American Studies 180
CRITICAL ISSUES IN ASIAN AMERICAN AND PACIFIC ISLANDER HISTORY
20TH CENTURY
University of California, Santa Cruz
Spring 2012
MWF 11:00AM-12:10 PM, Cowell 113
Instructor:
Office:
Office Hours:
Michael Jin (mjin@ucsc.edu)
Humanities 1, Room 234 (831/459-5223)
M 1:00 PM-3:00 PM, or by appt.
Course Description
This upper-division course examines Asian American and Pacific Islander history from the turn of the
twentieth century to the present in larger national, cross-racial, and transnational contexts. We will
critically scrutinize and challenge the conventional understanding of Asian Americans and Pacific
Islanders solely as communities of immigrants and their descendants within the United States. Our topics
include race relations, migration, war, colonialism, assimilation, gender ideology, social movements,
multiracial identity, family and community life, and cultural representations in Asian American and
Pacific Islander experiences across racial, ethnic, and national boundaries. Rather than focusing
exclusively on the historical narratives of selected Asian American and Pacific Islander “ethnic” groups,
we will examine how race, gender, class, sexuality, and other historical issues have shaped the formation
of complex and diverse identities and representations of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the
United States and beyond.
Reading List
•
•
Major Problems in Asian American History: Documents and Essays, edited by Lon Kurashige and Alice
Yang Murray (Houghton Mifflin, 2003)
Course Reader
The required course book and reader will be available at Literary Guillotine (831/457-1195), an
independent bookseller located at 204 Locust Street in downtown Santa Cruz.
Evaluation Criteria
25%
20%
25%
30%
Attendance, completion of reading assignments, and class participation
Short response papers (2-3 pages, due April 13, May 14, and May 30)
Take-home midterm (5-6 page essay, due April 30)
Take-home final (6-7 page essay, due June 11)
Please complete the reading assignments and be prepared to participate actively in class discussion. You
will not pass the course if you miss more than three class lectures without advanced permission and/or
evidence of a verifiable medical or family emergency. Your previous knowledge or assumption of Asian
American history will not help you very much in this course if you do not critically engage the course
readings and participate in class discussion.
Academic Integrity
You are required to strictly abide by the University policy on academic integrity for undergraduate
students. Plagiarism and/or any other type of academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. For more
information, consult the official UCSC policy on academic integrity:
http://undergraduate.ucsc.edu/acd_integrity.
Class Schedule
WEEK 1 Locating Asian Pacific America
April 2
Course Introduction, Why “Asian American and Pacific Islander History?”:
Representations of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Historical Narratives
April 4
Locating Asian and Pacific Diasporas: People, Geography, and History
April 6
Multiple Meanings of “Asian American/Pacific Islander”
READING:
Major Problems
• Chpater 1
Reader
• Nazli Kibria, “Not Asian, Black or White? Reflection on South Asian American Racial Identity,”
Amerasia Journal
• Gary Y. Okihiro, “Is Yellow Black or White?,” Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American
History and Culture
• Paul Spickard, “Pacific Diaspora?,” Pacific Diaspora: Island Peoples in the United States and Across
the Pacific
WEEK 2 Empires: Colonialism, Race, and Citizenship
April 9
Manifest Destiny Goes Pacific: Race and Citizenship in the U.S. Empire in Asia-Pacific
April 11
Film: My America… or Honk If You Love Buddha (Renee Tajima-Peña, 1997)
April 13
Pacific Islanders in the U.S. Empire
Response Paper #1 Due
READING:
Major Problems
• Chapter 2, Essays by Yong Chen and Ronald Takaki, 47-54.
• Chapter 5
Reader
• Maria Dolores Elizalde, “1898: the Coordinates of the Spanish Crisis in the Pacific,” The Crisis of
1898: Colonial Redistribution and Nationalist Mobilization.
• Dorothy Fujita-Rony, “Introduction” and “The Role of Colonialism,” American Workers, Colonial
Power: Philippine Seattle and the Transpacific West, 1919-1941.
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WEEK 3 Confronting Exclusion, Orientalism, and Imperialism: Interethnic Tensions and
Dynamics
April 16
Cultural Representations of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the Exclusion Era
April 18
“Yellow Peril” in Law and Politics
April 20
Conflicts and Alliances: Interracial and Interethnic Dimensions
READING:
Major Problems
• Chapter 6 and 7
Reader
Dorothy Fujita-Rony, “Resistance, Return, and Organization,” American Workers, Colonial Power.
