This course offers an introduction to Asian American studies centered on the issues of “race,” “privilege,” and “power” from the premise that multiple racial projects—including Orientalism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, and settler colonialism—contribute to Asian racial formation, and that warfare plays a central role in these projects. With a focus on militarism in the US, Asia, and the Pacific region, the class explores the intersections of race, Indigeneity, and class as well as possibilities for making connections across variegated groups. Exploring Asian Americanism through archives, personal narratives, and other texts, the course focuses on the role of history in producing current conditions and our understandings of them.
