Course Offerings (CAS Bulletin)
CORE COURSES
Approaches to Asian/Pacific American Experience
V18.0301 Formerly V15.0010. Identical to V57.0626. Tchen. Offered every semester. 4 points.
This interdisciplinary course provides a general introduction to the themes of Asian/Pacific/American Studies through class discussions, guest speakers, and visits to community organizations in addition to traditional class methods. Emphasizing historical perspectives, it explores concepts of “home” and “community,” as well as “Asian” and “American” in the context of Asian/Pacific/American experiences. Issues covered may include: diaspora and migration, colonialism, orientalism, labor, family/community formations, national and international law/policy vis-à-vis A/P/As, intersections of sex/gender/race, education, popular culture and representation, activism, pan/ethnic identities, and electoral politics.
Asian/Pacific American Community Studies: Theories and Practices
V18.0302 Formerly V15.0101. Prerequisite: V18.0301. Siu. Offered every other semester. 4 points.
This course investigates through class discussions and fieldwork, definitions of Asian/Pacific American communities based not just on ethnicity and geography, but also gender, class, sexual orientation, religion, and other significant affiliations and identifications. Introduces the theories and practices of Asian American “community studies” through an interdisciplinary framework that evaluates and draws on a variety of approaches from urban studies and planning, anthropology, sociology, humanities, media, and cultural arts.
Note: Students cannot enroll in the Metropolitan Studies internship in the same semester.
INTRODUCTORY-LEVEL COURSES
History of Asians in the United States
V18.0305 Formerly V15.0030. Identical to V57.0046. Offered every two years. 4 points.
A general overview of Asian American history, beginning in the mid-19th century to the present. The course explores the experience of a wide range of groups that fall under the term “Asian American,” noting not only the facts and figures of this group’s presence in the United States but also their experiences, the dynamic of cultures, and their contributions to American history. The incorporation of various academic approaches, such as film and fiction, provides an interdisciplinary means to illuminating this history and topic of study.
Asian American Literature
V18.0306 Formerly V15.0301. Identical to V41.0716 and V29.0301. Offered every year. 4 points.
This overview begins with the recovery of early writings during the 1960s-1970s and proceeds to the subsequent production of Asian American writing and literary/cultural criticism up to the present. The course focuses on significant factors affecting the formation of Asian American literature and criticism, such as changing demographics of Asian American communities and the influence of ethnic, women’s, and gay/lesbian/bisexual studies. Included in the course is a variety of genres (poetry, plays, fiction and nonfiction, literary/cultural criticism) by writers from diverse ethnic backgrounds. The course explores the ways in which the writers treat issues such as racial/ethnic identity; immigration and assimilation; gender; class; sexuality; nationalism; culture and community; history and memory; and art and political engagement.
Asian American Women
V18.0307 Formerly V15.0302
and V97.0302. Offered every other year. 4 points.
Central concerns include the category, identities, experiences, and lives of Asian American women throughout history. Uses theories of cultural studies to produce vital ways of contextualizing the realities of Asian and Asian American women, especially in relationship to Asian American men, other people and communities of color, mainstream cultures, and themselves. These theories are applied throughout the semester to the oral histories, testimonials, media representations, and cultural productions of, by, and about Asian American women. Topics include immigration, labor, sex work, anti-Asian violence and violence against women, third-world feminism, female masculinities and queer identities, and acts of cultural resistance (through performance, visual culture, literature, and film).
Asian/Pacific American Media and Culture
V18.0308 Formerly V15.0305. Identical to H72.0488. Offered every other year. 4 points.
Who are Asian/Pacific Americans as cultural producers today? How do we imagine ourselves? What are some of these images? This course discusses Asian/Pacific American experiences such as migration, assimilation, displacement, generational and class differences, multiculturalism, and racism within our respective communities as well as across communities. In this survey seminar, participants have the opportunity to explore the diversity of Asian/Pacific American cultures through a wide range of film and video screenings, critical and fictional writings, and guest artists. The course examines mainstream stereotypical representations of Asian/Pacific Americans and their experiences. The majority of the semester is spent looking at these representations in relationship to more complex narratives produced by cutting-edge Asian/Pacific Americans whose works address issues of class, race, gender, national, and sexual identities through independent and alternative cinematic and literary lenses.
Asian American Art and Social Issues
V18.0309 Formerly V15.0313. Offered every two years. 4 points.
Examines how Asian American visual artists of different ethnic and generational backgrounds, ranging from recent immigrants and refugees to the American-born, articulate questions of self and community identification through the visual arts. Using slides, artists’ videos, and film, themes central to the historical impact of European orientalism, the experience of traversing cultures, situating oneself in America, speaking to and of Asia, speaking to and of East-West interaction, intergenerational connections, gender roles, and Asian cultural stereotypes are explored. The course asks how “ethnic-specific” work is framed and presented through contemporary exhibitions and curatorial and critical practices. Visits to pertinent art exhibitions and public programs may be arranged.
