Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Introduces students to the interconnected, border-crossing worlds of Asian and Asian diasporic people through discussion of scholarship, films, short stories, essays, oral histories, and visual art. Surveys key topics in the study of globalizing processes, such as migration, trade, imperialism, decolonization, globalization, and environmental change. Students with credit for ASC 101 may not take this course for further credit. Breadth-Humanities/Social Sciences.

COURSE DETAILS:

In this course, we will explore different aspects of Asia’s global story through films, essays, visual art, and oral accounts that depict the interconnected, border-crossing worlds of Asian and Asian diasporic people. Over the course of the semester, we will examine different phases in this story, beginning with a unit entitled “Ocean Crossings, Interdependent Worlds” in which we trace Asian people’s encounters with each other and the broader world in the centuries before European intervention, through the movement of goods (such as spices and ceramics), plants, and religions. In the second unit, entitled “Imperial Frameworks: Globalizing Asia Across and Against Borders,” we will track the global movement of Asian people during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including to North America, as shaped by histories of Indigenous presence, the extractive projects of imperial European and North American nation-states, and anti-Asian racism. Here, key texts will include films like Richard Fung’s Dal Puri Diaspora, which follows the travels of the filled flatbread dal puri roti from India to the Caribbean and eventually to Canada. Finally, a third unit entitled “Haunted Connections: Living Globally in Empire’s Wake” will focus on Asian and Asian people’s experiences of globalization in the contemporary moment, through films about the global circulation of Asian care workers and popular culture, the infrastructures needed to support these forms of circulation, and their complicated human and environmental effects. Throughout the course, short writing assignments will enable you to hone your skills of critical thinking, analytical writing, and clear argumentation; and practice thinking with key Global Asia concepts and frameworks; there will also be opportunities to interact with Asian and Asian diasporic artists and scholars, who will introduce us to their work in person or over Zoom. 

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

All course texts will be uploaded to Canvas or shown in class.  

REQUIRED READING NOTES: