Fall 2024 Courses

ASAM 055. Critical Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) Studies.
N. Shahbazian, PZ, F 1:15-4:00 p.m.
This class is an introduction to SWANA studies. SWANA stands for Southwest Asia and North Africa and is a decolonial term for the Middle East. This class will seek to queer traditional Middle Eastern Studies by approaching the ambiguity, liminality, and discrepancies of both the SWANA region and its peoples. Through a focus on SWANA minority groups, students will learn about specific ethno-religious identities and the history of racialization of SWANA people in the U.S. The class will then center on social movements, including for Palestinian liberation, and the broader connection of organizing within multi-racial and collective solidarity building.

ASAM 070. Surveillance: An Introduction.
B. Nasir, PO, MW 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
In the twenty-first century, mass surveillance has successfully penetrated every aspect of public and private life, so much so that we are unable to imagine a world without it. Through critical readings, film and television, as well as social media, this course will draw on abolitionist methods and theories to examine the rise of surveillance in the United States. Students will come to understand how modern power works, particularly through the lens of race, by focusing on various case studies including: the monitoring of captives in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) targeting of Muslim Americans post-9/11, and the increasing use of “big data” or information technology in police departments. Along with querying the origins and history of surveillance, this course will probe the strategies and techniques of contemporary anti-surveillance social and protest movements.

ASAM 077B. Tattoos: Aesthetics, Cultures, and Pasts in the United States.
T. Honma, PZ, W 7:00-9:50 p.m.
Survey course examines cultural interpretations of tattooing in the United States from the 19th century to the present. Addresses issues such as US racial formation, settler colonialism, nation-building, war, and American empire. Particular focus on the intersections of aesthetics and ideology as they pertain to cultural identity, group membership, abjection, and deviance within racialized, classed, and gendered social environments.

ASAM 082. Racial Politics of Teaching.
K. Yep & C. Fought, PZ, R 1:15-4:00 p.m.
This class examines how race and ethnicity are constructed in schooling from sociological, linguistic, and ethnic studies standpoints. Specifically, we will discuss how race and ethnicity are constructed in schooling and ways teachers/educators may refine their pedagogies in relation to race and ethnicity. Students will do a research project.

ASAM 089. Embodied Learning, Pedagogies of Belonging, and Qi Gong.
K. Yep & B. Junisbai, PZ, F 9:35 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
From policing bodies to productivity culture, scholarship examines subsequent distortions of bodies in educational institutions. Our bodies map the ways we are isolated, segmented, and dehumanized. And our bodies also narrate the ways we persist, repair, connect, foster solidarity, and radically reimagine ourselves and the world. The literature illuminates how bodies in classrooms are multi-layered and contested. Highlighting the possibility of social change through education, this course explores Roxana Ng’s framework of “embodied learning” as a potentially decolonizing pedagogical praxis. Through readings, dialogue, and practices, the class examines the hidden curriculum of different corporeal/mind dualisms in classrooms, the impact of (dis)embodiment on educational outcomes, and the transformative possibility of embodied education for critical consciousness and social action. This class investigates qi gong as an epistemological framework and an embodied practice related to liberatory pedagogies. Rooted in traditional Chinese medicine, qi gong involves breathing, awareness, and movement and centers interconnectedness as the basis for its knowledge system. Combining discussion of readings and experiential practice, we will engage in a community-engaged project that includes relational mindfulness, qi gong, and other contemplative practices.

ASAM 090. Asian American and Multiracial Community Studies.
T. Honma, PZ, W 2:45-5:30 p.m.
Introduces students to studying and working beside Asian American and Pacific Islander communities through the exploration of the politics of place. Issues to be addressed in the course include ethical considerations of community projects and social topography as it changes in the Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander diasporas. Course will be project-based and working with community-based organizations.

ASAM123. Pacific Islander History and Culture Through Life Writing.
A. Flores, HM, T 1:15-4:00 p.m.
Life writing provides readers with an engaging opportunity to learn about history and its connection to the present. Utilizing the concept of Native survival, this course will examine the history and culture of Pacific Islanders through life writing that includes autobiography, biography, comics, graphic novels, and memoirs. Some of the main themes for this course include colonialism, diaspora, gender, indigeneity, migration, race, trauma, violence, and war. Class discussions, lectures, film screenings, and readings constitute the interpretive lens for this course.

ASAM 125. Introduction to Asian American History, 1850-Present.
A. Flores, HMC, TR 9:35-10:50 a.m.
This survey course examines the history of Asian immigrant groups and their American-born descendants as they have settled and adjusted to life in the United States since 1850.  We will explore issues such as the experience of immigration, daily life in urban ethnic enclaves, and racist campaigns against Asian immigrants.  In addition, this course utilizes an ethnic studies framework that requires students to critically explore other themes such as class, community, empire, gender, labor, race, sexuality, settler colonialism, and war from the perspective of Asian Americans.

