ASAM 002 / (ENGL072) Introduction to Asian American Literature. Park.
This course will explore the varieties of Asian American Experience by considering the literary forms they take. Our
readings will range from poems carved into the walls of a detention center at the beginning of the century to experiments
in literary form in the eighties and nineties. The course will consider literary representations of a broad range of Asian
American experience: tales of migratory labor, Chinatown stories, the extraordinary case of Japanese internment,
panethnic activist literature, and the different accounts that emerge when Asian America expands beyond East Asia to
include South and Southeast Asian American experience. In each instance, we will read these forms within their
historical moments, ultimately asking how these formal expressions map onto the conditions of Asian America.
ASAM 006 / (AFRC006, SOCI006, URBS214) Race and Ethnic Relations. Nopper.
The course will examine how social networks, neighborhood context, culture, and notions of race affect inequality and
ethnic relations. The course reviews the studies of ethnic entrepreneurship, urban segregation, labor force participation,
and assimilation processes. The course emphasizes how inequality affects ethnic relations as well as the economic and
social integration of different groups in society.
ASAM 012 / (SAST052) Indians Overseas: A Global View. Gambhir S. Freshman seminar.
This course is about the history of Indian immigration into different parts of the world. The course will consist of
readings, discussions, observations, data collection and analysis. The topics will include cultural preservation and cultural
change through generations, especially in North America, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom, and the African continent.
The course will encourage organized thinking, observations and analysis of components of culture that immigrant
communities are able to preserve in the long run and cultural components that undergo change or get reinterpreted. In this
context, we will look at entities such as religion, food, language, and family. The course will include immigrants' success
stories, their contributions, thier relationship with others groups in the new society and the nature and extent of their links
with India. The course will also address conflict with other sections of the host society, including discrimination against
and victimization of immigrants. Other issues will include new social and cultural concerns of immigrants and the rise of
new community organizations such as temples and cultural organizations to address those issues. The course will benefit
from the study of other immigrant communities around the world.
SM 013 / (HIST104) Freshman Seminar in Asian American History. Azuma.
This reading seminar will focus on how different groups of Asians interacted with each other in the context of early
twentieth-century American society, especially in Hawaii and California. Such issues as ethnicity, complexity of race
relations (as opposed to conventional black-white binarism), and the intricate entanglements of class and race will also be
examined.
ASAM 209 / (SAST290) South Asians in the United States. Khan.
This course investigates the everyday practices and customs of South Asians in America. Every immigrant group has its
own history, customs, beliefs and values, making each unique while simultaneously a part of the "melting pot" or salad
bowl" of American society. Yet how do people define themselves and their ethnicities living in a diasporic context? By
taking into account the burgeoning South Asian American population as our model, this course will explore the basic
themes surrounding the lives that immigrants are living in America, and more specifically the identity which the second
generation, born and/or raised in American, is developing. South Asians in the U.S. will be divided thematically covering
the topics of ethnicity, marriage, gender, religion, and pop culture. Reading and assignments will discuss a variety of
issues and viewpoints that are a part of the fabric of South Asia, but will focus on the interpretation of such expressive
culture in the United States.
ASAM 354 / (HIST354) Amer Expansion in the Pacific: Race, Immigration, Citizenship in the 'Frontier.' Azuma.
This course will delve into the continuing process of westward American expansion into the Pacific after the 1890s. Such
questions as immigration, race relations, and diplomacy will be discussed in the class. Students who are interested in
U.S.-Asia relations, Asian immigration, and histories of Hawaii and the Philippines as part of the American Empire are
especially encouraged to take this course.