COURSES
Planning for the Spring 2010 semester is underway! We look forward to having students enroll in our Spring 2010 courses, and find out about scholarships, internships and other activities taking place next semester. Please stop by our office in Room 1122 on the ground floor of the Cole Student Activities Building, or read our new FAQ for Students if you have questions.
Our faculty are known for their dedication to teaching. Each year the program offers eleven to fourteen courses in Asian American Studies, directs six to nineteen undergraduate students in individual research projects, and mentors graduate students seeking specialized training in the field.
The program has become extremely popular among students. Annual enrollment in AAST courses numbers around 400, including students of every background and from a wide range of majors across the university. See the courses offered in the current and past semesters (left) and for AAST course descriptions (below).
A Comprehensive Listing of Courses:
Here is the latest list of the Spring 2010 courses. For more information, call the AAST office at 301-405-0996 or email us.
AAST200: Introduction to Asian American Studies
This course will introduce and examine major themes in Asian American Studies. The Asian American community has a long history in the United States starting with immigration to the Americas during the 19th century that has continued to today. Major emphasis will be placed on the contemporary themes and problems surrounding the experience of Asian Americans: reasons for coming to the Americas, immigration flows and adaptation patterns, economic and social adjustment, gender and family relations, class and community, identity, race relations, civil rights/political participation, and social movements. As this course is only an introduction to the field of Asian Americans Studies, this course will seek to encourage students to pursue other courses that delve into a particular group or issue more in-depth.
HIST219M/AAST201: Asian American History
An introduction to the history of Asian Americans in the United States and the Americas and an interdisciplinary perspective of the field of Asian American Studies. The course uses the historic method to interpret topics that include theories of race and ethnicity; Asian migration and Diaspora to the Americas; Asian American work and labor issues; gender, family, and communities; nationalism, nativism, and anti-Asian movements; Asian Americans during the World War I, Cold War, and Vietnam eras; and the efforts of Asian Americans to define themselves and our global culture in the civil rights and post-civil rights era. Primary and secondary sources, both about and by Asian Americans, will provide the basis for our historical work, particularly with regards to understanding how individuals made choices and interpreted their situations. We will explore the meanings of Asian American experiences, mapping their influence within main currents in American and global history.
AAST298J: Asian American Art
This course examines how Asian American visual artists of different ethnic and generational backgrounds, ranging from recent immigrants and refugees to the American-born, articulate self and community identity through the visual arts. This course will use slides, artists' videos, and film to explore themes such as the historical impact of Western "orientalism," the experience of traversing cultures, the difficulties of situating oneself in America, interaction between the United States and Asia, intergenerational connections, gender roles, and Asian cultural stereotypes. The course asks how artists frame "ethnic-specific" work and how artists present themselves and their work through contemporary exhibitions and curatorial as well as critical practices. Visits to pertinent art exhibitions and public programs will be arranged.
AAST298P: Asian American Popular Culture
In the first part of this course, we will take a look at how Asian Americans have been understood in a larger field of popular culture. While we are all familiar with discourses about stereotypes, we will pay special attention to how these images have evolved over time. Do Asian Americans have a place in "American" popular culture? In the second part of this course, using theoretical frameworks developed in the study of popular culture, we will ask whether or not there is such a thing as "Asian American popular culture." If there is, what is it? Who is engaging in it? Who is producing it, and who is consuming it? How does this shape our understanding of Asian American communities? Topics of discussion will include (but are not limited to) television, the internet, dance, music, movies, and comics.
AAST378: Experiential Learning (PermReq)
This course provides a space for AAST minor students to reflect on and analyze their internship experiences in working situations. Students will acquire internship positions that have social, economic, political, educational, and representational implications for the local Asian American community. Throughout the semester, students will participate in and observe their organizations, as well as reflect upon their shifting roles as participant-observers. We will examine the history, structure, funding, and culture of organizations through examples you bring from your internship sites. We will analyze the impact of race as well as gender, class, sexuality, and other dimensions of difference in the organizations' ideologies, missions, practices, activities, and clients. We will also investigate these organizations' relationship to larger forces of oppression, repression, community, and care.
