Asian and Asian American Studies (AAAS)

An introduction to Asian history through material culture, art, and film, with focus on the development of Asia’s world religions and cultural transmission across the region.

University Core fulfilled: Historical Analysis and Perspectives

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

An introductory course which surveys the cultures and histories of Asian Pacific Americans in the United States. Interaction among various Asian Pacific Americans communities also will be discussed.

University Core fulfilled: Foundations: Studies in American Diversity.

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

An introduction to the history of maritime Asia, this course examines Southeast Asia as one of the “crossroads of the world,” connected by and through its surrounding oceans and seas. Students will also engage with oral history methodologies.

Core Fulfilled: Historical Analysis and Perspectives

This course introduces students to major authors, texts, diverse genres, and themes in Asian literature. It examines the intricate connections between literary works and various cultural aspects, including philosophy, spirituality, religion, and aesthetics. It also explores how Asian literature actively contributes to discussions on topics such as modernity and tradition, gender and sexuality, trauma and violence, memory and identity, among others. Through the critical analysis of Asian literary works, this course aims not only to enhance students’ analytical skills but also to cultivate a deeper and more nuanced understanding of Asian culture, history, and society. Please note that specific coverage may vary at the discretion of individual instructors.

University Core fulfilled: Integrations: Interdisciplinary Connections

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

This course explores sociocultural dynamics in modern and contemporary Asia. We will question: How did Asian societies adapt to “Western” influences in the 19th and 20th centuries? How have modernization and globalization transformed traditional social, cultural, gender, and religious dynamics in Asia? By discussing these questions using academic literature in History, Anthropology, and Sociology, students will develop critical insights into contemporary social and cultural phenomena across Asia.

Core fulfilled: Understanding Human Behavior

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

This course introduces students to some of the major works, genres, and movements in Asian cinema, encompassing films from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, among others. Students will gain insights into the cultures, histories, and aesthetic traditions of Asia, and understand cinema not only as a distinct genre of art but also as a powerful social and political artifact.

A survey of Asian Pacific American writers and their literature, using critical analysis of autobiographies, short stories, novels, poetry, essays, and films.

University Core fulfilled: Explorations: Creative Experience.

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

Topical studies of timely and pertinent contemporary interest involving Asian Pacific Americans in the United States.

University Core fulfilled: Explorations: Understanding Human Behavior; Flag: Engaged Learning.

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

Applying critical race theory, this course examines Asian American media representations within the broader context of U.S. racial, ethnic, and cultural history. Students will analyze contemporary narratives and agentive responses alongside historical foundations, comparing these experiences with those of other communities of color. The curriculum further explores how race intersects with vital issues of identity, sexuality, class, and narratives of homeland and nation.

Food is an essential part of human (and non-human)'s biological survival, but its production, circulation, and consumption are complicatedly intertwined with political, economic, social, ethical, and cultural problems. In this course, students will deepen their understanding of Asian societies and communities through careful observation, analysis, and reflection on Asian food. The course combines academic discussion of anthropological texts with experimental fieldwork in Asian communities in Los Angeles. In this way, students will apply what they learn from the classroom to their everyday lives and milieu.

University Core Fulfilled: Flag: Engaged Learning.
This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

The history of Christianity in Asia is as old as the history of Christianity itself. But while much has been told about Christianity as it grew from an obscure Jewish sect to mighty Western Christendom, not enough attention has been given to the Christianity which spread eastwards to Asia in the first millennium of the Christian era. This course seeks to correct the imbalance by introducing students to the history of Christianity in Asia. It traces the development of Christianity in different parts of Asia, both in the ancient times and since the Age of Discovery.

University Core fulfilled: Integrations: Faith and Reason.

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

Islam is among the world’s oldest faith traditions, its fastest growing religion, and has more adherents in Asia than any other religion. This course introducing Islam as a meaningful and creative lens through which to study Asian history and culture, situating cultural production (i.e. art, music, dance, media, fashion) as sites where theological and historical questions alike are meaningfully raised. Looking at a variety of examples across regions, cultures, and academic disciplines, students will gain an appreciation of spiritual creativity in relation to Islam in diverse Asian contexts.

