Asian American Studies 198 Special Topics Course M/W 2-4 pm Wellman 115 Professor Rhacel Salazar Parreñas T.A: Winnie Tam THE IMMIGRANT SECOND GENERATION This class analyzes post-1965 Asian American children of immigrants/and or immigrant children. This class looks at diverse childhood experiences, including those of ‘brain drain’ children, ‘refugee’ children, and ‘parachute and ‘transnational children.’ This class looks at their experiences vis-à-vis the family, education, globalization, the racial/ethnic community, and finally popular culture. Emphasis is placed on gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and intergenerational relations. Topics covered include the negotiation of the model minority stereotype, youth masculinity, youth femininity, transnational intergenerational relations, poverty, and children’s roles in small-business entrepreneurship. Readings: Nazli Kibria, Becoming Asian American: Second-Generation Chinese and Korean American Identities (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou, Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity (New York: Routledge, 2004). Miri Song, Helping Out: Children’s Labor in Ethnic Businesses (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999). A Course Reader will be required. *This course will be requesting a grade mode of LETTER GRADE. If you would like the option of reinstating the original grade mode of Passed/Not Passed, you may do so by the 25th day of instruction, on 2/11/04. Students electing this option must take a copy of this syllabus to the Office of the Registrar by the above date and file a GRADING VARIANCE EXCEPTION petition there. Course Requirements: Attendance and Participation 10% Students will be expected to attend all class sessions prepared to discuss assigned readings. Students should actively contribute to discussions for this to be a fruitful and engaging class. Actively contributing does not mean talking a lot – instead it means that one had completed the readings prior to class, struggled enough with the readings that one comes to class with questions and some idea about what is useful, wrong, or unclear about the text. Three unexcused absences result in a score of 0% for attendance. Your participation grade will be largely based on your facilitation of an assigned day of readings. Beginning in the second week of class, a group of students will be assigned to facilitate class discussion for the last 30 minutes of each class bypreparing to discuss 3 questions that are essential to their understanding of the assigned readings. The group of students should meet prior to class to formulate their questions. Midterm 20% Reaction Pieces 40% Two four-page reaction pieces on a set of weekly readings. Reaction pieces must be turned-in before the first class on the week following the readings were assigned and discussed in class. Reaction pieces must be typed (12-point font) and double-spaced. For the reaction piece, you must identify the pertinence of the works(s) to our understanding of Asian American experiences by doing the following: • You must define the concepts introduced by the weekly readings, for instance pan-ethnicity, segmented assimilation, model minority, brain drain, intergenerational relations, parachute kids, etc, and then address their pertinence to the study of the lives of the ‘children’ of Asian immigrants. • Address how race, class, sexuality and/or gender shape their experiences. • Interrogate the construction of identity for 1.5/second generation Asian Americans. • Address how both cultural and structural factors shape their experiences. First reaction piece is worth 15% and the second reaction piece is worth 25%. Final 30% Your final will be an oral examination. Each student will be asked one question that they must answer within an allotted time of five minutes. The final exam will be conducted in the Instructor’s office and will be administered individually. A study guide will be provided to students. Final questions will draw heavily from the questions that students developed in their facilitation of class discussion. The final will be cumulative. WEEK I INTRODUCTION (January 5) No Readings WEEK II THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ON IMMIGRATION, “THE SECOND GENERATION” AND THEIR SEGMENTED ASSIMILATION IN AMERICA (January 10 and 12) Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou. 1993. “The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 530: 74-96. Roger Waldinger and Cynthia Feliciano. 2004. “Will the new second generation experience ‘downward assimilation’? Segmented assimilation re-assessed,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 27(3): 376-402. Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou, PART I of Asian American YouthWEEK III “BRAIN DRAIN” CHILDREN AND THE MAKING OF RACIAL ETHNIC IDENTITIES (January 19 and 21) Nazli Kibria, Becoming Asian American, Chapters 1-5 WEEK IV MASCULINITY (January 24 and 26) Nazli Kibria, Becoming Asian American, Chapters 6-7 Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou, Chapters 10-13 REACTION PIECE #1: Reaction piece on Becoming Asian American is due on the 24th. WEEK V FEMININITY (January 31 and February 2) Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou, Chapters 4-6, 8 MIDTERM: 2 February WEEK VI NEGOTIATING THE BINARY SPLIT: EITHER ASIAN OR AMERICAN (Feb 7 and 9) Karen Pyke and Tran Dang. "'FOB’ and ‘Whitewashed’: Identity and Internalized Racism Among Second Generation Asian Americans” Qualitative Sociology 26:147-172. Mia Tuan -- article FILM: The Debut 9 February WEEK VII FAMILY AND INTERGENERATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS FROM A TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE (Feb 14 and 16) Marjorie Faultstich, Orellana, Barrie Thorne, Anna Chee, and Wan Shun Eva Lam. 2001. “Transnational Childhoods: The Participation of Children in Processes of Family Migration,” Social Problems 48(4): 572-91. Rhacel Parreñas. 2001. “Mothering From a Distance: Emotions, Gender, and Intergenerational Relations in Filipino Transnational Families,” Feminist Studies 27:2 (Summer): 361-90. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas and Cerissa Salazar Parreñas, “Workers without Families: Keeping the Dependents of Immigrant Workers outside U.S. Borders,” (co-authored with Cerissa Salazar Parreñas) Asian Law Journal 10:2 (2003): 143-59. Diane Wolf. 1997. “Family Secrets: Transnational Struggles among Children of Filipino Immigrants,” Sociological