Course Outline for Ethnic Studies 11
Solidarity in Asian American and Pacific Islander Communities

Effective: Fall 2024
SLO Rev:
Catalog Description:

ES 11 - Solidarity in Asian American and Pacific Islander Communities

3.00 Units

This course explores the core experiences, histories, cultures, and theories with an emphasis on solidarity across the broad and diverse Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities, including East Asian Americans, Southeast Asian Americans, South Asian Americans, Filipinx Americans, Pacific Islander Americans, and Arab Americans. Ethnic Studies, Asian American Studies, and Pacific Islander Studies frameworks and core competencies will be applied to describe critical events and intellectual traditions, including: AAPI solidarity within and among other ethnic/racialized groups; impacts of white supremacy and racialization; impacts of wars, colonization, and imperialism; intersectionality, decoloniality, self-determination, anti-racism, liberation, and sovereignty in order to build a just and equitable society.
2203.00 - Ethnic Studies
Optional
Type Units Inside of Class Hours Outside of Class Hours Total Student Learning Hours
Lecture 3.00 54.00 108.00 162.00
Total 3.00 54.00 108.00 162.00
Measurable Objectives:
Upon completion of this course, the student should be able to:
  1. Analyze and articulate concepts such as race and racism, racialization, ethnicity, equity, ethno-centrism, eurocentrism, white supremacy, self-determination, liberation, decolonization, sovereignty, imperialism, settler colonialism, and anti-racism as analyzed in Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies and Ethnic Studies;
  2. apply theory and knowledge produced by Asian American and Pacific Islander communities to describe the critical events, histories, cultures, intellectual traditions, contributions, lived-experiences and social struggles of those groups with a particular emphasis on agency and group-affirmation;
  3. critically review how struggle, resistance, racial and social justice, solidarity, and liberation, as experienced, enacted, and studied by Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are relevant to current and structural issues such as communal, national, international, and transnational politics as, for example, in immigration, reparations, settler-colonialism, multiculturalism, language policies;
  4. critically analyze the intersection of race and racism as they relate to class, gender, sexuality, religion, spirituality, national origin, immigration status, ability, tribal citizenship, sovereignty, language, and/or age in Asian American and Pacific Islander communities;
  5. describe and actively engage with anti-racist and anti-colonial issues and the practices and movements in Asian American and Pacific Islander communities to build a just and equitable society;
  6. describe the role of colonization, wars and immigration laws on shaping the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.
Course Content:

  1. Who are Asian Americans?

    1. Degrees of panethnicity

    2. Panethnic movements and identity formation

      1. anti-Asian violence (ie Vincent Chin, post-911, post-COVID era)

    3. Cultural expressions related to identity and heritage

  2. Under Western Eyes

    1. Orientalism - West to East Asia

    2. Western colonization of Asia and the Americas

      1. Americas

      2. East Asia

      3. Southeast Asia

      4. South Asia

      5. MENA (Middle East North Africa) 

      6. Pacific Islands

    3. Wars

      1. Forgotten Wars

      2. World War II and mass incarceration

      3. Cold Wars

      4. “War on Terror” and surveillance of Arab, Muslim, and South Asian communities

      5. Critical Refugee Studies

      6. Impacts of U.S. Militarism in Asia Pacific

  3. Racialization and Identity

    1. Racial Formation

    2. Heterogeneity, hybridity, multiplicity

    3. Yellow Peril v. Model Minority

    4. “White Man’s Burden”

