University Bulletin (2021-2022)

• Minor

Yuri Doolan, Program Director
German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature

The minor in Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies requires five courses.

1. Four distinct courses in Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies consisting of one core course and three elective courses.
2. One related course in another area of Ethnic Studies or related field (as approved by the program director).
3. A minimum of three of the five courses required for the minor must be taken from Brandeis faculty. Courses taken at other institutions for credit must be approved by the student’s advisor and the program director.
4. No course with a final grade below C-, nor any course taken pass/fail, may be counted toward the AAPI minor. 
5. No more than two courses taken for the AAPI minor can double count toward any other single major or minor.

AAPI 92a Internship and Analysis
Usually offered every semester.
Staff

AAPI/WGS 30a Critical Adoption Studies
Corequisite: AAPI/HIS 163a, AAPI/HIS 171a, AAPI/HIS 186b, or AAPI/WGS 126a. Course may be taken as a prerequisite within the past year with permission of the instructor. Yields half-course credit.
Although adoption has a storied past spanning a range of diverse cultural, geographic, and temporal settings, the adoption of children across national boundaries is a relatively new phenomenon—one that emerged in tandem with America’s postwar expansion into Asia. Today, international adoption is a normalized and accepted institution that helps to express dominant US ideologies of humanitarianism, internationalism, and multiculturalism. But American’s sudden and unprecedented desire to adopt children from abroad was anything but natural, informed instead by the dynamic geopolitical imperatives of the early Cold War years. Since then, the knowledge production around international adoption in the United States has been dominated by American social workers and adoptive parents. This 2-credit hour practicum interrogates the knowledge production about international adoption that has historically privileged perspectives from the receiving country or that of adoptive parents in particular. Instead we investigate the cultural, ethnic, and racial experiences of transnationally, transracially adopted individuals as well as their birth families long overlooked in adoption studies. Usually offered every year.
Yuri Doolan

AAPI 140b Introduction to Asian American Studies
[ ss ]
Explores the Asian American experience and its broader connections to class, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. The course will examine topics of imperialism, labor migration, racial and communal formations, identity, culture, and politics of Asian America. Usually offered every year.
Leanne Day

AAPI 141a Pacific Islander Studies: Cultures and Representations of Oceania
Offers an introduction to the field of Pacific Islander Studies and Oceania with an emphasis on literary and cultural production to reckon with settler colonialism, sovereignty movements, climate change, militarism and nuclearism, Indigenous feminisms, and popular culture. Usually offered every third year.
Leanne Day

AAPI 142a The War in Vietnam in Literature and Film
[ djw hum ]
What we have come to call the Vietnam War fundamentally changed the histories of Vietnam and the U.S. through the Cold War to the present day. Taking a transnational approach, this course will examine various understandings of the war through major U.S., Vietnamese, and Vietnamese American literary texts and films from the mid-twentieth century to the present day. All course materials are in English; no Vietnamese language knowledge is required. Special one-time offering, fall 2021.
Howie Tam

AAPI/HIS 163a Asian American History
[ deis-us dl ss ]
Explores the history of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States with a focus on their lived experiences and contributions to U.S. society. Course culminates in a final AAPI digital oral history project. Usually offered every second year.
Yuri Doolan

AAPI/HIS 171a The United States in the Pacific World
[ deis-us djw ss ]
How have U.S. imperial ventures—cultural, military, political, and economic—reconfigured local societies and geographies? What are the afterlives of those ventures and how have they reverberated between American society and the Pacific World? To answer these questions, this course explores the history of American incursion into places such as China, Hawai’i, the Philippines, Guam, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Samoa from the nineteenth century to present. We explore issues such as orientalism, empires and militarism, labor and commerce, race and inequality, intimacy and sex, as well as migration, culture, family formation, and identity both in and across the Pacific Ocean. In focusing on the lasting legacies and human consequences of this contact, this course deepens our understanding of the multiracial history and character of the United States and also provides an opportunity to place the American experience within a larger global context. Usually offered every second year.
Yuri Doolan

AAPI/HIS 186b Legacies of the Korean War
[ deis-us djw ss ]
Explores the lasting legacies and human consequences of the Korean War in a transnational context. Course culminates in a final digital oral history project. Usually offered every second year.
Yuri Doolan

AAPI/WGS 126a Asian American Women's History
[ deis-us ss ]
Explores race, gender, and U.S. history from the perspective of Asian American and Pacific Islander women. Course culminates in a final AAPI women's digital oral history project. Usually offered every second year.
Yuri Doolan

AAPI/WGS 137b Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene
[ deis-us ss ]
Examines performances of Asian/American women and how they have changed over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We analyze American film, television, and stage performances to trace the shifting, yet continuous participation of Asian/American women on screen and scene in the United States. Important issues include Orientalism and representation, race and racism, immigration and diasporas, militarisms and empire, gender and hypersexuality, yellow face practices then and now, as well as assimilation and resistance. We ask: what have dominant representations of Asian/American been like from the silent film era to the current digital age? How have the figures of the lotus blossom, the dragon lady, the trafficked woman, the geisha, the war bride, the military prostitute, the orphan, among other problematic tropes emerged to represent Asian/American women? How has the changing political, social, and cultural position of Asian/Americans shaped their participation in media production, as well as their media representations in the United States broadly speaking? Usually offered every second year.
Yuri Doolan

AAS/AAPI 129b The Spirit of Bandung: Afro-Asian Insurgency and Solidarity
[ deis-us djw ss ]
Examines the racial conflicts between Black and Asian American communities and develops an understanding of how the Afro-Asia political project is an insurgent coalitional project. To do this, we will explore the historical and contemporary struggles, insurgencies, and solidarities of Black and Asian peoples. We will learn together how Afro-Asia serves as an insurgent site of critique, resistance, and revolutionary aesthetics that connects distant geographies, diasporas, and Black and Asian peoples to a global anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-colonial political imaginary. Usually offered every year.
Soham Patel

AAAS/WGS 125b Gender, Migration, and Sexuality in a Global Asia
[ ss ]
Provides an overview of the study of gender, sexuality, and migration in Asia. It begins with studies that provide a big picture of the study of gender, sexuality, and migration. It then proceeds to highlight how gender shapes institutions of migration and various forms of mobility followed by case studies of different groups of women and minoritarian subjects such as students, factory workers, and sex workers.This course will pay particular attention to the intersections of gender, sexuality, and global economy; changing constructs of masculinity and femininity; and how dynamics of gender and sexuality shift across time and space. Usually offered every year.
Carolyn Choi

AAPI 140b Introduction to Asian American Studies
[ ss ]
Explores the Asian American experience and its broader connections to class, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. The course will examine topics of imperialism, labor migration, racial and communal formations, identity, culture, and politics of Asian America. Usually offered every year.
Leanne Day

AAPI 141a Pacific Islander Studies: Cultures and Representations of Oceania
Offers an introduction to the field of Pacific Islander Studies and Oceania with an emphasis on literary and cultural production to reckon with settler colonialism, sovereignty movements, climate change, militarism and nuclearism, Indigenous feminisms, and popular culture. Usually offered every third year.
Leanne Day

AAPI 142a The War in Vietnam in Literature and Film
[ djw hum ]
What we have come to call the Vietnam War fundamentally changed the histories of Vietnam and the U.S. through the Cold War to the present day. Taking a transnational approach, this course will examine various understandings of the war through major U.S., Vietnamese, and Vietnamese American literary texts and films from the mid-twentieth century to the present day. All course materials are in English; no Vietnamese language knowledge is required. Special one-time offering, fall 2021.
Howie Tam

AAPI/HIS 163a Asian American History
[ deis-us dl ss ]
Explores the history of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States with a focus on their lived experiences and contributions to U.S. society. Course culminates in a final AAPI digital oral history project. Usually offered every second year.
Yuri Doolan

AAPI/HIS 171a The United States in the Pacific World
[ deis-us djw ss ]
How have U.S. imperial ventures—cultural, military, political, and economic—reconfigured local societies and geographies? What are the afterlives of those ventures and how have they reverberated between American society and the Pacific World? To answer these questions, this course explores the history of American incursion into places such as China, Hawai’i, the Philippines, Guam, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Samoa from the nineteenth century to present. We explore issues such as orientalism, empires and militarism, labor and commerce, race and inequality, intimacy and sex, as well as migration, culture, family formation, and identity both in and across the Pacific Ocean. In focusing on the lasting legacies and human consequences of this contact, this course deepens our understanding of the multiracial history and character of the United States and also provides an opportunity to place the American experience within a larger global context. Usually offered every second year.
Yuri Doolan

AAPI/WGS 137b Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene
[ deis-us ss ]
Examines performances of Asian/American women and how they have changed over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We analyze American film, television, and stage performances to trace the shifting, yet continuous participation of Asian/American women on screen and scene in the United States. Important issues include Orientalism and representation, race and racism, immigration and diasporas, militarisms and empire, gender and hypersexuality, yellow face practices then and now, as well as assimilation and resistance. We ask: what have dominant representations of Asian/American been like from the silent film era to the current digital age? How have the figures of the lotus blossom, the dragon lady, the trafficked woman, the geisha, the war bride, the military prostitute, the orphan, among other problematic tropes emerged to represent Asian/American women? How has the changing political, social, and cultural position of Asian/Americans shaped their participation in media production, as well as their media representations in the United States broadly speaking? Usually offered every second year.
Yuri Doolan

AMST 104a China and America: A History of Cultural Exchanges
[ ss ]
Familiarizes students with the basic ideas, themes, and developments that have governed the history of Sino-American cultural relations for the last 250 years. Topics range from the role of tea in the American Revolution and the legal status of Chinese immigrants in the United States, to the popularity of the fictional character, Dr. Fu Manchu, and the ideological origins of the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Special one-time offering, fall 2021.
Simon Sun

ENG 12b Literature of the Pacific Rim
[ hum ]
The Pacific is vast, remote, and mysterious—or is it? By reading fictional and artistic works from twentieth and twenty-first century East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Americas, this course will explore how the geographically remote regions of the Pacific have interacted closely with each other in historical, economic, and political relations and how such interactions allow us to envision a just and ethical global future. Themes covered will include racial dynamics, war, capitalism, and the environment in relation to the geopolitical relations surrounding the Pacific. Special one-time offering, spring 2022.
Nayoung Kim

ENG 22b Asian American Literature
[ hum ]
With its focus on a major and enduring racial formation in the U.S., this course covers a wide range of literary expressions of Asian American subjectivities forged in various flashpoints of American history, from the early days of Chinese “coolie” labor in the late nineteenth century to the contemporary moment of refugee migration. Along the way, we will learn about structures of violence that have manifested into exclusion laws, internment camps, devastating wars, and refugee displacements. Major authors include Julie Otzuka, Maxine Hong Kingston, Chang-Rae Lee, and Jhumpa Lahiri. Usually offered every fourth year.
Howie Tam

AAS/AAPI 129b The Spirit of Bandung: Afro-Asian Insurgency and Solidarity
[ deis-us djw ss ]
Examines the racial conflicts between Black and Asian American communities and develops an understanding of how the Afro-Asia political project is an insurgent coalitional project. To do this, we will explore the historical and contemporary struggles, insurgencies, and solidarities of Black and Asian peoples. We will learn together how Afro-Asia serves as an insurgent site of critique, resistance, and revolutionary aesthetics that connects distant geographies, diasporas, and Black and Asian peoples to a global anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-colonial political imaginary. Usually offered every year.
Soham Patel