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What makes Asian cuisines Asian? What does it mean to define a group of people by the food they eat? Why is it that Asian Americans still face discrimination, despite the popularization of things like Chinese takeout, boba, and Pad Thai in the US? Food has been integral to Asian American culture and continues to have prominent influences on the American food landscape. From media depictions of Asian parental love through the phrase "Did you eat yet?" to racist remarks like "Do you eat dog?", food follows Asian migrants wherever they go. This course focuses on the messy entanglements between food, empire, and Asian America. Food is a powerful sensory experience that can evoke the strongest of emotions and document the most traumatic of histories. However, for many Asian migrants, food is also how they access and form communities to make a new home for themselves. By looking at these connections, this course aims to explore how food racializes and is racialized in the US. The course will start by looking at how food can trace Asian American colonial entanglements and feed the US Empire. Then, we will look at how food has been used to racialize Asian Americans, diving into discourses of authenticity, labor, and smell. Finally, the course will end with discussions of how food functions as a form of community-building and resistance. We will use a wide range of media forms like academic journal articles, cookbooks, short-form videos, oral histories, and memoirs to explore these themes. Student facilitator: YuYu Yuan