AMCULT 204: Themes in American Culture

Section 008

Museums and the Pacific

Instructor: Christine Delisle

Credits: 3

Requirements and Distribution: HU

This course examines the relations between museums and indigenous Pacific Islanders. It explores the role of museums, including the work of Euro-American explorers, scientists, photographers, anthropologists, archaeologists, and tourists, in the collection, exhibition, and representation of native Pacific objects and peoples. In addition to examining the colonial legacies of museums in the U.S., Europe, and the Pacific, this course will explore contemporary political, social, and cultural contestations around the institution and the way that indigenous Pacific Islanders have reshaped museums and museum practice.

AMCULT 214: Introduction to Asian/Pacific American Studies

Section 001

Instructor: Amy Stillman

Credits: 3

Requirements and Distribution: ID, RE

Asian Americans are among the fastest-growing population segment, yet they are virtually invisible in public culture in the United States. Pacific Islander Americans? Even more so. The following four questions frame our study of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans.

• What historical themes define the experiences of Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans in the United States?
• What are some of the contributions to American life and thought by Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans?
• What present-day issues do contemporary Asian American and Pacific Islander American communities face?
• What can the perspectives of Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans tell us about American history and contemporary society?

These questions also pose crucial opportunities to critique the structures of power and oppression through which Asian and Pacific Islander Americans have navigated to locate citizenship and belonging. Since the late 20th century, Asian and Pacific Islander American immigration has also produced demographic and cultural transformations in public culture and contemporary life. We will examine the roots of Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies in the activism of the Asian American Movement, and follow through to the present moment of transnational flexible citizenship.

Requirements for this course will include guided “discovery” exercises, a term project, and essay midterm and final examinations.

AMCULT 301: Topics in American Culture

Section 012

Gender, Sexuality, Race, and Imperialism in Asian American Culture Production

Instructor: Victor Mendoza

Credits: 3

Cultural production has often been the site where tensions among different ethnic and racial groups in the United States are resolved, exaggerated, or transfigured. We will survey in this course the representations of and by Asian American subjects in U.S. literature and culture since the nineteenth century. More specifically, we will explore the ways in which the cultural and literary production arising out of the contradictions of U.S. democracy “displace,” in the words of Lisa Lowe, “the fiction of reconciliation”--the ways in which the cultural productions of Asian America “disrupt the myth of national identity by revealing its gaps and fissures.” We will study the ways in which Asian American cultural production serves a political function, not only for the ethnic or racial group it embodies or represents, but also for the larger body national politic it threatens, constitutes, and sustains. While attending to this often counterhegemonic or "resistant" function of some Asian American cultural production, we shall also examine how some of these cultural products, even as they render a critique of hegemonic norms, instantiate others. To that end, we shall pay closer attention to the categories of gender and sexuality that comprise the heterogeneity and multiplicity of Asian America. Readings in the course may include novels, plays, poems, films, visual culture, musicals, historical documents, and scholarly articles.

AMCULT 317: History of the Pacific Islands

Section 001

Instructor: Damon Salesa

Credits: 3

The Pacific Islands. You might think of hula girls, conch shells, Moby Dick, aloha shirts, outrigger canoes, Gauguin, and 'Survivor: the Marquesas'; or then again, you might not think of anything. Strangely, although the Pacific Ocean is the biggest thing on earth, bigger than Africa, the Americas, and Asia combined, and actually neighbors the U.S., it is in many respects a blank space in our historical and cultural maps. The Pacific means more to the U.S. than you might think. Early U.S. imperial adventures were in its waters, a number of major industries were or are dependent on its resources; thousands of Americans died in the Pacific, most of America's remaining colonies are there, and the U.S. military dominates the region. These are just some of the issues we will cover in this course, which will cover the general history of the region, as well as focus on particular moments and places. Particular attention will be given to Pacific Islanders, their cultures and histories. No prior knowledge or study of the region is necessary. Assessment will be through four short in-class tests, an in-class presentation and a related writing assignment, participation in class discussion & activities, and a final paper.

AMCULT 324: Asian American Literature

Section 001

Instructor: Emily Lawsin

Credits: 3

Requirements and Distribution: HU

What does it mean to read and interpret Asian American literature?