AAST388: Independent Research (PermReq)
Independent research provides an opportunity for students interested in the ?eld of ethnic studies to explore an aspect of the Asian American community in depth. New scholarship is the cornerstone of all educational institutions, so AAST welcomes students to be as creative as possible in developing their research project. Students can employ any method of research available to them from examining historical documents or current statistics, to conducting interviews and focus groups. A faculty member will be assigned to guide each student through their research. Because each student is responsible for their own progress, AAST 388 allows students to gain academic experience in a format that is more ?exible than a conventional course.
AAST398B: Contemporary Asian American Literature of the 21st Century
This course will investigate recent Asian American literature, focusing on post-millennial works of fiction. With the shifting social and political landscapes of the 21st century in mind, students will examine how established Asian American writers have shifted their literary interests-or, as crucially, maintained them. The new, emerging "generation" of authors will be considered, especially in regards to topics such as Asian American writers' exploration of new issues, forms, and venues of distribution and the influence of new technologies on Asian American literary production.
AAST398D: Filipino American History and Biography
This course will focus on post-1965 Filipino American experiences, analyzing both history and public policy, and will include topics such as: immigration and assimilation; educational attainment and affirmative action; economic mobility; health care reform; Filipino American Veterans equity; political/electoral participation; and multiracial Americans; and building communities within Filipino America. Students will have an opportunity to identify how Filipino Americans are affected by these issues; observe and critique collective efforts to address these issues; and analyze the commonalities and contrasts between Filipino Americans and other racial groups, including other Asian and Pacific Islander groups. Students will also have an opportunity to research and document the contributions of local and national Filipino American advocates through an oral history project.
AAST398M: Multi-Racial Asian Americans
The multiracial American population is increasing exponentially, as are available services and organizations to support it. With these shifts in mind, this class will examine multiracial America yesterday, today, and tomorrow, with an emphasis on multiracial Asian America in particular. Some questions of interest: what is the public consciousness of multiracial peoples? What is public policy regarding multiracial peoples? How do multiracial peoples view their struggles for identity, equity, and community? What "infrastructure" exists to support the multiracial population, and in what ways does it provide-or fail to provide-support? Having identified the crucial issues facing multiracial America, the class will culminate in collaborative projects to address them.
SOCY424/AAST424: Sociology of Race Relations
This course examines U.S. racial and ethnic relations in the context of immigration, both past and present. Given the continued significance of race and ethnicity in the United States, the course will cover a history of race relations and an understanding of the categories of race and ethnicity. Major debates focusing on ethnic and racial inequalities will be examined. Through a multiracial, multiethnic framework, students will endeavor to uncover the sources of racial and ethnic inequality in the hopes of mitigating racial and ethnic conflict and enhancing understanding among groups.
AAST498A: Education and Counseling Issues for Asian Americans
This course will examine the psychological, counseling, and educational issues facing Asian Americans, covering subjects such as racial and ethnic identity, mental health use, sexuality and gender roles, family functioning, psychological research relevant to the Asian American community, testing and assessment, cultural values, acculturation, counseling service delivery, and psychopathology. The class seeks to challenge the existing model minority myth and replace it with a more complicated understanding of counseling problems facing Asian Americans.
AAST498C: Introduction to Chinese American Studies
This course will introduce and examine major themes in Chinese American studies. Course themes include Chinese American racial and ethnic identities, Chinese American migration and settlement patterns in the U.S., community activism and organization by Chinese Americans, and problems facing the Chinese American community. The class will combine a historical analysis of immigration flows beginning with the 1849 California Gold Rush with an exploration of contributions made by present-day Chinese Americans including community leaders, activists, and everyday people.
