the way we will also examine relevant data showing the impact which immigration has had on American society.
Prerequisites: Six credits of sociology or permission of instructor
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.
AMST 303: Theory for Asian Pacific American Studies
Sylvia Chong (schong)
MW 1400-1515
This course, also cross-listed as AMST 302: Introduction to American Studies Part II, will cover key concepts that are crucial to the study of American culture, society and politics. This semester we will turn our attention to recent American Studies scholarship. While we will examine a range of approaches, the course focuses on questions of identity, migration, and imperialism that have been central to the discipline in recent years. Using the theme of the course, "Aliens in America," we will examine theoretical concepts such as race, class, labor, gender, discourse, nation, empire, and technology. In addition to learning how to read and analyze scholarship, we will also develop research skills. Each of you will work on a research project over the course of the semester that takes one (or more) of our texts as a model.
ANTH 301: Theory and History of Anthropology
Ira Bashkow (ib6n)
TR 1230-1345
This course is designed for students majoring in anthropology: it presents a broad historical outline of major approaches and debates in the field, and fosters skills in critically reading and discussing social and cultural theory. By reading sample works we will learn about the approaches of 19th-century social evolutionism, Boasian cultural anthropology, l'AnnŽe Sociologique, British structural functionalism, French structuralism, symbolic anthropology, American cultural materialism and neo-evolutionism, later American cultural anthropology, practice theory, feminism, and post-modern theories. We will be concerned to understand these approaches not only as theoretical frameworks for understanding other cultures, but also as commentaries upon, and reflections of, the culture that produced them. The course stresses close reading and analysis of primary texts. The discussion session is obligatory. This is a required course for anthropology majors.
CPLT 300 / ENCR 300: Contemporary Literary and Critical Theory
Jennifer Wicke (jaw2b)
MW 1400-1515
This course explores the main currents in twentieth- through twenty-first century literary theory, as a series of questions in a global framework that transform the understanding of language, voice, and representation in general, and literature in particular. We will trace an unfolding conversation within literary theory about the meaning and use of words and their relationship to images and the forms that mediate them, the nature of language and the extent of its power to create our world, the significance of beauty and the value of art, the role of emotion and individual subjectivity, and the part that group identity plays in giving voice to cultural representations including literature. The conversation begins with issues from literary criticism but expands to a broad dialogue with contributions from philosophy, political theory, psychology and psychoanalysis, cultural studies, history and anthropology among other fields. Our course will survey landmarks in literary theory, including structuralism and post-structuralism, cultural and political critique, psychoanalysis, feminist and queer theory, postmodernism, cultural studies, aesthetics, and postcolonial thought, and will examine closely how these debates have changed the questions we ask about literature and representation in general, and its very definition. Students taking the course will emerge with a solid introduction to the most prominent areas of contemporary theory, but also with the critical tools to pose their own enthusiastic questions, their own thoughtful arguments, and their own probing theories of literature and language, especially in light of the new-found prominence of global awareness as a factor in all cultural representations. This lecture/discussion class involves a commitment to reading complicated materials carefully, and to faithful attendance and participation; there will be a take-home midterm essay exam and a final exam, as well as one paper, a 7-10 page project that fuses a theoretical approach (made with passion and imagination) with a student's own chosen work of literature, or another cultural artifact or event in culture.
PLPT 302: Modern Political Theory
Stephen White (skw2n)
MW 1300-1350
SOC 341: Race and Ethnicity
Milton Vickerman (mv8d)
MW 1400-1515
This course provides a graduate level introduction to the field of Race and Ethnicity. As such, it attempts to cover a broad spectrum of topics, focusing on the theoretical and consequential aspects of conceptions of race and ethnicity. Of necessity, the course also has a historical focus, since modern-day debates over race are strongly conditioned by the past. Moreover, to really understand issues of race and ethnicity, we must take a cross-cultural perspective, since these debates have often been skewed by a focus on the wrenching problems produced by racial/ethnic conflict in the United States. By adopting these perspectives, the course seeks to provide insight into the complexities that surround issues of race and ethnicity.
