Asian American Politics
Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial minority group in the United States – what are the varied ways Asian Americans have been engaging in politics and how have they shaped the terrain of American politics? This course will survey the different facets of political life in Asian American communities, focusing on three major themes. First, we will examine the origins and evolution of “Asian America” as a political project. Second, we will explore how Asian Americans have been engaging in a variety of political arenas, from electoral politics to community organizing. We will consider topics such as voting, political representation, and grassroots activisms around gentrification, anti-Asian violence, and immigrant detention and deportation. Third, we will consider the politics of interminority relations; in other words, how Asian Americans engage with other communities of color. We will focus on the political and ethical questions around affirmative action, Black Lives Matter, and multi-racial solidarity. Throughout the course, we will grapple with the multiplicities and pluralities of Asian Americans, including both the limitations and possibilities of identity politics in a diversifying America.
Race and Ethnic Politics in the United States
Race has served as an enduring organizing principle of American politics. This course surveys how race shapes politics and how politics shapes race in the United States. In the first of the semester, we will focus on the political processes and institutions that “make” race and interrogate what we mean exactly when we say race is socially constructed. In the second half of the semester, we turn to looking at how racialized groups engage in politics on multiple fronts, paying particular attention to electoral politics and social movements. Throughout the course, we will grapple with both the challenges to and possibilities of diversity and racial justice in contemporary America. Topics include but are not limited to political representation, voting, intersectionality, citizenship, immigration, community activisms, and solidarity.
Courses Taught at Barnard:
Grassroots Activisms and Social Change (colloquium)
How do ordinary people come together to enact social change in society? Focusing on the United States, this course explores how everyday people engage in collective action from the ground up, through social movements, community organizing, and other forms of advocacy and activisms. In particular, we will consider the role of grassroots movements and organizations as agents of democratic representation and catalysts for political transformation for marginalized communities. We will engage key questions about why groups choose to make political demands outside of formal institutional spaces, what kinds of visions for social change they put forward, how they seek to achieve their ideals, and how successful they are. The course will focus on contemporary activisms around racial justice, immigrant rights, LGBTQ+ rights, feminism, and labor.
The Promises and Perils of Identity Politics (colloquium)
In the course, we will engage the decades-long debates around what it means to organize politics around identity in the United States, particularly from the lens of marginalized groups. In the age of American politics where the term “identity politics” is often used as a dismissal or derogation of the experiences of marginalized groups, what exactly is identity politics? What do the contemporary anxieties around identity politics tell us about political life? What are the political possibilities that arise from organizing identity-based movements? Does focusing too much on identity politics overshadow concerns around material redistribution? We will trace the notion of identity politics back to its origins in Black queer feminism in the 1970s, and seek to understand its evolutions to today. We will bridge the work of critical theorists with the empirical study of identity-based politics, focusing on those who have sought to negotiate differences across race, gender, and sexuality.
Policing, Prisons, and Asian America (University of Pennsylvania)
In the era of Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate, how do Asian Americans fit into national conversations about the role of police and prisons in society? Some Asian Americans have pushed for prosecuting anti-Asian incidents as “hate crimes” and activating other carceral responses in light of pandemic-related anti-Asian violence. Others have grappled with how Asian Americans themselves face different forms of carceral violence and what solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement looks like. This course asks: What are the varied ways Asian Americans are entangled with the prison industrial complex, as invested in, impacted by, and seeking to resist policing? What can the experiences of Asian Americans tell us about the politics of race, violence, and the carceral state? First, we will examine the debates over “hate” frameworks and carceral solutions in the Stop Asian Hate movement and the broader contemporary movement against anti-Asian violence. Second, we will consider how Asian Americans are impacted by the carceral state in multiple ways, including but not limited to post 9/11 surveillance, immigrant detention and deportation, and the policing of sex work and other forms of gendered and precarious labor. Third, we will explore how Asian Americans have been resisting carceral violence, building alternatives, and engaging in projects for police and prison abolition.