ASAM 144 PO. Anti-Muslim Racism: A Global Perspective.
B. Nasir, PO, T 1:15-4:00 p.m.
This course explores the rise of Islamophobia to critically examine anti-Muslim racism and activist responses to it, with an emphasis on the United States. Through ethnographies, hip-hop, and fictional and documentary films, students will learn about the historical and enduring effects of Islamophobia on Muslim and non-Muslim South Asian American, Arab American, and African American communities. In addition, this course will consider emergent forms of antiracist protest forged in response to heightened policing, surveillance, and war in the current age of national security.

ASAM 161 CM. The Care Work of Asian Women.
L. Itagaki, CMC, MW 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
As sex workers, nannies, housekeepers, domestics, janitors, war brides, hospitality workers, manicurists and masseuses, care work is feminized and sexualized labor and Asian Pacific Islander Desi cis-/transwomen are the faces of this work. Even in management or executive careers, APIDA women are expected to perform this care work to facilitate the congeniality, smooth operations, and profits. While sharing very similar experiences, oppressions, and harms faced by other Black, Indigenous and women of color, representations of APIDA women and their labor have been specifically deployed to bolster nationalistic and militaristic Americanness and Whiteness across centuries of US empire and justify anti-Asian violence and exclusion.

ASAM 179B. Asian Americans and the Law.
Staff, SC, R 7:00-9:45 p.m.
Analyze the intersection of Asian American history to American Jurisprudence, especially Constitutional and Immigration law.  In many regrettable instances, our legal system has been used to oppress Asians and Asian Pacific Americans.  However, Asian Americans have used the courts to fight back for equality and justice, contributing immensely to the formation of Civil Rights in the United States.  The class will attempt to tie in current events and contemporary issues to past legal struggles and victories.   We will use actual court cases in the same manner that a law school course might to examine issues such as Immigration, Property Rights, Employment, Education, Hate-crimes, Racial Profiling, among others.

ASAM 179H. Music in Asian America.
Staff, HM, F 1:15-4:00 p.m.
This course addresses the cultural politics of Asian American music. We will explore the role of diasporic expressive culture in shaping racialized identities and emergent political formations. The “Asian American” will be broadly defined. Expanding the rubric of conventional East Asian American categories, we will examine South/Southeast Asian American musics and cross-racial alliances. Afro-Asian encounters will be of particular focus. This class incorporates a substantial community-based ethnographic research project. No musical training necessary.

ASAM 179R. Popular Culture and the Pacific Islands.
A. Flores, HMC, R 1:15-4:00 p.m.
This seminar (discussion-based) course critically examines the relationship between popular culture and the Pacific Islands. Using concepts and theories in cultural studies, history, Indigenous studies, and media studies, students will learn how to analyze aesthetics, form, historical context, meaning, power, and representation embedded in popular culture. Some of the various forms of popular culture that will be explored include fashion, films, graphic novels, music, sports, and television. Additionally, emphasis will be placed on intersecting themes such as capitalism, gender, indigeneity, racism, and settler colonialism.

ASAM 190A. Asian American Studies Senior Seminar: Applications, Analysis, and Future Directions.
S. Goto, PO, TR 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
This is the capstone seminar for senior Asian American Studies majors (minors optional). The seminar is designed to bring seniors together to discuss and assess their understanding of Asian American Studies practice and theory at the Claremont Colleges and beyond. We will engage in minor research activities, read & analyze provocative books and articles, and revisit key issues & controversies.

PSYC 155. Seminar in Ethnic Minority Psychology and Mental Health.
W. Hwang, CMC, MW 2:45-4:00 p.m.
This course examines the roles and influences of ethnicity, race, and culture on psychology and mental health.  Students will learn about intergroup dynamics, racism and White privilege, ethnic identity development, acculturation and immigration, ethnic differences in the expression of distress, differential patterns and barriers to help-seeking, mental health disparities, and ethnocultural issues that influence treatment processes.

SOC 126AA. Immigration and the Second Generation.
H. Thai, PO, M 1:15-4:00 p.m.
Analysis of post-1965 children of immigrants, and/or immigrant children in Asia America. Emphasis on variations on coming-of-age patterns, the course examines diverse childhood experiences, including ‘transnational’ children, ‘refugee’ children, and ‘left-behind’ children. Emphasis on gender, class, ethnicity, intergenerational relations, education, sexuality, popular culture, and globalization, and specifically how young adults negotiate major American institutions such as the labor market and educational systems.

THEA 001G. Acting for Social Change.
J. Lu, PO, MW 1:15-3:45 p.m.
Acting for Social Change is an introduction to the fundamentals of acting, drawing upon different techniques such as psychological realism and physical theatre. Students will perform a self-written monologue, a documentary monologue transcribed from a live interview, and a two or three person scene from a play. They will also be introduced to Playback Theatre and Theatre of the Oppressed, two forms of theater that are applied commonly today to create dialogue, heal conflict and trauma, and build community.