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From the beginning of jazz to the war years.

Thomas Jefferson assumed many roles during his life-- Founding Father, revolutionary, and author of the Declaration of Independence; natural scientist, inventor, and political theorist; slaveholder, founder of a major political party, and President of the United States. This introductory seminar explores these many worlds of Jefferson, both to understand the multifaceted character of the man and the broader historical contexts that he inhabited and did so much to shape.

This is a dual purpose class: a writing workshop in which you will generate autobiographical vignettes/essays as well as a reading seminar featuring prose from a wide range of contemporary Asian-American writers. Some of the many questions we will consider are: What exactly is Asian-American memoir? Are there salient subjects and tropes that define the literature? And in what ways do our writerly interactions both resistant and assimilative with a predominantly non-Asian context in turn recreate that context? We'll be working/experimenting with various modes of telling, including personal essay, the epistolary form, verse, and even fictional scenarios.

This workshop course offers a supportive, open-ended intellectual maker space where upperclass American Studies students can develop individual capstone projects in conversation with fellow majors and with guidance from the program's capstone mentor.

What is meant by the term Asian American? How have representations of Asian Americans influenced concepts of US citizenship and belonging? What are the social and political origins of the Asian American community? This course provides a critical introduction to the interdisciplinary field of Asian American studies. Drawing on historical, creative, and scholarly texts, the course examines the history and possibilities of Asian American community. To do this, we place the Asian American experience within a transnational context, paying particular attention to the ways that Asian American lives have been shaped by the legacies of US wars in Asia and by the history of US racism. In the process, we examine the role that representations of Asian Americans have played in shaping the boundaries of US citizenship and belonging. Throughout the course, we utilize our discussions of Asian American racialization and community formation to think critically about the social and political ramifications that the designation Asian American entails.

This course charts processes of imperialism and colonization and their joint impact on indigeneous peoples worldwide. By looking at the history of colonialism with a focus on its impact on indigenous communities and other communities of color through the processes of conquest, slavery, genocide, the exploitation of human and natural resources, and the legacy of colonization embedded in contemporary systems of oppression, students will gain an understanding of the complexity of these systems, as they continue to impact marginalized communities in the Americas, Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Trans-Pacific region, and the Middle East. The course concludes with studies in decolonial projects and the emergence of epistemologies from the Global South as methods for countering the histories of empire and colonization.

This course will examine the establishment of the Cambodian, Hmong, and Vietnamese communities in the US. We will focus on the historical events that resulted in their immigration and arrival to the US as well as the similarities and differences in the ways in which they were received. In addition, the course will focus on issues that impacted in the development of these communities focusing on the social, political, and economic processes by which new immigrant groups are incorporated into the American society. The second part of the course will be devoted to analyzing contemporary issues including but not limited to: class status, educational attainment, ethnic identity, racialization, second generation, mass media representation, poverty, and economic mobility.

This course incorporates a Native American perspective in the assigned readings and is an introduction to Native American History from contact with Europeans to the present. History, from a Western perspective, is secular and objectively evaluative whereas for most Indigenous peoples, history is a moral endeavor (Walker, Lakota Society 113). A focus in the course is the civil rights era in American history when Native American protest movements were active. Colonization and decolonization, as they historically occurred are an emphasis throughout the course using texts written from the perspective of the colonized at the end of the 20th century in addition to the main text. Students will be encouraged to critically explore issues of interest through two short papers and one longer paper that is summarized in a 15-20 minute presentation on a topic of interest relating to the course.

'A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest,' writes Joan Didion, 'remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image.' From the Gold Rush to Hollywood to Silicon Valley, Yosemite to the Salton Sea, in this course we'll encounter a series of writers and artists whose work is set in California, or participates in its imagining, and throughout consider how culture and a sense of place are closely related. How does a novel, photograph, or film conjure a landscape or community? When we think of California, whose stories are included, and whose are left out? Possible texts: works by Mary Austin, Cesar Chavez, Mike Davis, the Depression-era Federal Writers Project, Rebecca Solnit, and John Steinbeck; films: Sunset Boulevard, Clueless, and There Will Be Blood; and the art of Carlton Watkins, Dorothea Lange, Richard Misrach, and Chiura Obata. For the final paper, students will write about a California place of their choice.