This course is an introduction to Asian American texts that represent a range of genres: autobiography, poetry, drama, short story, novel, cultural history, stand-up comedy, and cultural criticism. An understanding of their sociohistorical context and political significance is crucial, so occasionally we will pair literary texts with historical and legal texts. Yet the latter also will be treated as “literary” material that relies on the power of rhetoric and figurative language. Generally, we will emphasize the constructed and crafted nature of the texts at hand, a challenging task for all students of literature but perhaps especially when it comes to analyzing literature by U.S. writers of color.

Course requirements: several short responses; an essay topic proposal; two essays; and an exam.

AMCULT 353: Asians in American Film and Television

Section 001

Instructor: Scott Kurashige

Credits: 4

Requirements and Distribution: ID, RE

• How have the movies and TV shaped American conceptions of Asians?
• How were stereotypes of Asians as “coolies,” “savages,” “yellow peril,” “dragon ladies,” “gooks,” and “model minorities” created?
• What impact have these stereotypes had upon American wars, race relations, immigration policy, hate crimes, and Japanese American internment?
• Have features by Asian Hollywood stars like Bruce Lee and Margaret Cho served to breakdown stereotypes?
• How have independent filmmakers and media activists generated new and more complex conceptions of Asian American identity and culture?

These are some of the many questions we will explore in this course. Our investigation will survey the powerful impact that racialized images of Asians have had upon American history. Students will develop analytical tools to dissect and critique media representations of both Asia and Asian Americans.

AMCULT 353 Course Flyer

AMCULT 355: Topics in American Creative Expressionism

Section 001

The Hula

Instructor: Amy Stillman

Credits: 3

Requirements and Distribution: CE

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the performance rudiments of the Hawaiian hula dance tradition. The emphasis will be experiential. Students will learn the following:

1.Selected segments of the basic movement vocabulary

2.Several complete choreographies.

3.Because the hula is a tradition in which the movement component is tightly integrated with poetry and song, students will also learn characteristics of hula song repertoire.

4.Because hula is a tradition that is tightly integrated with indigenous Hawaiian belief systems, students will also be introduced to traditional protocol, involving an introduction to vocal techniques of chanting.

In addition to performance experience, the course will also include discussion of contemporary issues surrounding the politics of culture. Through video viewing and written critique assignments, students will explore the dynamics surrounding the contemporary maintenance of the hula tradition. We will consider the role of hula in Hawai'i's tourism industry, the mutually influential exchanges of Hawaiian performance—hula and music—and American popular culture throughout the 20th century, the impact of hula competitions in the revitalization of Hawaiian culture since the 1970s, and the global spread of hula practice.

Grades will be based on satisfactory effort in movement acquisition throughout the term, written quizzes, written assignments on video viewing, and a final experience-based project.

AMCULT 498: Humanities Approaches to American Culture

Section 004

Literature of Hawai‘i

Instructor: Susan Najita

Credits: 3

Requirements and Distribution: ULWR

As its literature attests, Hawai‘i is simultaneously the uniquely multicultural fiftieth state of the Union, a colonial outpost, and the disputed sovereign nation of native Hawaiians. As might be expected, the literature of Hawai‘i is a highly contested terrain ranging from works by native Hawaiian writers, “local” writers, and works by “foreigners.” This course allows students to read and study the literary and oral traditions of Hawai‘i, including works by writers of native Hawaiian, Chinese, Puerto Rican, Japanese, Filipino, and Korean descent, through competing paradigms which place Hawaii’s literatures and cultures within the historical, social, and political contexts of western imperial expansion, globalization, Asian American literature, and the native Hawaiian movement toward autonomy and self-determination. The literatures of Hawai‘i have been and can be read through these frameworks as well as how they also problematize and contest these categories. We will examine dominant representations of the islands by Melville, London and Twain as well as contestatory representations by “local” writers such as Balaz, Holt, Trask, Murayama, Pak, Yamanaka, Zamora Linmark and Cobb Keller. The course will also contextualize these authors within the broader critical paradigms of mainland Asian American literature as well as Pacific Island literatures.