New AAADS Course This Spring! AAS 20C: Asian American Popular Culture

AAS 20C: American American Popular Culture
Professor Roger Chung

This course will feature Asian American popular cultural practices and phenomena. While ethnic or traditional culture will be significant, we will approach “Asian American Culture” as an emergent cultural form that responds to racialization in America. Although race will be a prominent course analytical lens, the fashioning and refashioning of emergent cultures in America will be heavily dependent on the ways gender, ethnicity, sexuality and class intersect with race to produce uniquely Asian American shared experiences. From racialization, we will move towards globalization, and focus on the ways transnational consumption patterns change the contours of cultural practice, and introduce new tensions between Asian American and mainstream popular culture. Some topics this semester will include: Import Car Racing, Body Modifications, Student Culture Shows, Gang Membership, Comedy, YouTube, Hip-Hop, Beauty Contests, Dating and Relationships, K-Pop and Anime. Lastly, we will also value the rich cultural productions and traditions right here at UC Berkeley, and insert student culture nights, Theatre Rice, and hardboiled news magazine into the curriculum.