Spring 2025 Courses
ANTH 185SC. Palestine in Ethnography and Film.
L. Deeb, SC, T 2:45-5:30p.m.
Intensive and focused study of specific issues and themes in the Middle East and North Africa/ Southwest Asian and North African region, drawing extensively on anthropological sources and modes of inquiry. This seminar provides an overview of Palestinian society and culture, the ways in which Palestine and Palestinians have been represented in ethnography and film, and the settler-colonial and imperial histories, discourses, and narratives that impact these representations in the United States.
ASAM 055. Critical Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) Studies.
N. Shahbazian, PO, M 7:00-9:50p.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 086. Social Documentation and Asian Americans.
Staff, HM, F 1:15-4:00p.m.
Viewing of films and other documentary forms by Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) for critique and discussion. Basic instruction in use of digital video technology to document social issues relevant to Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Community- project.
ASAM 094. Community Health.
Staff, PZ, T 7:00-9:50p.m.
This course explores the struggle for social justice and health equality for and with underserved Asian American communities and Pacific Islander communities. Through participatory teaching strategies, the class will examine health care as a basic human right and analyze movements working towards eliminating disparities in health. Fulfills Pitzer social responsibility requirement.
ASAM 105B. Zines in the Asian Diaspora.
T. Honma, W 7:00-9:50p.m.
This course explores self-published zines as a way to understand Asian diasporic experiences in various regions of the “Pacific World.” We will examine factors involved in transpacific movement and migration and how Asian diasporic communities choose to represent themselves through the medium of zines. By engaging in comparative analysis between creative narration and scholarly texts, we will investigate competing definitions of what it means to be “Asian.”
ASAM 115. Theory and Methods.
B. Nasir, PO, R 1:15-4:00p.m.
As an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary field of study and knowledge production, Asian/American and Pacific Islander Studies uses a variety of research methods to address the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class in the realms of politics, representation, identity, and community formation, among others. The course will provide a critical examination of important themes in Asian American history; contemporary issues facing Asian American communities in a time of accelerated economic, social, and political changes; and the relation of textual and cultural production to epistemology and states of being and feeling that respond to structures of power.
ASAM 151. Queer Ethnic Studies.
T. Honma & S. Portillo, PZ, W 2:45-5:30p.m.
Students in this course will reflect on the interdisciplinary field of queer Ethnic Studies through a diverse range of texts and media to analyze structures of power and domination, with a particular focus on how ‘queerness’ destabilizes normative assumptions regarding the nexus of race, class, and gender-based ontological and epistemological formations. Students will interrogate knowledge production, community organizing and resistance, advocacy, mutual aid and migrations with the field of queer Ethnic Studies as well as the research and methodologies produced by queer and trans* thinkers, activists, and cultural workers, radicals and revolutionaries.
ASAM 160. Asian American Women’s Experiences.
Staff, SC, R 7:00-9:50p.m.
This course is an interdisciplinary examination of Asian and Pacific Islander American women. It will examine the history and experiences of Asian American women in the United States. The class will include both lecture and discussion and will cover various issues, such as gender roles, mass media stereotypes, Asian women’s feminism, and the impact of sexism and racism on the lives of Asian American women through education, work, and home life.
ASAM 179I. Transpacific Japan: Relationality in Love and Money.
S. Goto & L. Yamane, PO, M 1:15-4:00p.m.
This course is a broad introduction to contemporary Japanese economy and culture and its diaspora through the interdisciplinary lenses of Asian American Studies, Economics and Psychology. We will use the themes of love (interpersonal relationships) and money (economy). We will examine historical phases of ‘love’ and ‘money’ beginning with the high rates of growth in the post WWII experience. How has the nature of the self, changed or remained similar across time in Japan? How is this impacted or independent of the larger Japanese and global economy? How does this change or stay resilient with immigration experiences and across generations? We will discuss the character of Japanese economic policy making well as its effect on the behavior of Japanese institutions, labor forces, families, individuals and their relations with others. Topics will include macroeconomic growth, monetary and fiscal policies, international trade, the role of cultural values, and power relations. With the collapse of the Bubble economy and the Lost Decades, we will end with a discussion of Japan’s recent economic conditions and indices of well-being in Japan and across the Japanese diaspora.
ASAM 187. Asian American Arts and Activism.
J. Lu, PO, W 7:00-9:50p.m.
The course examines the role that different artistic forms–including but not limited to: graphic art, performance, poetry, photography/film/video, street/protest art–have played within social justice movements across the Asian diasporas in the U.S. We will begin with the emergence of the Asian American movement in the late 1960s, and the different expressive forms that took place across the U.S. and internationally. We use this moment as a historical jumping off point as well as a political framework for understanding Asian American identity and culture. Students will engage in a combination of theoretical and creative exercises and projects in order to understand the material, representational and epistemological complexities of the terms “arts,” “activism,” and “Asian American.”
ASAM 191PO. Asian American Studies Senior Thesis.
Students will work with one or more faculty on original thesis research toward completion of senior thesis.
ENGL 043. Families in Asian Diasporic Literature and Film.
J. Noh, PO, TR 9:35-10:50a.m.
This course examines the representation of family in Asian diasporic literature and film. Through close readings of novels, poems, graphic narratives, and films, we will study how recent writers and filmmakers of South Asian, Southeast Asian, and East Asian descent have used family relationships to think about gender, sexuality, race, and economic mobility in the context of war, immigration, and globalization. We will also investigate the family plot as a dominant feature of Asian American and other Asian diasporic literatures: Why the pull of family? Are there alternatives? Possible authors and filmmakers include Maxine Hong Kingston, Ruth Ozeki, Arundhati Roy, Richard Fung, Aimee Phan, Thi Bui, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Lulu Wang, and Lee Lai.
