This course examines how US institutions (legal, economic, social and cultural) have ideologically constructed the category of Asian-ness and materially engaged with “Asian” peoples, both within the United States and in US overseas territories. Course materials also center the ways in which individuals and communities constructed as “Asian” have interacted with these US institutions and have, in the process, participated in shaping US history and public culture. Special attention is paid to California, a state with a rich history of Asian migration via both the Pacific and overland routes. In this regard, course readings discuss the central role of Asian labor in California’s economic history, explain how the Asian presence shaped 19th- and 20th-century California law (and California courts’ interpretations of US federal law), and explore the role of California-based Asian American communities in social movements from the 1960s to the present. The framing of the course highlights the internal diversity of the category “Asian,” and attends to the multiple ways in which various Asian American communities have interacted with each other, with other racialized/ethnicized groups, and with the U.S. settler state.
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