AAST498J: South Asian Diaspora
This course examines the South Asian Diaspora in its cultural context. We will explore the historical roots of the Diaspora and the conditions under which South Asians created homes for themselves abroad. In addition to examining the Diaspora's past, the course will investigate present-day South Asian Diaspora cultures including popular culture, film, music, dance, art, theater and literature.
AAST498N: Asian American Material Cultures
This course will study material objects created by Asian Americans. Topics covered include the body (cosmetic surgery, clothing, tattooing), space (Chinatowns, Filipino grocery stores), food (pho, South Asian cuisine), and art (textiles, paper folding, Japanese American internment artwork). Students will study the theoretical and methodological foundations of material culture studies, asking why practitioners of this field have, for the most part, ignored Asian American contributions. By combining both historical and contemporary perspectives, we will assess both past traditions and current trends.
PREVIOUSLY-OFFERED CLASSES
ENGL233/AAST233: Introduction to Asian American Literature
This course studies a small sample of the rich and diverse tradition of Asian American writings from the 19th to the 21st century. Key concerns include understanding the major themes that arise in this body of literature as well as the histories and politics that inform and shape the literature. Students will develop their ability to closely read texts, analyze literature, integrate the literature's historical and political contexts, and participate and write in a thoughtful, creative, and open-minded manner.
HIST219L/AAST298A: Introduction to Immigration and Ethnicity in America
The United States is a nation of immigrants with most people tracing their ancestry to other countries around the world. The definition and conception of ethnicity is constantly evolving and continually negotiated throughout history and in our everyday lives. This course will introduce students to the history, changing demography, and social contexts of immigration. Through the narratives of immigrants, policymakers, and immigration scholars, we will explore how the definitions of race, ethnicity, and the "other" involve struggles over defining meanings of American identity.
AAST298G: Asian American Food and Culture (formerly Asian American Foodways)
This course will explore the many meanings and functions of food in Asian American contexts asking how food shapes identities and how food expresses histories of power relations. Readings will be structured around topics such as pho, food protests, food and memory, hunger, globalization, war, and food workers. We will apply theories of transnationalism, identity formation, subjectivity, and feminisms to our readings. We will also explore culinary tourism, thinking about how individuals and groups appropriate food and also associate food with assimilation as well as acculturation. Many readings and discussions will focus on how individual authors and communities define their national, racial, and gendered identities in culinary contexts.
AAST298M: South Asian Experiences
This course will explore the many ways that South Asians have created and imagined "community" in the United States. The course will provide students with historical, political, cultural, and critical lenses through which to view South Asian identity and community formation. What does it mean to adopt a collective South Asian identity? What can we learn from historical moments and experiences, cultural production, and the organizing struggles of communities of color and immigrants as methods of identity formation? How does this compare to other immigrant communities and to the South Asian diaspora in other parts of the world? The course will incorporate readings from literature, law, and ethnic studies; guest speakers; documentaries; in-class and online participation; and community-based and community-building activities so that we can explore these questions together.
AAST298N: Introduction to Filipino American Studies
This course will introduce and examine major themes in Filipino American Studies. Course themes include the impact of U.S. imperialism in the Philippines, the effects of U.S. labor needs on Filipino migration and settlement patterns in the U.S., and the significant (yet often unrecognized) contributions of Filipinos and Filipino Americans in political and social movements. The class will combine a historical analysis of immigration flows and adaptation patterns with an exploration of contributions made by present-day Filipino Americans including community leaders, activists, and everyday people.
AAST298R: Asian Americans in Film
Cinema has become a leading medium for articulating Asian American experiences. This class introduces students to significant films by and/or about Asian Americans, many of them adaptations of books. This class will trace the evolution of ethnic images from their earliest to latest manifestations, with an eye toward understanding the historical, social, and literary meaning behind the imagery. After close attention to the primary texts, students are expected to engage in such debates as identity and representation, race and ethnicity, and cultural studies. At the center of this course is inquiry about translation (etymologically "a carrying across") across languages, across cultures, from self through society, from "fact" to "fiction," between media, between genres, and from speaker to audience.
AAST398A: Introduction to Vietnamese American Studies
This class explores the Vietnamese American experience from the perspective of the emergent field of Vietnamese American Studies. Drawing from Asian American Studies, this subfield holds Vietnamese Americans at the center of analysis, developing historical, theoretical, sociological, and cultural tools to contextualize and understand the specific experiences of Vietnamese Americans. By exploring the history of Vietnamese immigration, the circumstances and conditions under which Vietnamese live and flourish in the U.S., and the subsequent communities and identities that are formed, this class will tease out the conditions of life in the U.S.-including their racial, classed, gendered, and capitalist dimensions-and will explore how Vietnamese Americans have negotiated and responded to them. Ultimately, this class asks what it means to be Vietnamese American today, especially for the second generation as it comes of age and for future generations on the horizon.
AAST398P/HIST319P: Asian Americans in Washington, DC
This course will examine Asian immigration to the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area, bridging various disciplines and exposing students to cross-disciplinary research methods. This course also provides a comparative approach to the study of immigration in urban centers and how local conditions and structures affect immigrants' migration and adaptation patterns. We will explore the history and settlement patterns of Asian American communities, as well as social, economic, cultural, and political experiences in the region. We will also analyze Asian American's influence on the nation's capital.
AAST498B: Asian American Biography and Historiography
This course examines how scholars have asked questions and found answers about the history of Asian Americans. Asian Americans, as members of a small but distinct group of immigrant and colonized peoples, have historically provoked and participated in historical debates about national, ethnic, and racial group identities. Our aim in this course will be to look critically at how scholars frame problems and attempt to demonstrate the validity of their answers. Students will consider scholars within their historical contexts and assess how ideas about Asian Americans have changed over time.
AASP499L/AAST498D: Law & Identities: A Diversity Learning Community Polyseminar
This polyseminar is designed to allow students to explore the complex and contested interactions between the law and the construction of group and individual identities. Students will study theories of identity and community (including racial, gender, religious, national, and sexual identity) and will focus upon how the law has been central in defining, rewarding, and punishing difference. After a general examination of how diverse communities define themselves and their legal and contemporary problems, the class will engage with the current research of faculty and outside speakers. Interested students can complete a 1-3-credit experiential course - research, internship, civic engagement - tailored to fit their individual academic interests and the requirements of their major.
AAST498E: Asian American Sexualities
Students will be challenged to analyze and question definitions of masculinity, femininity, dating, marriage, sexual orientation, gender identity in the contexts of politics, race, and culture. The course will be interdisciplinary, and consider intersections of race, sex and power. Students will make use of readings, film, writing, research and nonjudgmental inquiry while engaging these issues with the goal of political empowerment, civil rights, community-building, and health in mind.
AAST498F: Asian Americans and Public History
Public history is historical information presented to and interpreted by a popular audience. It provides opportunities for people to learn and interpret history beyond the contexts of a higher education classroom. If carefully practiced, public history can effectively challenge audiences to rethink history beyond traditional narratives and incorporate experiences of groups often left out of the history texts. Coursework will include critical thinking regarding elements of public history such as monuments and museums. Students will be asked to consider the effects on public discourse and society that these artifacts and institutions have. In the past, this course has used the case study of Japanese American internment experiences during World War II to illustrate these phenomena.
EDCP418A/AAST498I: Asian American Leadership
This course studies the contemporary and historical roles of Asian American leaders and provides students with tools to become more effective leaders within the Asian American community. We will explore how specific traditional Asian family and cultural values shape Asian American leaders and ideas about leadership. The course will focus on student activists and leaders as a case study for Asian American leaders. Goals include providing students with basic organizational management, communication, and conflict resolution skills necessary to run a student activist organization. In addition, the course will analyze local, regional, and national Asian American organizations and their leadership-related problems and solutions.