WEEK 4 The “Pacific War”: Race, Citizenship, and Displacement
April 23
Pacific Islanders and the Legacy of America’s War in the Pacific
April 25
Displacement of Asians and Pacific Islanders during WWII
April 27
War, Race, and the Meaning of Citizenship
READING:
Major Problems
• CH. 9, “War, Race, and the Meaning of Citizenship, 1941-1988,” 285-317.
Reader
• Vincente M. Diaz, “Deliberating ‘Liberation Day’: Identity, History, Memory, and War in Guam,”
Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s).
• “The World War II Internment of Japanese Americans,” Asian American Opposing Viewpoints.
• Michi Weglyn, “Hostages,” What Did the Internment of Japanese Americans Mean?
• Rinjiro Sodei, “From Hiroshima, Back to Hiroshima,” Were We the Enemy? American Survivors of
Hiroshima.
WEEK 5 America’s Pacific: Liberation Narratives and the “Cold War”
April 30
Pacific Islanders and the Cold War
Take-home Midterm Due
May 2
“America’s Forgotten War”: The Cold War and Community Tension in Asian America
during the 1950s
May 4
The “World Refugee Fatigue” and Southeast Asian Diaspora
Film: A Village Called Versailles (S. Leo Chiang, 2009), selected scenes
READING:
Still Present Pasts: Korean Americans and the “Forgotten War” (http://www.stillpresentpasts.org)
Major Problems
• Chapters 10 and 12
3
Reader
• Ramsey Liem, “History, Trauma, and Identity: The Legacy of the Korean War,” Amerasia Journal.
• “Under the Organic Act, 1950-1970,” Destiny’s Landfall: A History of Guam.
• Nam Le, “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice” in The Boat.
• Pa Xiong, “Hmong Means ‘Free,’ or Does It? Memoirs of the Hmong Dead,” Amerasia Journal.
WEEK 6 Changing Face of Asian Pacific America: Diversity, Movement, and Identity
May 7
The “Movement”: Transnational and Diasporic Dimensions
May 9
Asian American Movement and Representation: Issues and Problems
May 11
The “Movement” and Its Contradictions: Gender, Sexuality, and the Meaning of
“Ethnic” in Asian Pacific America
READING:
Major Problems
• CH. 13, “Panethnicity, Asian American Activism, and Identity, 1965-2000,” Documents 1, 2, 3, 4, 6
and Essays, 419-427; 430-434; 441-456.
Reader
• Sonia Shah, “Presenting the Blue Goddess: Toward a National Pan-Asian Feminist Agenda,” The
State of Asian America: Activism and Resistance in the 1990s.
• Michael P. Perez, “Chamorro Resistance and Prospects for Sovereignty in Guam,” Amerasia
Journal.
• Yoko Yoshikawa, “The Heat is on Miss Saigon Coalition: Organizing Across Race and Sexuality,”
The State of Asian America: Activism and Resistance in the 1990s.
• Ruthann Lee, “Queer Theory and Anti-Racism Education: Politics of Race and Sexuality in the
Classroom and Beyond,” Embodying Asian American Sexualities.
• Vijay Prashad, “Kung Fusion: Organize the ’Hood Under I-Ching Banners,” Everybody Was Kung
Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity.
WEEK 7 Images of Asia/Pacific/America
May 14
Post-1965 Asian Pacific America: New Immigration Policies, “Brain Drain” and the
Model Minority Image; Reality and Representation
Response Paper #2 Due
May 16
Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Public Places
May 18
Asia Bashing, Violence against Asian Americans, and Pan-Ethnic Movement
Film: Who Killed Vincent Chin? (Christine Choy and Renee Tajima, 1987), selected scenes
READING:
Major Problems
• CH. 11, “Post-1965 Immigration and Asian America,” Documents 1- 8, 357-375.
• CH. 13, Document 5, “A Government Report on the Murders of Vincent Chin and Jim Loo, 1992,”
427-430.
Reader
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•
•
•
•
Sucheng Chan, ‘Why Are There So Many Asian-ancestry Engineers and Scientists?’ in “Asian
Immigration and Undergraduate Education,” In Defense of Asian American Studies.
“Special Immigrants Issue: The Changing Face of America,” Time, July 8, 1985
Op-ed pieces and readers’ responses in “On Asian-American Admissions,” “Asian Americans and
College Admissions,” and “Convenient Elitism,” Harvard Crimson, November 2006.
Rosalind S. Chou and Joe R. Feagin, “Everyday Racism: Anti-Asian Discrimination in Public
Places” and “Anti-Asian Discrimination in Schools and Workplaces,” The Myth of the Model
Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism.