ENGL 146. Asian American Poetry: 1960s to the Present.
J. Noh, PO, TR 1:15-2:30p.m.
This course will focus on canonical and non-canonical Asian American poetry; particularly, how that body of work has been read, regarded, and taught, as well how it has been included or excluded more generally in American Studies. We will examine discussions and scholarship regarding Asian American poetry and poetics that have deepened in the last twenty-five years. In addition, the course will engage with the emergent and established communities that have formed by and for Asian American poets from the mid-twentieth century to the present. This class will also examine and situate the work of Asian American poets as located both inside and outside a mainstream white culture. We will explore the poetry and poetics of Asian American poets from the second half of the twentieth-century to contemporary twenty first-century poetry, particularly following three categories of poetic form: narrative, lyric, and nontraditional writing. This focus on form will include work off the page, performance, spoken word, and avant-garde work. Not only will the course explore multifaceted traditions in poetry but we will also look at both the theories of categorization and the politics that are always at stake for the poetries and poets. Letter grade only.
FGSS 188E. The Queer Transpacific: Sinophone Cultures and Race/Ethnicity in Asian America.
J. Cheng, SC, T 2:45-5:30p.m.
This course draws together emergent scholarship in transpacific studies and sinophone studies with Asian American studies and queer studies. It attends to how the hemispheric Americas and Asia Pacific regions have been shaped by the United States and China, respectively and concomitantly. We trace overlapping histories of U.S.-European interventions into Asia Pacific, Pacific militarizations, Chinese empire, and modern Chinese nation-state building led by Han ethnonationalisms. Focusing on transpacific crossings and the production of “sinophone cultures” in history, popular culture, science, and tourism, this course applies queer analyses to investigate how the U.S. and China produce one another as analogous “others.”
GWS 162. Decolonizing Gender and Sexuality in Asian/America.
A. Bahng, PO, TR 11:00a.m.-12:15p.m.
Through an analysis of historical and contemporary Asian American and Pacific Islander literature, film, performance, art, and popular culture, this course emphasizes a wide range of engagements with gender and sexuality that disrupts binary thinking on the topic. Students will examine the formation of Asian American genders and sexualities alongside histories of racialization, migration, and labor that span East, South, and Southeast Asian, as well as Pacific contexts. In our engagement with transpacific movements of people and culture, we will foreground settler colonial occupations of the Pacific Islands and highlight the work of decolonial queer-feminist thinkers like Haunani-Kay Trask, Maile Arvin, and Stephanie Nohelani Teves. We will attend to the incommensurability of migrant and indigenous frameworks, even as we move through the persistence and at times concurrence of multiple forms of colonialism that connect Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. Some questions we will address include: How do historical contexts (i.e. the Cold War, 9/11, Japanese internment) affect Asian American gender formations? What does the popular (Orientalist depictions of Asian women from Geisha Girl to Tiger Mom) have to do with the geo-political (U.S. economic relations with Asia)? How might an Asian American queer politics reveal the limitations of the model minority myth? How can centering Pacific Islander onto-epistemologies decolonize notions of gender and sexuality?
HIST 125AA. Introduction to Asian American History, 1850-Present.
L. Itagaki, CM, MW 11:00a.m.-12:15p.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.
PSYC 114. Asian American Child Development.
H. Park, SC, T 2:45-5:30p.m.
This course will provide a psychological perspective on the nature and meaning of growing up as Asian American in North America. We will examine the diverse experiences of Asian American children, youth, and families, drawing upon primarily psychological theory and research. Furthermore, students will be exposed to interdisciplinary ethnic studies scholarship, memoirs, news articles, and films. Integrating a range of course materials, we will evaluate scientific claims, personal narratives, and everyday portrayals of Asian American children, youth, families, and communities. We will compare and contrast these multiple sources of information to gain a holistic view and identity gaps and future research directions in the field of psychological science. Course topics will include ethnic and racial socialization, ethnic identity development, peer relations, acculturations, biculturalism, model minority myth, parenting, family relationship, and transracial adoption.
PSYC 153AA. Asian American Psychology.
S. Goto, PO, TR 1:15-2:30p.m.
Introduces students to the salient psychological issues of Asian Americans. Taking into account the social, cultural, and historical context of the Asian American experience, this course addresses values and cultural conflict development, acculturation, marriage and gender roles, vocational development, psychopathology, and delivery of mental health services.
SOC 150AA. Contemporary Asian American Issues.
H. Thai, PO, W 1:15-4:00p.m.
Survey of contemporary empirical studies focusing on Asian American experiences in the U.S. and globally; major themes include race, class, gender, sexuality, marriage/family, education, consumption, childhoods, aging, demography, and the rise of transmigration. Readings and other course materials will primarily focus on the period since 1965.
THEA 115O. Applied Theatre.
J. Lu, PO, MW 1:15-3:45p.m.
Applied Theatre encompasses all theatrical interventions that are deployed outside of a traditional theater space for community building, problem solving, and healing justice. In this course, you will learn techniques from Playback Theatre and Theatre of the Oppressed, the most widely known forms of Applied Theatre.