AAST498L: Immigration and Ethnicity in America
The purpose of this course is to explore some of the issues in U.S. history relating to immigration, race, and ethnicity. We will focus especially on the Asian Diaspora to the United States and contemporary issues facing Asian Americans. The course will examine the social, political, economic, and legal issues related both to immigration and immigration policies. The course is discussion and research-oriented, with the intention of developing students' ability to think critically and debate on these themes.
AAST498M: Asian American Public Policy
From 1849 through 1969, Asian Americans were more often the victims of public policy than its creators. Over the past forty years, however, affirmative action and the rise of an Asian American consciousness and political movement have changed the American public policy landscape. Using Asian Americans as a case study, this course will analyze the development of public policy in America. Topics such as human rights, voting rights, and the movement to redress the wartime internment of Japanese Americans will serve as backdrops for discussion. We will explore the policy-making roles of legislators, judges, local and national political leaders, journalists, writers, unions, social movements, and community organizations. The goal of this course is to give students a better appreciation of how public policy has been shaped in the past and how they can shape it in the future.
AMST418L/AAST498P: Model Minorities and Black Americans
This course explores the idea that the black-white "binary" understandings of race in the U.S. are inadequate because race is a complicated, changing, and socially-constructed concept. In order to begin to appreciate the complex nature of race we will analyze the model minority narrative by focusing on African American, South Asian, and East Asian experiences in the U.S. This course will help students understand the rich, textured nature of race in the U.S. by examining the experiences of groups who are often contrasted, but rarely seriously studied in conjunction. Students will assess the historical and contemporary relationships between African Americans and Asian Americans in the United States.
AAST499: Advanced Research Assistantships
This course is designed to provide an opportunity for students to learn advanced research methodologies and best practices while serving as a research assistant. Students will work closely with the instructor on a research topic in the student's field of interest. The student will also work closely with the instructor and develop professional contacts in their field and prepare a research report or paper for submission to a professional journal or website. Topics to be discussed include how to request research funding, how to professionally network, how to pitch a research proposal, and how to market research topics in the academic field. This is a multi-disciplinary course, so it is assumed students will have a basic understanding of their field's research methodology. Coursework will include usage of the SPSS statistical software package.
FORTHCOMING COURSE OFFERINGS
Note: Blurbs for Comparative Ethnic History, Advanced Topics in Asian American Film, and Panethnic Asian Americans will be posted soon.
AAST100: Introduction to Ethnic Studies
Race and ethnicity in the U.S. both act as a catalyst for violence, division, and oppression as well as a source for empowerment, identity, and hope. This course introduces students to the study of race and ethnicity with an emphasis on how we create meanings for race and ethnicity which extend beyond our individual lives. The class encourages students to think critically about what race and ethnicity mean to them and to identify the impact of race and ethnicity in the United States. Course materials will engage ongoing conversations about how we give meaning to race and ethnicity in cultural, political, social, and economic dimensions. Some of the topics we will explore include the relationship between race/ethnicity and gender, the family, youth, sexuality, and political activism. By analyzing a variety of texts from across the disciplines, students will begin to appreciate the dynamic and contested invention we call race and ethnicity.
AAST 211: The Asian American Movement(s): Past, Present, and Future
An introductory, comparative, and interdisciplinary study of Asian American social and political struggles from the 1960s to the present. The course traces the development of protest movements created by people of color in response to racial, class, gender, and political inequality in the context of U.S. politics and history. This course simultaneously takes a historical approach, looking at the rise and fall of specific currents within Asian American communities, and a theoretical approach, reading various movements, organizations, and political activities under larger thematic causes. We will end by considering how we can use what has already taken place within Asian/Pacific American communities and apply it to our present and future political moments.
AAST241: East/West Encounters: Asia, Asian Americans, & the West
This course investigates the complicated relationship between "East" and "West." By asking how Asian cultures and European/European American cultures viewed each other, students will begin to appreciate the fluid and socially-constructed natures of race, ethnicity, and nationalism. This course will take two approaches to the subject of "East-West" representations. On one hand, the course tackles the thorny question of "Orientalism" (racist European imaginings of Asia). On the other hand, the class explores "Occidentalism" (racist Asian representations of the U.S. and Europe). Some of the topics this class will explore include the gendering of the Orient, "East-West" images during WWII, and how Asian Americans reshaped what it was to be Asian during the 1960s and 1970s Third World Movement.
