University Bulletin (2023-2024)

• 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/ENG 22b Asian American Literature
[ deis-us 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

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/ENG 102a Transpacific Science Fiction
[ djw hum ]

Through critically acclaimed examples of science fiction set in the vast, multitudinous site of the Pacific and its continental edges, this course explores the intersection of technology and the humanities through a range of topics including scientific colonialism, techno-orientalism and dystopia, racial formation in the post-apocalypse, artificial intelligence, and environmental destruction. Some of the course materials include films (Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell), novels (Chang-Rae Lee, Ruth Ozeki), and a graphic novel. Usually offered every third year.

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 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/WGS 126a Asian American and Pacific Islander Women
[ 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

AAPI/ENG 22b Asian American Literature
[ deis-us 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

AAPI/ENG 102a Transpacific Science Fiction
[ djw hum ]

Through critically acclaimed examples of science fiction set in the vast, multitudinous site of the Pacific and its continental edges, this course explores the intersection of technology and the humanities through a range of topics including scientific colonialism, techno-orientalism and dystopia, racial formation in the post-apocalypse, artificial intelligence, and environmental destruction. Some of the course materials include films (Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell), novels (Chang-Rae Lee, Ruth Ozeki), and a graphic novel. Usually offered every third year.

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 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/WGS 126a Asian American and Pacific Islander Women
[ 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

EAS 120b Southeast Asian Literature in English
[ djw hum ]

Explores a range of Southeast Asian literary productions presented in English from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Materials include influential texts by Western observers (W. Somerset Maugham, Marguerite Duras) during the colonial period as well as major works by prominent postcolonial writers (Tash Aw, Eka Kurniawan, Mai Der Vang). We will consider the complex questions of colonialism, postcoloniality, twentieth-century wars, and regional identity formation under late capitalism through intersectional textual analysis. Usually offered every third year.

Howie Tam

FA 72b Introduction to Korean Art
[ ca nw ]

Surveys Korean and Korean American art, focusing on later historical periods from the Joseon dynasty to the present. We will examine art and social systems, material culture, and shifting artistic identities in the country’s transition to modernity. The latter part of the course will focus on modern and contemporary art of Korea as well as the works of Korean American artists. Usually offered every fourth year.
Staff

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