Cinema of AsiaAmerica
V18.0310 Formerly V15.0314. Identical to V33.0314 and H72.0315. Offered every other year. 4 points.
Begins with a critical history of misrepresentation and discrimination of Asians inHollywood, then creates an arc of study that documents resistance and ultimately an undeniable and empowered presence. The second half of the semester focuses on a critical appreciation of contemporary Asian and Asian American film. The course uses both screenings and readings and is divided into four areas of concentration: the history of misrepresentation in Hollywood films; the appropriation of Asian paradigms byHollywood; the achievements of contemporary Asian American films; and the achievements of exemplary Asian filmmakers who have transcended regional and artistic borders.
Race, Immigration, andNew York City
V18.0311 Formerly V15.0322. Identical to V93.0453. Offered every two years. 4 points.
According to 2000 Census figures, almost two-thirds of women inNew York City are women of color. Latinos make up 27 percent ofNew York City’s population, 787,047 Asian American New Yorkers marked “Asian,” and the West Indian population composed largely of Jamaicans and Haitians is estimated at 589,000. The experiences of post-1965 immigration from Asian, Latin America, and the Caribbean in historic “gateway” cities likeNew York City are transforming urban demography, political and social institutions, the delivery of social services, and local economies. This course focuses on how post-1965 immigration has impacted neighborhood economies and the urban labor market, neighborhood change and community formation, race/ethnic identity and relations, and political participation. Through census navigation, readings, and fieldwork, students explore the public policy implications forNew York City as a result of the 2000 Census numbers.
Filipino Americans,U.S. Colonialism, and Transnationalism in the Philippine Diaspora
V18.0312 Formerly V15.0323. Offered every three years. 4 points.
Examines how Filipino global dispersal afterU.S. colonial rule (1902-1941) ambiguously culminated in thePhilippines’ commonwealth status in the 1930s and after the postindependence period. Explores how the colonial formation of the “Filipino American” portended the postcolonial emergence of the overseas contract worker (OCW) and how the OCW reciprocally points to the Filipino American as a complex figure of colonial and transnational histories.
History of the South Asian Diaspora
V18.0313 Formerly V15.0326. Identical to V57.0326. Offered every year. 4 points.
Introduction to the history of the South Asian diaspora in theUnited States. Highlights work on South Asian immigrant communities in theUnited States and the little-known history of South Asian immigrants on the East Coast in the context of historical migration to theUnited States,Canada, and theCaribbean. The course offers a multidisciplinary perspective and uses classic as well as new works on South Asians in theUnited States from history, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies.
Asian American Theatre
V18.0314 Formerly V15.0328. Identical to H28.0606 and V30.0256. Offered every year. 4 points.
Acts as both an introduction to the genre of Asian American theatre and an interrogation into how this genre has been constituted. Through a combination of play analysis and historical discussion, students look at the ways Asian American drama and performance intersect with a burgeoning Asian American consciousness.
ADVANCED-LEVEL COURSES
Documenting Asian/PacificAmerica: Creating Presence
V18.0360 Formerly V15.0080. Offered every three years. 4 points.
How have Asian/Pacific American cultural producers negotiated community inclusive of class, gender, ethnic, sexual, generational, cultural, and historical differences? What kind of day-to-day issues does one face in any given community? This course examines how Asian/Pacific American film and videomakers have represented concepts of community and how grassroots media production can be used to explore social, cultural, and political issues and concerns in relation to Asian/Pacific American communities. Course participants can create presence through their own audiovisual projects.
Filming AsianAmerica: Documenting Community
V18.0361 Formerly V15.0090. Identical to H72.0450. Offered every three years. 4 points.
Focuses specifically on the Asian American communities ofNew York and their histories. Presents filmmaking as a mode of community documentation and filmmakers as historians. Students meet as theorists and field researchers. The first phase is largely historical and theoretical, while the latter mainly deals with hands-on filmmaking. Students document various aspects of Asian/Pacific American communities in New York—sociocultural and political issues surrounding them, histories, personal stories, geodynamics of ethnic localities, domestic lives, professions, ethnic festivals and performances, etc. At the end of the course, students have made at least two collective documentaries (10 to 12 minutes each), which may be interrelated or on entirely different subjects.
Reimagining Community: Race, Nation, and the Politics of Belonging
V18.0362 Formerly V15.0200. Identical to V14.0325. Offered every other year. 4 points.
