ASAM 001 Asian Americans in Contemporary Society *
(Grace Kao)
Cross listed with SOCI 103
LEC MW 3:30-5:00PM
This course presents an overview of sociological research on Asian Americans in the U.S., framed around the evaluation of Asian Americans as "model minorities." We begin with a brief overview of popular images of Asian Americans as seen through recent portrayals in mainstream media (movies, television). We review general sociological frameworks used to understand racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. and move quickly to document the history of Asian immigration to the U.S. We explore how Asian Americans fare in educational attainment, labor market experiences, political organizations, urban experience, and Asian interracial marriage and biracials. We examine whether and how "Asian American" is a meaningful label.
ASAM 002 Introduction to Asian American Literature *
(David Eng)
Cross listed with ENGL 072
LEC TR 3:00-4:30PM
This course will explore the varieties of Asian American Experience by considering the literary forms they take. Ourreadings will range from poems carved into the walls of a detention center at the beginning of the century to experimentsin literary form in the eighties and nineties. The course will consider literary representations of a broad range of AsianAmerican 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 toinclude South and Southeast Asian American experience. In each instance, we will read these forms within theirhistorical moments, ultimately asking how these formal expressions map onto the conditions of Asian America.
ASAM 006 Race & Ethnic Relations *
(Grace Kao)
Cross listed with SOCI 006 / AFRC 006
LEC MW 10-11AM
402 REC F 11:00-12:00PM
403 REC F 10:00-11:00AM
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 160 South Asians in the US *
(Fariha Khan)
Cross listed with SAST 290
LEC TR 12:00-1:30PM
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 201 Ethnic Economies & Globalization *
(Tamara Nopper)
Cross listed with URBS 215 / SOCI 150
LEC T 6:00-9:00PM
What drives different ethnic groups to open businesses and why are some more “successful” in entrepreneurship than others? How do different groups finance their businesses and does the U.S.
government help some open firms? How is racial conflict over business competition related to global factors? This course bridges the topics and literatures of globalization, development, urban
studies, the sociology of entrepreneurship and race, and Asian American studies to explore connections between ethnic entrepreneurship and globalization. We examine how US-located
ethnic entrepreneurship is impacted by diplomatic ties, globalization of banking and telecommunications, foreign investment, trade, transnationalism, diasporic institutions, gentrification, deindustrialization, and immigration. In the process students become familiar with 1) examples of business patterns among ethnic groups; 2) relationship between entrepreneurship and
employment opportunities; 3) differences between ethnic enclaves, ethnoburbs, and ethnic economies, and 4) data used by those studying and working in business, economic and urban development, finance, and immigration.
ASAM 294 Facing America *
(Gwendolyn Shaw)
Cross listed with ARTH 294
LEC TR 10:30-12PM
This course explores the visual history of race in the United States as both self-fashioning and cultural mythology by examining the ways that various representations of Native American, Latino, and Asian identity, alongside ideas of Blackness and Whiteness, have combined to create the various cultural ideologies of class, gender, and sexuality that remain evident in visual and material culture today.
ASAM 354 American Expansion in the Pacific
(Eiichiro Azuma)
Cross listed with HIST 354
LEC MW 3:30-5:00PM
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.
ASAM 299 Independent Study
PERMISSION NEEDED FROM DEPARTMENT
* Fulfills Cultural Diversity in the US Requirement in the School of Arts and Sciences