SWAG 381A: Feminist Theory
Instructor TBA
TR 1230-1345
This course provides an overview of the historical bases and contemporary developments in feminist theorizing and analyze a range of theories on gender, including liberal, Marxist, radical, difference, and postmodernist feminist theories. We will explore how feminist theories apply to contemporary debates on the body, sexuality, colonialism, globalization and transnationalism. Throughout the course we will incorporate analysis of race, class, and national differences as well as cross-cultural perspectives.
Transnational
ANTH 291C: Writing Muslim Worlds
David Strohl (djs5v)
TR 0930-1045
While journalists and talk-show commentators constantly talk about a homogenous "Muslim world," anthropological accounts showcase the diverse approaches that Muslims take to the Islamic religion. This course introduces students to anthropological studies of Muslim communities around the world. By reading a series of short ethnographies on Muslim societies in settings as varied as South Asia, Indonesia, and Lebanon, we will examine a diverse array of institutions, rituals, and social practices associated with Islam. In doing so, we will look at the different ways Muslims have made sense of Islam as a global religion and its local manifestations in different cultural contexts.
ANTH 302C: Transnational East Asia: Focus on China and South Korea
Caren Freeman (cwf8q)
WF 1000-1050
South Korea and China are countries that are "on the move." By this I refer to their tumultuous histories as well as the increased circulation of people, ideas, and objects within and across their national borders. Through cross-cultural comparison of China and South Korea, this course asks in what ways have border crossing-activities and mobility within circuits of global capitalism altered the way life is lived and imagined both at home and in Korean and Chinese communities overseas? Seeking new understandings of the way power works in a transnational milieu, we will explore the challenges that mobility poses to concepts of ethnic/national identity, citizenship, gender and family formation. Topics include, but won't be limited to, the new forms of marriage and romance mediated by the global economy; diasporic cultures; migrant laborers and "split transnational families;" consumer practices; overseas entrepreneurs; transnational adoptees; and return migrants and their (re)encounter with their imagined homelands.
ANTH 557: Recent Ethnography of Minorities in China
John Shepherd (jrs4c)
T 1400-1630
This will be a small group seminar for students who have previous background in China studies or anthropology. This course explores the distant and recent history of Han and non-Han nationalities in the Chinese empire and nation-state, primarily through the medium of recently published ethnographies. The course will examine the reaction of minority nationalities to Chinese predominance, and the bases of Chinese rule and cultural hegemony. The course explores changes in gender roles, ethnic and subethnic (i.e., intra-Han) identity formation, processes of ethnic conflict, and the emergence of separatist and nationalist movements. The course also examines the role of minorities (religious and sexual as well as ethnic minorities) in the definition of Chinese nationalism, and China as a multi-cultural society. The course will offer a critique of Eurocentric theories of colonialism, modernity, and world system. This course will fulfill the second writing requirement and the non-Western requirement.
EAST 101: East Asian Canons and Cultures
Gus Heldt (gch8r)
TR 1530-1645
HIEA 100: Science and the Making of Modern Japan
Federico Marcon (fm2u)
R 1530-1800
It has often been argued that as soon as Japan embarked on modernization and transformation into an industrial power after 1868, "the paradigms in effect in the Tokugawa period were all replaced by Western ones, and government policies restricting certain fields did not survive the demise of the shogunate."
Contrary to this interpretation, this seminar aims at demonstrating how the autonomous and extraordinary developments in (proto)scientific theories and practices in early modern Japan not only facilitated the adoption of Western science in the late 19th century, but also had an enormous influence in the scientific research of twentieth century Japanese scientists. The class utilizes a variety of textual, aural, and visual sources to follow the social, intellectual, and cultural transformation of Japanese science from the premodern period to the present.
No previous knowledge of Japanese history is required to enroll in this class.
HIEA 201: History of Chinese Civilization
Cong Ellen Zhang (cz5h)
TR 0930-1045
This is an introductory course to Chinese history. The first half of our class deals with the formation of the country's intellectual traditions, efforts of empire-building, and the characteristic orientation of Chinese society to family, locality, and education. We will also look at how the successive government of late imperial China dealt with the strains of a growing and changing society. The second half of the course will consider how China met and mastered the challenges of the 19th century, and what the particular challenges of the 20th century were. We will conclude the class by discussing the government and society of the People's Republic of China against the background of these challenges. Required reading for the class includes Patricia Ebrey, China: A Cultural, Social, and Political History and Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook. Final grades for the class will be based on four quizzes, one term paper, and the final exam.