    5. Racialization, gendering, and sexualization of Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs)

      1. LGBTQ Asian American and Pacific Islander experiences and expressions

  4. Labor, Immigration and Exclusion

    1. Coolies

    2. Farm and Plantation workers

    3. Exclusionary laws and practices

      1. Citizenship

      2. Immigration

      3. Legal cases

    4. 20th century Immigration and refugee policies

    5. Colonization and Nursing

    6. Tech Visas

    7. Undocumented AAPIs

  5. Place and Space

    1. Ethnic enclaves

    2. Segregation

    3. Ocean and occupied territories

    4. Language

    5. Education

  6. Media and popular culture

    1. Mainstream media

    2. Creative production in arts and media (ie music, poetry, film) by AAPIs

  7. Education

    1. Tape v. Hurley (1885) - Chinese American access to education

    2. Demand for Ethnic Studies and Asian American Studies

    3. Impact of model minority stereotype

    4. Underrepresented Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders

  8. Class and Work

    1. Labor movements

    2. Poverty & welfare

    3. Glass/bamboo ceiling

    4. Transnational feminism and domestic workers movement

  9. Resistance, liberation, and solidarity movements and moments

    1. 1968 Third World Liberation Front Strike

    2. Transnational anticolonial struggles

    3. Resisting Islamophobia

      1. post-9/11 and Japanese American solidarity

    4. Political participation

    5. Asian American and Pacific Islander Women’s groups

    6. I-hotel protest/housing rights

    7. Immigrant rights today

    8. The Mau Movement in Samoa

    9. Polynesian Panthers

    10. Asian/Black solidarity 

    11. Environmental Justice movements 

    12. Hawaiian sovereignty 

    13. Envisioning a future of AAPI allyship and solidarity

  10. Relational Critiques

    1. Model minority myth and anti-Black racism

    2. Asian American settler colonialism (particularly in Hawaii)

    3. Disaggregating/critiquing AAPI panethnicity

Methods of Instruction:
  1. Presentation
  2. Group Activities
  3. Distance Education
  4. Lectures
  5. Textbook reading assignments
  6. Class and group discussions
  7. Presentation of audio-visual materials
  8. Research project
  9. Online Assignments
  10. Community activities/civic engagement projects
  11. Written assignments
  12. Group Presentations
  13. Lecture/Discussion
Assignments and Methods of Evaluating Student Progress:
  1. Oral history interview of a relative or Asian American Pacific Islander community member. Base questions on major themes related to class such as immigration, war, resistance, work, gender, or family. Write a reflection essay on the interview process, the interviewee’s life story, and compare and contrast their story with readings from class, analyzing patterns or impacts of racialization, colonization, settlement, immigration, sovereignty, intersectionality, and/or white supremacy.
  2. Journal prompts related to identity, resistance, cultural, decoloniality, etc. Such as: “How has your ethnic/racial identity changed over time? Consider dimensions of culture, institutions, interests, etc.
  3. Creative presentations of research topics, such as writing an original poem about the I-hotel struggle.
  4. Research project: select a topic with the approval of the instructor; write a five-page paper including a bibliography of no less than 5 books/journal articles, using APA style.
  1. Exams/Tests
  2. Projects
  3. Research Projects
  4. Quizzes
  5. Papers
  6. Oral Presentation
Upon the completion of this course, the student should be able to:
  1. explain and access examples of Asian American and Pacific Islander resistance, social justice, solidarity, and/or liberation movements;
  2. critically analyze texts and theories related to Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies;
  3. probe an historical or contemporary event/issue involving Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders through an intersectional analysis of racialization and racism in relation to gender, class, national origin, sexuality, religion, citizenship, and/or language.
Textbooks (Typical):
  1. Fischer, K. and Hodges, T. (2023). Introduction to Ethnic Studies, Chapter 5: Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies LibreText, ASCCC OERI https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Sandboxes/kfischer_at_chabotcollege.edu/Introduction_to_Ethnic_Studies.
  1. Wu, J.Y.S., T.C. Chen, R.G. Lee, G.Y. Okihiro, H. Zia, D. L. Eng, S. Han, et al. (2010). Asian American Studies Now?: a Critical Reader Rutgers University Press.
  2. San Francisco State University. Asian American Studies Department (2009). At 40: Asian American Studies @ San Francisco State: Self-Determination, Community, Student Service Asian American Studies Dept, San Francisco State University.
  3. Choy, C.C. (2022). Asian American Histories of the United States. Beacon Press.
  4. Camacho, K.L. (2019). Sacred Men: Law, Torture, and Retribution in Guam. Duke University Press.
  5. Camacho, K.L. (2021). Reppin: Pacific Islander Youth and Native Justice. University of Washington Press.
  6. Jeung, R., Umemoto, K., Dong, H., Mar, E., Hirai Tsuchitani, L., Pan, A. (Eds.) (2019). Mountain Movers: Student Activism and the Emergence of Asian American Studies University of California, Los Angeles, Asian American Studies Center.
  7. Hune, S. and Nomura, G. M (Eds). (2020). Our Voices, Our Histories: Asian American and Pacific Islander Women New York University, Press.
  8. Rodriguez, R.M. and Dhingra, P. (2021). Asian America (2nd). Polity Press.
Abbreviated Class Schedule Description:
Core experiences, histories, cultures, and theories with an emphasis on solidarity across broad and diverse Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. Ethnic Studies frameworks and core competencies will be applied to describe critical events and intellectual traditions, including: AAPI solidarity; impacts of white supremacy and racialization; impacts of wars, colonization, and imperialism; intersectionality, decoloniality, self-determination, anti-racism, liberation, and sovereignty.
Discipline:
Ethnic Studies*, or Asian American Studies*