Spring 2008 A/P/A Courses
MAP World Cultures: Asian Pacific America Asian Pacific America encompasses a complex, diverse, and rapidly changing population of people. This interdisciplinary course introduces students to major issues in the historical and contemporary experiences of Asian Pacific Americans, including migration, modernization, racial formation, community-building, political mobilization, among others. In this course we will pay particular attention to Asian Americans’ use of cultural productions—films, literature, art, media, and popular culture—as an expression/reflection of their cultural identities, historical conditions, and political efforts. Sponsored by MAP office. (APA, SCA) Concepts In Social And Cultural Analysis This course is a gateway to all majors offered by the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis (SCA). It focuses on the core concepts that intersect the constituent programs of SCA: Africana Studies, A/P/A, American Studies, Gender and Sexuality, Latino Studies, and Metropolitan Studies. Because we live in a society of "screens" from jumbotrons, cell phone, HD-TV and computer screens, this semester, we will focus on how one's electronically, mass mediated image impacts and overdetermines one's social, cultural and political destiny. In this sense, it's often ironic that one's media 'representation' is more compelling than one's 'representation' at the ballot box. The course will survey basic approaches to a range of significant analytical concepts explored by all of SCA's constituent programs (e.g., Property, Work, Technology, Nature, Popular Culture, Consumption, Knowledge), through the politics and culture of "representation." (AF,AM,APA,GSS,LAT,MET,SCA) Counts as MAP Social Science requirement. History & Literatures of the South Asian Diaspora America is not always the answer. This class offers an introduction to the many and varied fictions that have been produced by diasporic South Asians across the globe over the last 150 years: in Australia, Africa, Europe, and Caribbean. Our exploration of the poetics of immigration will involve looking at writers of canonical renown (VS Naipaul, Anita Desai), as well as younger voices such as Anjalika Sagar, Hanif Kureishi, Hari Kunzru and Rana Dasgupta. Liberal use will be made of independent and avant-garde cine-essays, and there will be a broad range of critical and creative texts, including neglected genres such as science fiction and comics. Particular attention will be paid to the diverse geographies of Asian migration be they plantations, dance floors, restaurants, call centres. Themes to be addressed include abjection, globalization, the impact of 9/11 and techno-servitude. (APA) Same as History V57.0326 Reading Race and Representation Much contemporary public discourse characterizes race as a problem that some individuals “have,” or, even, a “card” that some people “play.” It is rarely recognized as a structural or material dimension that comprises everyday experience and knowledge. In this course, we will ask what it means to “read” race in objects, spaces, and events that for the most part do not seem to be “about” race per se. The course is organized around a series of such topics, which we will consider from an interdisciplinary perspective, engaging historical and legal texts, literature, and film, as well as scholarship from anthropology, sociology, and history. Over the course of the semester, we will address concepts and themes related to U.S. ethnic studies and critical race theory, including citizenship, rights, segregation, whiteness, colonialism, labor, migration, and alienness. The course provides an introduction to critical American studies as a field of scholarship that challenges our sense of the nation as socially and politically exceptional by asking what is forgotten or excluded in such a self-image. (AF,AM,APA,LAT,SCA) Formerly V15.0603; Same as English V41.0058 Senior Research
Seminar: Dangerous & Intermingled: Subaltern New York In the world of moralists, intermingled New York has and still represents the epitome of danger and evil about the American experiment-the public intermixture of classes, genders, races, sexualities, spiritualisms, and devil knows what else!#? As elite Protestants created a refined European-affected "high brow" culture, they also created their "other"-a transgressive, lowly city of shadows, miscegenation, and impurity. The docks, the Bowery, the Five Points, Greenwich Village, LES/Loisaida, Chinatown, and Harlem were all forged against the repressed imaginings of the powerful and distinguished. This people's Gotham, this disdained intertwined underworld of music, slang, jokes, songs, stories, foodways, and marvels of people, from different cultures and subcultures seeing, touching, smelling, tasting, speaking/listening, and living amongst each other will be the focus of this advanced research seminar. Prior original research experience required. (SCA,APA, LAT, MET) Same as Gallatin K20-1480.001. Topics: Transnational
Feminism The world we live in is characterized by the ever-increasing mobility of capital, people, technology, culture and media across national borders; “globalization” has been used as the umbrella concept that describes this phenomenon. How does globalization shift the way in which we understand concepts of masculinity and femininity, sexuality and sexual identity, race and ethnicity? What kinds of travel, displacements and diasporas are engendered through globalization, and how are these movements linked to prior movements precipitated by earlier histories of colonialism, indentured labor and slavery? These questions of fixity and place, travel and tourism, labor and migration in a global context are all intimately linked to discourses of gender and sexuality. This course will explore how feminist scholars and activists, under the rubric of “transnational feminism,” have responded to the myriad ways in which globalization affects our experiences as gendered, sexual, raced and classed beings. We can thus understand transnational feminism as both a field of scholarship and an activist project, one that has emerged as a way of making sense of and responding to the reorganization of gender and sexuality in the context of globalization. (GSS, APA) Globalization, Immigration, & Post Colonial
Identity In this seminar we take an interdisciplinary approach to the literature of migration and postcolonial identity. In order to place the creative writing by postcolonial authors in context, we first investigate why people migrate to the "First World" in general (and the US specifically) through a series of economic, sociological, anthropological and cultural studies readings on the topics of globalization and migration. The primary questions we to investigate in the first half of the class through these readings: How is the First World, and particularly the US, implicated in migration from the Third"? What compels people to migrate? Are the common sense ideas we hold about why people come to our country accurate? Do efforts to "development" the Third World, such as NAFTA, affect migration? How do waves of the globalization of the labor and consumer markets effect US culture? How does war dislocate communities? Are we currently paying the price for mistakes in foreign policies in the 1980s and economic policies of the 1990s? Is US xenophobia entirely new to our era? In the second half of the class we will consider the effect of migrations on the construction of identity in the post-colonial and neocolonial period after WWII: on "First World" identities, "Third World" identities, and on those identities that travel between them. I have designed the syllabus so that you will have an average of 100 pages to read in weeks when the reading is theoretical, economic or sociological and 200 pages in weeks when it is fiction. (AF,APA, LAT) Language CoursesCantonese -
Elementary II 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. (APA) Filipino - Elementary II Prerequisite:
V18.0321 Elementary Filipino I or equivalent. Filipino – Intermediate II 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. (APA) Formerly V15.0403 Hindi
- Elementary II Hindi
- Elementary II Hindi – Intermediate II Hindi – Advanced |
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