HIEA 210: Korea: 1870s-2009
Ronald G. Dimberg (rgd)
MWF 1300-1350
HIEA 210 will cover the history of Korea from the 1870'S into 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 210 is open to all undergraduates.
HIEA 322: Japanese Political History
Federico Marcon (fm2u)
MW 1400-1515
This lecture class surveys the political history of modern Japan from 1600 to the present. Through an assortment of written, aural and visual sources, it offers an introduction to the political thoughts and practices characterizing Japanese historical development from the dramatic transformations of the Tokugawa period and the modern revolution of 1868, through the tragic nationalist surge of the 1930s and the Second World War, to the postwar economic miracle, the social and economic crisis of the 1990s, and the contradictory neo-nationalist and neo-liberalist countermeasures of the first decade of the 21st century. In sharp contrast with stereotyped descriptions of Japan as a country essentially isolated and unchanged since antiquity, HIEA 322 reveals how Japan's historical development in the last 400 years has been profoundly conditioned both externally by its relations with other countries and internally by radical social transformations. No previous knowledge of Japanese history is required to enroll in this class. The course is based on weekly lectures and at least three movie screenings. Reading materials consist of a manual and a course-pack of primary sources in English translation to be downloaded as pdf files from Collab, amounting to a weekly load of approximately 150 pages. Evaluation is based on easy weekly assignments on the readings (25%), a mid-term exam (25%), a final exam (25%), and a short essay (25%).
HIEA 403: North Korea/South Korea
Ronald G. Dimberg (rgd)
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 Partition of Korea after World War II; The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950; Crisis in North Korea. The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956; Ethnic Nationalism in Korea; Inter-Korean Relations: Problems and Prospects, and Korea's Democratization. Students will be prepared to discuss assigned reading material during the weekly meetings of the class, and will write critical reviews of two of the assigned books. The course grade will be based on participation in weekly discussions (2/3) and the review essays (1/3).
HISA 100A: Introductory Seminar: Pakistan: Islamic Frontier
Richard Barnett (rbb)
W 1300-1530
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 (Yale U.P., 2003); Mary Anne Weaver, Pakistan in the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan (2002); Husain Haqqani, Pakistan: between Mosque and Military (2005); Mariam Abou Zahab and Olivier Roy, Islamist Networks: the Afghan-Pakistan Connection (2004).
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 303: Twentieth Century South Asia
Neeti Nair (nn2v)
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, and Sri Lanka; the independence of Bangladesh; and the legacy of colonialism on democracy, development and militancy in these South Asian countries. We will also consider how recourse to certain interpretations of 'history' has influenced the crafting of policy and politics. Structured chronologically, the course begins with a study of colonialism in early twentieth century India and ends by considering the challenges of deepening democratization, and unequal development.
There is no standard text book for the course. A course packet of chapters from books and journal articles will be made available at Brillig books. 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. The following required books will be available for purchase at the bookstore: Arvind Adiga, The White Tiger, Atlantic, 2008; Stephen Hay ed., Sources of Indian Tradition, Vol 2, Columbia U Press, 2nd ed., 1988. Course requirements include active participation in class (15%); a book review (20%); a midterm exam (25%); and a final exam (40%).
JPTR 332: Introduction to Modern Japanese Literature
Michiko Wilson (mnw5m)
W 1400-1630
PLCP 553: Japanese Politics
Leonard Schoppa (ljs2k)
TR 1400-1515
PLIR 424: War and Peace in South Asia
Touqir Hussain (th7h)
M 1400-1630
PLIR 524B: Rise of China in Historical Perspective
Brantley Womack (bw9c)
MW 1530-1645
PLIR 572: Japan in World Affairs
Leonard Schoppa (ljs2k)
M 1530-1800
SAST 260: Bollywood Dreams: Indian Cinema
Richard Cohen (rjc8s)
W 1400-1630
SAST 270: Indian Society and Politics
Rina Williams (rvw3k)
MW 1000-1050
SATR 300: Women Writing in India and Pakistan
Mehr A. Farooqi (maf5y)
W 1530-1800
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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