Core Fulfilled: INT Faith and Reason

This class will examine mythology and folktales from various Asian traditions: China, Japan, Korea, and India. The reading materials will be examined through psychological, philosophical, and cultural approaches. The topics for discussion include creation myths, heaven and hell, the mythic hero, metamorphosis, and immortality.

Juniors and seniors only.
University Core fulfilled: Integrations: Interdisciplinary Connections.

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

This course will explore the role of popular culture (i.e. popular literature, film, manga, television, music, posters, fashion, material culture, etc.) in the social production of meaning and creation of identity. It aims to impart to students the theoretical and analytical tools necessary to conduct in-depth interdisciplinary research on the mechanisms, implications, and functions of popular culture. Specific coverage may vary at the discretion of individual instructors.

University Core fulfilled: Integrations: Interdisciplinary Connections.

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

This course examines twentieth-century Asian fiction through the study of novels, short stories, novellas, biographies, diaries, and film. The class will also study major literary trends and movements.

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

This course introduces students to contemporary Chinese-language cinema, broadly defined to include films from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the diaspora communities. We examine both the poetics of cinema — cinematic language, styles, and aesthetics — and the politics of cinema, examining how filmmakers engage Chinese history and key social and political issues of the post-Mao era.

Core fulfilled: Integrations: Interdisciplinary Connections.

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

What is happening in Asia today? How are these political and economic events related to the historical formation of Asian societies? How are Asian countries and people interconnected with one another to shape current events? This course engages students to consider crucial moments, places, peoples, things, and ideas that have shaped Asian societies in the 20th and 21st centuries.

University Core fulfilled: Integrations: Interdisciplinary Connections.

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

Earthquakes; tsunamis; landmines; deforestation: Those who live in Asia are deeply familiar with the intertwined relationship between the human and more-than-human world. This course explores the multilayered histories of environmental crises (“natural” and “man-made”) and the impact of colonialism, postcolonial nation-building, and militarization on diverse communities across Asia. Students will also gain an appreciation of the creative works of artists, performers, and activists to collectively imagine a more just future.

Core fulfilled: Ethics and Justice

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

This course explores the rich historical and contemporary experiences of Filipino Americans, with a specialized focus on their impact on California and Los Angeles. Through an interdisciplinary lens, the course examines themes of colonialism, labor activism, and the post-1965 immigration wave.

University Core fulfilled: IINC Interdisciplinary Connections

This course introduces students to a variety of performance genres across Asia and its diasporas in relation to their cultural, historical, national, social, and global contexts. Case studies and embodied experience workshops include (but are not limited to) Indonesian court music and dance, Khmer classical dance, Asian American taiko, Korean popular music, and Cantonese opera in US Chinatowns. No prior musical knowledge is required for this course. Please note that specific coverage may vary at the discretion of individual instructors.

Core Fulfilled: ECRE Creative Experience.

Food is an essential part of human (and non-human)'s biological survival, but its production, circulation, and consumption are complicatedly intertwined with political, economic, social, ethical, and cultural problems. In this course, students will deepen their understanding of Asian societies and communities through careful observation, analysis, and reflection on Asian food. The course combines academic discussion of anthropological texts with experimental fieldwork in Asian communities in Los Angeles. In this way, students will apply what they learn from the classroom to their everyday lives and milieu.

Transpacific Korea aims to develop students' perspectives on mobilities, connections, and dynamics that have shaped Korean societies and communities. Based on the interdisciplinary approaches, students will analyze and discuss the artistic representation of Korean societies and cultures in film and conduct independent research.

University Core fulfilled: Integrations: Interdisciplinary Connections.

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

Using a diasporic lens, this course engages in an interdisciplinary examination of the histories, lives and experiences of Japanese Americans and Japanese migrants while exploring the concepts of resilience, resistance, and reconciliation. Using this broader lens the class will explore a wide range of Japanese American history from initial migration to the U.S. in the mid-19th century to current day. We will explore the challenges and celebrations of establishing Japanese American communities and the questions of cultural retention and revitalization. Additionally, we will take note of the impacts simultaneous events in homeland Japan on transnational identity formations.

Consent of instructor required.

