Course Titles 2009-2010: These courses are intended for all student "levels"
Fall 2009
GSAH 220: Global Interactions and Identities
"Power vs. Culture: Globalization in Asia Pacific since the 1780s"
Xiao-huang Yin
Director of Global Studies Program
Professor of Asian Languages and Cultures
This course traces the development of globalization in Asia Pacific and explores U.S.-East Asia relations in a global setting from the 1780s to the present. It delves briefly into the origins of globalization in Asia Pacific before examining the profound cultural and socio-economic changes brought about by globalization and the U.S. expansion into the region. Topics include the dynamics of interconnections and oppositions that transcend the perspective of individual cultures, the role of literature and arts in mobilizing people, roots of Asian nationalism, the experience of Western/American missionaries in Asia, the emergence of trans-Pacific business networks, the influence of transnational NGOs as an agent of change, and the participation of the United States in power rivalries in the Pacific Rim. NO PREREQUISITE. HONORS OPTION OFFERED.
3:00 – 4:20 (Tu/Th); BH 219
GSAH 230: Values, Experience, and Difference in Global Contexts
"Encountering Difference: East-West, North-South"
Sean Pue
Assistant Professor of Hindi Language and South Asian Literature and Culture,
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages
This course follows the dynamics of cultural interaction and translation in the flow of cultural objects around the globe. The course begins with the fourteenth-century Persian poetry of Hafez Shirazi and follows its transmission to the West, which culminated in the German poet Goethe's early-nineteenth century West-Eastern Divan. It finds a reply to Goethe in The Message of the East, a 1920s Persian text written by the South Asian poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal. Changing directions, the course next follows Joseph Conrad's imaginative journey from England to Africa, Heart of Darkness, and the counter-journey described by Tyeb Salih in his Arabic novel, Season of Migration to the North. Students will learn to balance attention to the historical contexts in which these literary works were written with considerations of their uniquely close intertextual ties. NO PREREQUISITE. HONORS OPTION OFFERED.
12:40 – 2:00 (Tu/Th); WH C214
GSAH 311: Crossing Boundaries/Changing Worlds (Section I)
"Moving(Writing) Across/Beyond/Caribbean Borders: Interpreting the Cultural Producion of Hispanic Caribbean Migrations"
Danny Mendez
Assistant Professor of Caribbean Studies
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
This course explores the origins and processes of global migrations by peoples of the insular Hispanic Caribbean (Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico) to, from and within the United States. Through our readings of primary and secondary texts, we will analyze the ways these migratory processes have been depicted culturally and politically through transnational practices that seemingly link these diasporic communities to their countries of origin. This course will also pay particular attention to the racial, ethnic, sexual, and class representations made in the texts we will analyze. In this course we will read and analyze various literary expressions of these issues as depicted in essays, poetry, novels, short stories and films. This is an interdisciplinary course in the sense that we will also make use of alternative readings from sociology, anthropology, history, economics, and political science, in order to better contextualize and understand the Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican migration flows to the United States. PREREQUISITE IS WAIVED! HONORS OPTION OFFERED.
8:30 – 9:50 am (M/W); BH 219
Spring 2010
GSAH 230: Values, Experience, and Difference in Global Contexts (Section II)
"Constructions in World Literature: Translation in History"
David D. Kim
Assistant Professor of German Studies
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages
What is world literature? Who writes it, and for whom? In this course, students will examine the role of translators in constructing a heterogeneous body of literatures, which leaves behind its spatiotemporal origin and travels around the world across time and space. That movement comes with significant changes as translators reshape the original text on the basis of linguistic differences, as well as the distance between the source and target cultures. Readings include excerpts from the Bible, St. Augustine, Murasaki Shikibu, Martin Luther, Goethe, The Arabian Nights, Jorge Luis Borges, and Brian Friel. There are also two film screenings: "Name of the Rose" and "Lost in Translation." All discussions and readings will be in English. Foreign language skills not mandatory, but helpful. NO PREREQUISITE. HONORS OPTION OFFERED.
12:40 – 2:00 (M/W); WH C306
GSAH 311: Crossing Boundaries/Changing Worlds (Section II)
"Asians in America and Trans-Pacific Migration Networks"
Xiao-huang Yin
Director of Global Studies Program
Professor of Asian Languages and Cultures
As a thematic course in global studies, this course studies Asian American culture and history from the mid-19th century to the present. We shall explore the ethnic experience and cultural heritage of Asian Americans and place them in the broader comparative contexts of multi-racial U.S. society and trans-Pacific migration networks. Topics include the "push" and "pull" factors that led various Asian groups to North America, problems they face as they adapt to their new environment, the emergence and development of pan-Asian American identity, the politics of race/gender/sexuality in Asian American life, the impact of globalization and transnational community networks on Asian America, and the influence of the U.S. involvement in Asian affairs on the Asian American experience. PREREQUISITE IS WAIVED! HONORS OPTION OFFERED.
3:00 – 4:20 (Tu/Th); BH 319