Critically examines and evaluates the various approaches to studying and interpreting different community formations. Examines different notions of community through a variety of disciplinary lenses.Readings are drawn from anthropology, history, feminist studies, cultural studies, ethnic studies, and philosophy. The course also examines these texts both as theoretical representations of community as well as historically embedded artifacts that are part of the larger machinery in the production of knowledge.
MultiethnicNew York: A Study of an Asian/Latino Neighborhood
V18.0363 Formerly V15.0310. Offered every two years. 4 points.
The growth of the Asian and Latino populations is driving the transformation of the economic, social, and political landscape ofNew York City. One notable pattern in social geography of multiethnicNew York is the emergence of concentrated Asian/Latino neighborhoods. This course focuses on one such neighborhood and uses quantitative methods and fieldwork to conduct a comprehensive community study. The objective is to examine the reproduction of socioeconomic inequality in “global cities” and identify viable strategies for community-based economic development in multiethnic immigrant communities.
Asian and Asian American Contemporary Art
V18.0364 Formerly V15.0319. Identical to V43.0319 and V33.0319. Offered every three years. 4 points.
Exposes students to wide-ranging issues of contemporary Asian and Asian American identities in the visual arts, emphasizing the need for greater transcultural awareness and understanding in the fluid environment of the post-cold war world, where people, ideas, and images swiftly traverse ever more porous national boundaries. Examines how Asian artists of different ethnic and generational backgrounds articulate questions of self, community, and cultural and national identification through the visual arts. Themes related to conceptions of Asian modernity and the legacy of interaction between Asia and the West, as well as the experience of traversing cultures and situating oneself inAmerica, are explored.
Asian Americans and War
V18.0365 Formerly V15.0321. Identical to V57.0654 and V33.0321. Offered every other year. 4 points.
Examines Asian American history and contemporary culture using the theme of “war” as an organizing principle. It considers not only the sociopolitical effects of actual war—between Asian nations, between the United States and Asian nations, and civil wars in Asia—on immigration to the United States, but also the myriad meanings of war and their social and cultural implications for Asian Americans. It examines the ways in which wars have transformed Asian American social organization and influenced shifting
alliances, multiple sense of belonging, and racial representations in the United States during World War II and Vietnam as well as the metaphorical presence of war in everyday life.
The Constitution and People of Color
V18.0366 Formerly V15.0327. Identical to V53.0801, V62.0327. Offered every other semester. 4 points.
Examines how the American legal system decided constitutional challenges affecting the empowerment of African, Latino, and Asian American communities from the 19th century to the present. Topics include the denial of citizenship and naturalization to slaves and immigrants, government-sanctioned segregation, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the prison industry, police brutality, post-9/11 detention issues, and voting rights. Course requirements include attendance at a community function involving constitutional issues, a midterm, and an interactive oral and written final project comparing a present-day issue affecting racial minorities inNew York City and proposing measures to collectively address the issue.
Race, Class, and Metropolitan Transformation
V18.0367 Formerly V15.0601. Identical to V57.0656. Offered every three years. 4 points.
Metropolitan growth in the 20th century has been marked by persistent class division and racial conflict. This course engages in a historical examination of the (re)production of ideologies and relationships of race and class within the process of 20th-centuryU.S. metropolitan development. Reading and discussion are organized around social, economic, and cultural transformations in the United States; we review the literature on urbanization and residential segregation in order to examine the framing of historical questions as well as current scholarship on theories of space, consumption, class, and race to explore their usefulness in the explanation of difference and inequality in 20th-century U.S. metropolitan spatialization.
Reading Race and Representation
V18.0368 Formerly V15.0603. Identical to V41.0058. Offered every three years. 4 points.
This seminar centers on “reading race” as it is variously theorized in a range of cultural productions (fiction, personal essays, cultural/literary criticism, sociology, independent films, and pop culture). The emphasis on Asian American work is situated within a comparative framework that includes writers and filmmakers from diverse backgrounds who explore ways of analyzing “differences.” Part of the course is devoted to examining re-readings of race that have significantly redefined the “canon” of American literature. Looks at how the relationship between racial “representation” (political, demographic, social historical, and cultural) and constructions of national identity has been interrogated, especially in reference to the politics of “multicultural literacy.”
Asian American Gender and Sexuality
V18.0369 Formerly V15.0604. Offered every year. 4 points.
Looks at gender and sexualities within racialized Asian/Pacific American contexts. How are masculinity and femininity constructed? What is “straight” A/PA sexuality and what are “queer” A/PA discourses? What do you do with all those images of Madame Butterfly, geisha girls, the Kama Sutra, transvestite prostitutes, Oriental massage parlors, servant boys, asexual computer nerds, island “natives,” and the “exotic” erotic? What is the connection between Asian gender and sexuality to A/PA identity? And what about the “trans” stuff—transnationality, transgender, etc.—the crossing of borders among nationalities, ethnicities, genders, bodies? How do all these cathect into personality and community sedimentations through war traumas, colonial disparities, immigration, class instabilities, and one’s own historical and cultural “baggage” and “inner furniture”—such as family values, religion, beliefs, traditions? Students have an opportunity to discuss and examine literature, theoretical texts, and film/video.