AAST244: Asian American Men and Women
This course will focus on the ways Asian American manhood and womanhood has been constructed by Asian Americans and non-Asian Americans. The class will investigate how Asian American women and men construe, produce, interpret, resist and frame gender. In other words, the course theme is to analyze why and how Asian Americans and other social groups "socially construct" gender. Furthermore, this course will probe how racialization (the process through which our racial differences take on social meaning) operates through gendering - the construction of masculinity and femininity. Course topics will include the role of gender in family, labor, sexuality, dating, marriage, and memoirs. This class will explore theory and history as well as contemporary contexts to provide a framework in which students can understand how Asian American men and women have built both an individual and a collective sense of masculinity and femininity.
AAST 248: Asian American Women and Men: The Social Construction of Gender
What does it mean to be an Asian American woman? What does it mean to be an Asian American man? This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to investigate the intersections of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, and class within Asian America. Specifically, this course will consider how we understand gender and familial norms within various Asian American communities - that is, before Asian American feminist and queer movements disrupted these static pictures of Asian America. After considering the influence of studies of Asian American feminism, masculinity, and queerness, we will consider the usefulness of binary logic in ordering our understanding of Asian Americans and gender. Students will be introduced to the key idea of deconstruction as it relates to feminist and antiracist politics.
AAST264: Introduction to Korean American Studies
This course will introduce and examine major themes in Korean American studies. Course themes include Korean American ethnic and racial group identities, Korean American migration and settlement patterns, the long-lasting effects of the Korean War, and the Korean Diaspora. Subjects addressed by the course include both classic and contemporary theories of race and identity; the Korean American family; the relationship between age, class, and gender among Korean Americans; the experiences of Korean war brides and adoptees; pro-independence and pro-democracy activism among Korean Americans during the twentieth century; the different waves of immigration as well as the unique niche occupied by the 1.5 generation; and the power of evangelical faith among many Korean Americans.
AAST 270: Introduction to Japanese American Studies
Studies specifically on Japanese Americans in both the humanities and the social sciences rose during the 1980s, but have since declined as we continue on in the 21st century. What has happened to Japanese America? This will be the central question of the course, focusing on Japanese American communities. We will take an interdisciplinary approach to address this, looking at Japanese Americans historically, sociologically, and demographically. We will also read Japanese American cultural productions alongside these studies to examine the more human dimensions of the Japanese American experience. We will inquire as to where Japanese Americans have been, where they are now, and think about what will happen to this historic community in the future.
AAST 300: Ethics, Values, and Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism, pluralism, diversity. What does it all mean? This course will provide a rigorous examination of how issues of race and ethnicity affect the values and ethics of American society and its citizens. Students will assess how their views about race have been influenced by their upbringing and will evaluate their beliefs about racial identity, ethnicity, cultural pluralism, tolerance, structural and institutional discrimination, and everyday racism. We will develop multiculturalism both as an ethical framework and as a democratic concept as we consider the new knowledges available upon rigorous consideration of the cultures and communities brought together under the umbrella of the "multicultural." This course will also extend beyond the national frame as we consider multiculturalism as an ethical framework for evaluating globalization.
AAST 400: Research and Methodology in Asian American Studies
Asian American Studies as an interdisciplinary field of knowledge directly emerged from the efforts of Asian American social movements during the 1960s and 1970s. This course represents a capstone seminar in research methodology. Methodology is constituted of two parts: methods and questions. By tracking the development of the field from its activist roots the present, we will understand how the use of particular research methods have enabled (or prevented) scholars to answer significant questions facing Asian Americans at large. We will also evaluate the political efficacy of these works, with a significant theme of the course being working to connect our academic work to the activist community and grassroots currents of Asian Americans today.