WEEK 8 Meaning of Race in Asian Pacific America
May 21
Asian American and Pacific Islander Racial Identities: “Monoracial,” “Biracial,”
“Multiracial”
May 23
Asian Americans and Inner-City Race, Gender, and Class Relations
May 25
Meanings of Family and Community: Interracial Relationships, Transnational
Adoption, and Transnational Families
Film: In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee (Deann Borshay Liem, 2010), selected scenes
READING:
Kip Fulbeck’s “The Hapa Project” (http://www.seaweedproductions.com/hapa)
“Eurasian Nation” (http://www.eurasiannation.com)
Major Problems
CH 11, Edward J.W. Park, “The Los Angeles Civil Unrest Transforms Korean American Politics,” 381386
Reader
• Joan Walsh, “Asian Women, Caucasian Men,” Image Magazine, December 2, 1990.
• Debates on “Asian Women, Caucasian Men,” Asian Week.
• Larry Hajime Shinagawa and Gin Yon Pang, “Asian American Panethnicity and Intermarriage,
Asian Week.
• Teresa Williams-León, “The Convergence of Passing Zones: Multiracial Gays, Lesbians, and
Bisexuals of Asian Descent,” The Sum of Our Parts: Mixed-Heritage Asian Americans.
• Henry Yu, “Tiger Woods at the Center of History: Looking Back at the Twentieth Century through
the Lenses of Race, Sports, and Mass Consumption,” Sports Matters: Race Recreation, and Culture.
• J. Kehaulani Kauanui, “Got Blood?,” Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty
and Indigeneity.
• Itabari Njeri, “Sushi and Grits: Ethnic Identity and Conflict in a Newly Multicultural America,”
Lure and Loathing: Essays on Race, Identity, and the Ambivalence of Assimilation.
WEEK 9 Asian Pacific America in Arts and Cultural Representations
May 28
No Class
May 30
Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders and Popular Culture
Response Paper #3 Due
5
June 1
Asian American and Pacific Islander Culture and Identity: Cross-Racial and
Transnational Dimensions
READING:
Major Problems, CH. 14, “New Formations of Asian American Culture, 1990-2001,” 457-490.
Reader
• Amy Abugo Ongiri, “Bruce Lee in the Ghetto Connection: Kung Fu Theater and African Americans
Reinventing Culture at the Margins,” East Main Street: Asian American Popular Culture.
• Sau-ling Cynthia Wong, “Autobiography as Guided Chinatown Tour? Maxine Hong Kingston’s The
Woman Warrior and the Chinese American Autobiographical Controversy,” Multicultural
Autobiography, American Lives.
• Oliver Wang, “These Are the Breaks: Hip-Hop and AfroAsian Cultural (Dis)Connections,”
AfroAsian Encounters: Culture, History, Politics.
WEEK 10 Identity, Space, and Place in Asian Pacific America
June 4
Land, Ocean, and Sovereignty: Pacific Islanders in the U.S. Empire
June 6
Rethinking Racial Boundaries of Asian Pacific America: Post-9/11 Policies and Asian
Pacific Americans
June 8
Remapping Contemporary Asian Pacific America: Transnational and International
Dimensions of Asian American/Pacific Islander Identity
READING:
Major Problems
• CH. 13 Document 7, “Hawaiian Sovereignty Leader Haunani-Kay Trask Criticizes Asian ‘Settler’
Privilege and Collaboration with Colonialism,” 434-436.
• CH. 15, “Erasing Borders and Boundaries: Asian Americans in the Twenty-First Century,” 492-521.
Reader
• Joanne Barker, “For Whom Sovereignty Matters,” Sovereignty Matters: Locations of Contestation
and Possibility in Indigenous Struggles for Self-Determination.
• Dan Taulapapa McMullin, “The Passive Resistance of Samoans to U.S. and Other Colonialisms,”
Sovereignty Matters: Locations of Contestation and Possibility in Indigenous Struggles for SelfDetermination.
• Maryam Qudrat Aseel, “Prologue” and “As the Smoke Clears,” Torn Between Two Cultures: An
Afghan-American Woman Speaks Out.
• Arif Dirlik, “Colonialism, Globalization and Culture: Reflections on September 11,” Asian
Americans on War and Peace.
• Amitava Kumar, “Nothing to Write Home About,” Asian Americans on War and Peace.
• “Your e-mails: Defining the Asian-American experience,” CNN.com, May 17, 2007.
Monday, June 11
Take-home Final Due 12:00 PM (Michael’s Office)
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