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

East Asian science fiction is the indigenization of a Western literary import at the intersection of many disciplines. This genre requires imagination and critical thinking on speculative topics that may or may never happen in our lifetimes. Despite the fictional aspect, many ideas and concepts from science fiction have permeated society due to how ubiquitous these works have become. The huge number of East Asian science fiction works produced in the past few decades reflects the influence of Western media and the rapid technological evolution and imagination in the Asian mediascape. Many East Asian science fiction narratives decentralize the importance of the West, focusing on China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, or Korea as sites of inspiration, resources, or calamity. This decentralization calls into question the power and privilege of Western narratives and storytelling in the past, and what changes can be made in modes of thinking through indigenizing Western tropes. East Asian science fiction thus demonstrates globalized media through local art and culture, and the rapid diversification of local media.
This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

This course critically explores one of the world's most popular, dynamic, and innovative cinemas - Hong Kong cinema. Situating Hong Kong cinema in historical, artistic, and transnational contexts, this course examines major developments in Hong Kong cinema running from the war time cinema, the rise of martial arts movies and their influx into the United States, the international breakthrough of the "New Wave," Hong Kong filmmaking before and after the 1997 handover to China, to Hollywood remakes of Hong Kong films in recent years. The class will focus on issues relating to filmic nationalism, transnational film production and consumption; migration, identity, and community formation; nostalgia, memory, and post-colonialism; and family, gender, and sexuality.

This course employs interdisciplinary methods to examine the problems and issues confronting women in Asia from pre-modern times to the contemporary era. Drawing on the scholarly insights of gender studies, history, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and film and media studies, we will explore how the concepts of womanhood and gender in Asia are constructed, institutionalized, appropriated, and reinterpreted in different socio-historical discourses. We will interrogate the underlying mechanisms that tend to perpetuate Asian women’s marginality and subordination. At the same time, we will pay particular attention to new perspectives on women’s roles in current scholarship and look into women’s ongoing negotiation with their gender identity and their struggles for empowerment and agency.

University Core fulfilled: Integrations: Interdisciplinary Connections.

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

This course explores gender, sexuality, and family dynamics in contemporary Asia. Students will deepen their understanding of contemporary Asia while developing comparative and critical insights into issues pertaining to colonial and postcolonial history and the anthropology of kinship.

University Core fulfilled: Integrations: Interdisciplinary Connections.

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

This course offers a critical examination of Asian American visual culture and artistic expressions, focusing on American artists of Asian descent in the early 19th century to present, as well as the representation and role of Asian Americans in film and television. Rethinking Asian American visual culture and contemporary American culture, this course focuses on the tensions among history, memory, and performance.

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

An interdisciplinary and comparative examination of the historical role of immigration and migration in shaping the Los Angeles region as well as the social, political, economic, and cultural impact of immigration in contemporary Los Angeles. University Core fulfilled: Integrations: Interdisciplinary Connections.

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

This course engages in an interdisciplinary examination of the identity development of persons of mixed-race ancestry in the United States through which students derive a critical understanding of race, ethnicity, and culture, while developing a deeper appreciation for ethnic, class, gender, generational, and racial diversity. University Core fulfilled: Integrations: Interdisciplinary Connections.

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.

This course explores the relationship between cities and global Asian cinema through perspectives from film studies and urban studies. It examines how urban spaces are represented, imagined, and experienced across films from Asia and its diasporas. We will also consider how cinematic portrayals of cities engage themes such as migration and displacement, inequality and justice, environmental change, cultural identity and diversity, history and memory, regulation and resistance, urbanization, and globalization. Through the course, students will develop a nuanced understanding of the interplay among cinema, urban space, and Asian cultures and communities in transpacific and global contexts.

University Core fulfilled: IINC Interdisciplinary Connections

This course is the capstone requirement for students in Asian and Pacific Studies. It offers a unique opportunity for students to draw together the various strands in the different academic courses they have taken and to focus much more closely on a specific Asian topic in a thesis project. To fulfill the purpose of the course and the Asian and Pacific Studies program's commitment to interdisciplinarity, the thesis must have integrated and interdisciplinary elements.

This course may not be repeated for degree credit.