Intro to Asian Amer. Studies

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

In this course, we will consider the history and politics of Asians in the United States. Beginning with definitions and theories of Orientalism, Race, and Asian Americanism, we will turn our attention to the events that have defined Asian Americans in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Paying particular attention to the politics of an event—exclusion, incarceration, immigration, war, and racial conflict—we will examine how and why particular policies were put into place, why events unfolded, and how Asians were imagined and how they acted in the face of racial attitudes, systems of imperialism, capitalism, and race, and ideas of nation. We will focus primarily on how race works, how it’s read, constructed, understood, and shaped by other forces. Given ideologies surrounding race and nation, how can we best understand and advocate for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders?