EAS 180 (2341) / GOG 180 (2810)

Asian America

Fall 2003

Meets: TuTh 2:30 – 3:50 pm in Humanities 113.

Associate Professor Anthony DeBlasi

Office: Humanities 254D

Phone: 442-5316

E-mail: deblasi@csc.albany.edu

Office hours: Tuesday 1:15-2:15 p.m.; Thursday 9:30-11:00 a.m.; and by appointment.

This course examines the Asian-American historical experience. We will study this experience by looking at a range of written and visual sources produced by or about Asian Americans during the last century and a half, including non-fiction, fiction, and cinema. Topics of particular interest include immigration motivations, Asian-American legal status, tensions within Asian-American families, the relationship of Asian-Americans to their countries of origin, and the emergence of Asian-American activism.

Texts available for purchase: The following books are available from the Campus Bookstore and Mary Jane Books (215 Western Avenue):

Chan, Sucheng, Asian Americans: An Interpretive History. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991.

Kikuchi, Charles. The Kikuchi Diary; Chronicle of an American Concentration Camp. 1973 Rpt. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 1993.

Jen, Gish. Mona in the Promised Land. Vintage Books. 1996.

A required xerox packet is also available from Shipmates in Stuyvesant Plaza.

Course Requirements:

Attendance at all lectures and discussions is required.

Midterm examination: 20%

Personal Writing Project: 25%

Final Examination: 35%

Class Participation: 20%

Explanation of Assignments:

1. Examinations

Both the Midterm and Final examinations will consist of identifications and essay questions testing your mastery of the subject matter. Study guides will be distributed before each examination.

2. Personal Writing Project

Each student is required to design, research, and write a detailed, five to seven page (5-7) paper on a topic of personal interest relevant to Asian-American studies. You must get my approval for your selection before beginning your project. The exact form of the project will vary, but all will show evidence of research and careful writing. Some possibilities for projects might include working on family histories, reviews of Asian American literature, or analyses of a contemporary Asian American issue. I am also open to other creative possibilities, but they must show the same rigor that more conventional approaches display.

3. Class Participation

Each student is also expected to actively participate in class discussions. In addition to the discussions of regularly assigned readings, you will also periodically be assigned material to present in class as part of our cooperative effort to explore issues related to the Asian American experience.

4. Submission of contemporary issue article

To help us prepare for the discussion of contemporary issues at the end of the semester. Each student is required to submit one article that raises or addresses some significant issue for Asian Americans. The articles can be from a newspaper, magazine, academic journal, etc. You will also be expected to submit a brief paragraph explaining what the issue is.

5. Reading Quizzes

Periodic unannounced reading quizzes are also part of your participation grade.

Grading policies:

Please note the following policies:

1. Letter grades are assigned according to the following scale: A=93-100, A-=90-92, B+=87-89, B=83-86, B-=80-82, C+=77-79, C=73-76, C-=70-72, D+=67-69, D=63-66, D-=60-62, E=less than 60. Please note that work never turned in counts as a zero (0).

2. Late papers lose one grade step for each day late (thus a B+ that is two days late receives a B-).

3. I do not give make-up examinations or quizzes unless you have an acceptable and documented excuse (for example, a medical excuse signed by a physician).

4. I will not consider requests for incompletes without a clearly documented and acceptable reason.

5. Plagiarism is using or purchasing the words or ideas of another and passing them off as one's own work. If a student quotes someone in a formal paper, that student must use quotation marks and give a citation. Paraphrased or borrowed ideas are to be identified by proper citations. Note that taking material from the internet also constitutes plagiarism if it is not properly cited. Plagiarism will result, at the minimum, in a zero (0) for the assignment.

General Education:

This course may be used to fulfill two categories under the general education requirements, Pluralism and Diversity and U.S. Historical Perspectives. The generic descriptions of such courses follow. Please note that this course fulfills the U.S. Historical Perspectives category only for those who received an 85 on the NYS Regents’ Examination.

Pluralism and Diversity:

Approved courses must meet each of the following six criteria:

* The course should relate directly to contemporary United States experiences of students or contain components that compare, on a fairly regular basis, aspects of other cultures to those experiences.

* The course should compare and relate aspects of racial and/or ethnic diversity, including gender-related concerns, to the topic of the course. In this context, the terms "racial" and "ethnic" may include groups that are self- and/or societally defined on such bases as nationality, religion, etc.

* The course should provide substantial knowledge of diversity as expressed through sociopolitical, ideological, aesthetic, or other aspects of human endeavor. This criterion is intentionally defined broadly to accommodate a variety of approaches. It is not a requirement or expectation that the content will focus on controversy or those aspects that result in conflict with other persons, groups, or cultures; see, however, the next criterion.

* The course should provide sufficient knowledge to permit the student to understand better the sources and manifestations of controversy and conflicts in cultural values arising from human diversity.

* Opportunities for student writing and discussion are central to the objectives of the program. The course should include at least one writing component. For discussions to be effective, classes of sixty or more students should require discussion sections, breakout sessions, in-class groups or comparable mechanisms permitting discussions within groups of twenty students.

* The course should focus on the theories, histories, dynamics, mechanisms, and results of human and social diversity, drawing on the experience of specific groups to illustrate those principles. Thus, whatever specific cultural heritages the students study should be placed in the larger context of cultural diversity.

U.S. Historical Perspectives:

Approved courses focus on specific narratives or themes in the historical unfolding of the United States, including political, economic, social, cultural and/or intellectual dimensions. All courses will feature an explicitly historical organization; deal with topics of national, as opposed to regional or local, import; and consider a topic of sufficient specificity for the course to be coherent, but over a period long enough to ensure that the historical dynamic is clearly visible.

Certain of these courses will balance topical focus and chronological breadth. A student who has achieved a score of 85 or above on the Regents Examination in "United States History and Government" will be considered to have fulfilled the chronological breadth criterion. Therefore, such a student has the choice of fulfilling the requirement by completing a course chosen from the basic list available to all students or from a list of more specialized courses. Each of the more specialized courses covers to some extent a knowledge of common institutions in American society and how they have affected different groups, provides an understanding of America's evolving relationship with the rest of the world, and deals substantially with issues of American history.

Approved courses focus on specific narratives or themes in the historical unfolding of the United States, including political, economic, social, cultural and/or intellectual dimensions. Students should acquire knowledge of substance and methods for comprehending the narratives or themes presented.

Class Schedule:

9/2	Tu	Introduction
9/4	Th	Patterns in U.S. Immigration History	Chan, Asian Americans, pp.3-24.
9/9	Tu	Asian Immigration to the United States I	Chan, Asian Americans, pp.24-42.
9/11	Th	Asian Immigration to the United States II	Chan, Asian Americans, pp.45-61. Mary Paik Lee, Quiet Odyssey, pp.161-173.
9/16	Tu	Race and Class in the Asian American Experience I	Documents on the Chinese and Japanese experiences: Foner and Rosenberg, ed., Racism, Dissent, and Asian Americans: pp.18-19, 25-31, 59-62, 78-83, 172-178, and 231-237. Kurashige and Murray, ed. Major Problems in Asian American History, pp.97-99.
9/18	Th	Race and Class in the Asian American Experience II	Chan, Asian Americans, pp. 63-100.
9/23	Tu	The Kikuchi Diary	The Kikuchi Diary, pp. 1-124.
9/25	Th	The Kikuchi Diary	The Kikuchi Diary, pp. 124-253.
9/30	Tu	Immigration Law in Post-war America	Chan, Asian Americans, pp. 121-142. Kurashige and Murray, ed. Major Problems in Asian American History, pp.359-362.
10/2	Th	The New Asian Immigration I	Chan, Asian Americans, pp. 145-165. Linda Trinh V, “The Vietnamese American Experience: From Dispersion to the Development of Post-Refugee Communities” in Jean Yu-wen Shen Wu and Min Song, ed., Asian American Studies: A Reader, pp. 290-305. Paul James Rutledge, “Emigration to the United States,” in The Vietnamese Experience in America, pp.15-34.
10/7	Tu	The New Asian Immigration II	Moazzam Sheikh, “Kissing the Holy Land,” and Tara Menon, “The Perfect Host,” in Living in America: Poetry and Fiction by South Asian American Writers, pp. 223-228 and 139-144.
10/9	Th	Returning to the Roots	Nguyen Qui-duc, A Taste of Home, pp.295-311.
10/14	Tu	MIDTERM EXAMINATION
10/16	Th	Film Presentation: Title and Times TBA
10/21	Tu	Film Discussion
10/23	Th	The Generation Gap in the Asian American Experience	Chan, Asian Americans, pp.103-118.
10/28	Tu	Mona in the Promised Land	Mona in the Promised Land, pp. 1-165.
10/30	Th	Mona in the Promised Land	Mona in the Promised Land, pp. 166-304.
11/4	Tu	Asian American Identity	Nazli Kibria, “Not Asian, Black, or White? Reflections on South Asian American Racial Identity,” in Jean Yu-wen Shen Wu and Min Song, ed., Asian American Studies: A Reader, pp. 247-254. Carol Roh-Spaulding, “Pages From a Notebook of a Eurasian,” pp. 247-254; and Usha Lee McFarling, “Cooking Lessons,” pp.301-306. Sui Sin Far, Big Aiiieeeee!, pp.111-123. Contemporary Issue Article due.
11/6	Th	The Asian American Movement	Chan, Asian Americans, pp. 167-188. Kurashige and Murray, ed. Major Problems in Asian American History, pp.442-449.
11/11	Tu	Asian Americans in a Multi-ethnic Society	Fong, The Contemporary Asian American Experience, pp.160-168. Kurashige and Murray, ed. Major Problems in Asian American History, pp.364-367. Personal Writing Project due.
11/13	Th	Asian influence on “American Culture”	TBA
11/18	Tu	Contemporary Issue Discussion	TBA
11/20	Th	Contemporary Issue Discussion	TBA
11/25	Tu	Film Presentation: Title and Times TBA
11/27	Th	Holiday
12/2	Tu	Film Discussion
12/4	Th	Concluding discussion: Who speaks for Asian America?	Chin, “Come All Ye Asian American Writers of the Real and the Fake”: Big Aiiieeeee!, pp.1-92.
12/9	Tu	Review

Final Examination: Tuesday, December 16, 2003, 10:30 am – 12:30 pm, HU-113.