APAS205

This course introduces complex challenges that Asian Pacific Americans (APAs) faced throughout their history in the United States and practical steps they took to overcome them. APAs are internally diverse, with over 50 ethnicities and a variety of relationships with U.S. culture and politics. This diversity is expressed in many ways. For example, APAs are residents of the U.S. mainland and the Pacific Islands, victims and perpetuators of racism, wealthy and impoverished. They are recent immigrants and have formed communities for generations in the United States. They are represented, misrepresented, and erased in popular media. With such multifaceted relationships to the United States, APAs have been at the center of many tensions of U.S. history and society, issues which mirror today's challenges of a globalized world. This course takes an interdisciplinary and multi-perspective approach to analyze these historical issues and to develop strategies to confront today's challenges.