SOC 206 - Asians in the US and Asia

This course introduces students to the sociological study of the construction of race in Asia and the making of Asian Americans in the United States. This course challenges two prevailing conventional notions: 1) history of race is irrelevant in Asia, and 2) Asian Americans are homogenous and very marginal in numbers. Though the historical study of Asia long appeared to be inhospitable and resistant to serious analysis of race, recent scholarship reveals how race in Asia has been deliberately ignored. Although explicitly excluded from American citizenship and still subject to prejudice and discrimination, Asian Americans, coming from more than twenty countries, are the fastest-growing racial group in the United States. By highlighting national, regional, and transnational construction of racial identity in Asia and the making of “Asian American” as a racial group in the United States, as well as bridging the historical and the contemporary, this course examines how those social constructions cannot be separated from power/knowledge, white supremacy, and antiblackness. 

Satisfies Sociology major requirement.
Satisfies Social-Scientific Thought requirement.
Satisfies Justice, Equality and Community requirement.