Chinatown and the American Imagination: A Field Research Course
V18.0370 Formerly V15.0607. Identical to K20.1229. Offered every year. 4 points.
What is a “Chinatown?” The word alone evokes many images, sounds, smells, and tastes from many different sensibilities. For recent immigrants it can be a home away from home; for “outsiders” an exotic place for cheap eats; for male action flick fans, Chow Yun-Fat (or Mark Walhberg) in The Corruptor; and for you? (Fill in the blank.) We explore the nooks and crannies of Chinatown in the American imagination and in itsNew York real-time, nonvirtual existence. How do we know what we know and not know? What doesChinatown have to do with the formation of normative “American” identities? What are the possibilities (and limits) of crossing cultural divides? Class members individually and/or in groups research, experience, and document a chain of persons, places, and/or events creating their own narrative “tour” of this place’s meanings. Novels, history books, tourist guides, films, and pop culture supplement the primary “text” of New York Chinatown. This is a collaborative, discussion intensive, field research-driven class.
Topics in A/P/A Studies
V11.0380 Formerly V15.0800. Offered every semester. 4 points.
Specific topics vary from semester to semester but can include Asian American Music, Mapping Identities: Imagined Communities and the Net, Poetics of Performance, Asian/African Caribbean Literature, Global Youth Cultures, Asian Americans of Mixed Heritage, and Comparative Asian/Black American Cinema, among other select courses.
LANGUAGE COURSES
Elementary Filipino I, II
V18.0321, 0322 Formerly V15.0401, 0402. Offered every semester. 4 points.
An introduction to Filipino with an emphasis on mastering basic grammar skills and working vocabulary. Lessons incorporate discussions on history, current events, literature, pop culture, and native values. The course is open to beginning language students, and lessons are modified according to the needs of individual students. Because language is key to connecting with community concerns, the course also includes field trips to Filipino neighborhoods in Queens andJersey City.
Intermediate Filipino I, II
V18.0323, 0324 Formerly V15.0403, 0404. Offered every semester. 4 points.
At this level, when the basic skills and working vocabulary have been mastered, emphasis can be placed on the linguistic rules to enable the student to communicate with more competence. There is also focus on translation. Lessons use a holistic approach and incorporate discussions on history, current events, literature, pop culture, and native values. To observe and experience the language at work, the course includes field trips to Filipino centers in the New York-New Jersey area as well as invited guests who converse with students in Filipino about their life and work.
Elementary Cantonese I, II
V18.0331, 0332 Formerly V15.0410, 0411. Identical to V33.0410 and V33.0411. Offered every semester. 4 points.
An introduction to Cantonese with an emphasis on the spoken and written language and conversational proficiency as a primary goal. The course emphasizes grammar, listening comprehension, and oral expressions. It is designed to give beginning students a practical command of the language. Upon completion of the course, students can expect to converse in simple sentences and recognize and write about 350 Chinese characters. Students with passable conversation ability or native speakers from Cantonese-speaking communities should not enroll in this course.
Intermediate Cantonese I, II
V18.0333, 0334 Formerly V15.0412, 0413. Identical to V33.0412 and V33.0413. Offered every semester. 4 points.
This is an advanced-level language and culture course following Elementary Cantonese. At this level, when the basic skills and working vocabulary have been mastered, emphasis is placed on the linguistic rules to enable students to communicate with more competence. The lessons focus not only on language, but also use a holistic approach and incorporate discussions on history, current events, literature, pop culture, and native values. Because language is key to connecting with community concerns, the course also includes field trips toChinatown and other Cantonese-speaking neighborhoods.
Advanced Cantonese
V18.0335 Formerly V15.0415. Offered every year. 4 points.
This seminar-style course is geared toward advanced learners of Cantonese who have studied intermediate Cantonese or who have a background in spoken Cantonese but who want to learn how to read and write Chinese characters. Students learn how to read traditional Chinese characters as pronounced in Cantonese. They also learn how to write standard Chinese.Reading material includes a textbook plus daily newspaper and selected literary texts written in Chinese characters.
Elementary Hindi/Urdu I, II
V18.0341, 0342 Formerly V15.0405, 0406. Identical to V77.0405, 0406. 4 points.
Intermediate Hindi/Urdu I, II
V18.0343, 0344 Formerly V15.0407, 0408. Identical to V77.0407, 0408. 4 points.
Advanced Hindi
V18.0345 Formerly V15.0409. Identical to V77.0410. 4 points.
