Description

For more than one hundred and fifty years, immigrants from Asia have encountered the American legal system. This seminar explores the Asian American experience under Anglo-American legal ideology, with particular emphasis on rhetoric, history and cultural studies. As the course title indicates, the broad theme of (non)citizenship will engage us as we work through the methods through which Asian Americans were included or excluded within the continental United States*. We will explore some of these episodes where Asian Americans came into contact with the American legal system. Asian-Americans have also attempted to use the legal system to effect change, with varying levels of success. The relationship between law and social change, and the limits of liberal legal ideology, are covered in this seminar.

This seminar will be grounded in critical race theory (CRT) as a critique of racism in the law and society and discuss current applications of CRT to the field of Asian American Studies. The writings in this area have been developed mainly through the legal and education scholarship of Derrick Bell, Mari Matsuda, Richard Delgado, Kimberlie Crenshaw, Daniel Soloranzo, Gloria Ladson Billings and William Tate. Critical race theory has its roots in previous discipline-based critiques related to the history, philosophy, politics and social construction and reality of race and discrimination.

To that end the seminar will begin to help us answer questions such as the following: Is there only one Asian American experience? How do cultural studies inform our knowledge of what it means (or what it meant) to be Asian American in a U.S. legal context? Who belongs to Asian America? Who decides? What boundaries, borders, bodies and cultures were transgressed in the formation of these Asian American experiences? Given the black-white bilateral approach to U.S. civil rights legislation, what would a new model of (Asian) American civil rights look like? How do past Asian American legal politics impact contemporary politics? Is there such a thing as Asian American jurisprudence?

This course is meant to be an opportunity to engage with a number of critical theorists and legal studies scholars on what “Race, Rights and the Asian American Experience” mean to them – as well as what they mean to you. This course will focus broadly on the topics of immigration, citizenship, internment, and transnationalism. Legal documents, fiction, films and museum/memorial websites will be analyzed for the tropes that they evoke of Asian America.

This course is also meant to bring legal scholars and (Asian) Americanists into conversation with one another. No legal background is necessary, although an interest in examining legal rhetoric and Asian American jurisprudence is required. For those unfamiliar with critical race theory, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic's Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (New York University Press, 2001) is a good, easy introduction. As well, an interest (or knowledge) of Asian American historical episodes would be most beneficial. The seminar will also be somewhat of an indulgence in Asian American scholarship, although of course, the definition of this literature can be (and will be) contested.

* Due to time constraints, this course will focus on the experience of Asian immigrants in the continental United States. Unfortunately, we will not be able to cover the experiences of Pacific Islander Americans which, of course, is both vastly similar and different to the experiences of Asian Americans and invokes perhaps a discourse of indigeneity rather than immigration.

Required Books:

• Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Duke UP, 1996)
• Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 1994)
• Henry Yu, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exclusion in Modern America (Oxford University Press, 2001)
• Angelo Ancheta, Race, Rights and the Asian American Experience (Rutgers University Press, 2001)
• Gish Jen, Typical American (Penguin, 1991)
• Kandice Chuh, Imagine Otherwise: On Asian Americanist Critique (Duke University Press, 2001)
• John Okada, No-No Boy (University of Washington Press, 1976)
• Ien Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West (Routledge, 2001)

Wired Bibliography

Annotated Bibliography

Course Requirements
This seminar explores a variety of approaches to analyzing the Asian American experience through a critical race lens. As such, this will primarily be a readings course. Students will bear the main responsibility for leading and participating in discussion. Please come prepared with a few questions on your own each week to help us work through the material.

Leading the Discussion
By 11:00 a.m. – before each class - one member of the seminar will distribute a brief critical essay that he or she has prepared on the reading for the week, along with a set of discussion questions. Maximum length: 1000 words, not including questions. Everyone will be responsible for leading the discussion once during the semester. If you wish to discuss the readings before composing your essay, please feel free to contact the instructor.

Supplementing the Syllabus
Each member of the seminar will also be responsible for providing an annotated bibliography pertaining to that week's readings once per semester. The annotated bibliography will also be due by 11:00 a.m. before each class. Maximum length: three pages. A brief summary paragraph should be provided alongside of each your choices, explaining the major premises and connecting the texts (legal documents, books, films, websites, etc) to the theme for that week.

Autobiographical Statement:
On the migrations, trajectories and discourses that have shaped your lives
This statement is meant to be a jumping-off point of sorts, a situating of self within the trajectories that have shaped your own personal scholarship. You will be asked to present a ten-minute statement reflecting on the ways that immigration has shaped your subjectivity and that of the communities in which you place yourself. It is also meant to be your method of introduction to your fellow classmates. The autobiographical statement will not be graded. If you are having trouble with this assignment, please feel free to contact the instructor. More will be said on this assignment in our first meeting.

For more on the place of autobiography within the legal academy, refer to Culp Jr., Jerome McCristal, “Autobiography and Legal Scholarship and Teaching: Finding the Me in the Legal Academy” in Richard Delgado, ed., Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (Temple University Press, 1995).

Seminar Paper: Episodes in Asian American Legal History
Given our rather broad and unwieldy course topic, the topic of the seminar paper will be left up to the individual student. The only restriction is that the essay should focus on an episode within (Asian) American legal history - more on my definiton of episodes later. Students are encourages to begin thinking about this early on in the semester - please feel free to consult me if you wish to discuss your topic further.

Grading

Evaluations will be based on writing and on the quality of each member’s participation in the seminar. In oral presentations and in written work, strict adherence to the principles of academic and personal integrity is expected. The guidelines for conduct in the seminar will be discussed at the initial session.

Class Participation: 40%
Leading Discussion: 10%
Supplementing the Syllabus: 10%
Seminar Paper: 40%

Week 1: Hellos and Introductions

• People V. Hall (Supreme Court of the State of California, 1854)
• Keith Aoki, "Critical Legal Studies, Asian Americans in U.S. Law & Culture, Neil Gotanda and Me", 4 Asian L.J. 19 (1997)
• Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Duke UP, 1996), ch. 1.

Supplementary Reading:
Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (New York University Press, 2001)

Week 2: Asian Americans and Critical Race Theory

• Neil Gotanda, "A Critique of 'Our Constitution is Colorblind'", 44 Stanford Law Review 1 (1991).
• Pat K. Chew, "Asian Americans: The 'Reticent' Minority and Their Paradoxes", 36 William and Mary Law Review 1 (1994), p. 1-94.
• Jayne Chong-Soon Lee, "Navigating the Topology of Race", 46 Stanford Law Review 747 (1994)
• Jerry Kang, "Trojan Horses of Race", draft paper, 1994 (do not cite without author's permission).

Supplementary Reading:
Continue to skim Delgado and Stefancic's Critical Race Theory: An Introduction if necessary.

Week 3: Racial Formation Theory: A Different Breed of Orientalism?

• Ian Haney Lopez, "The Social Construction of Race" 29 Harv. Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 1 (1994)
• Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 1994), p. 1-91 & epilogue
• Henry Yu, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exclusion in Modern America (Oxford University Press, 2001), read entire book.
• Edward Said, Orientalism (Vintage, 2003) - preface, introduction and afterword (be sure to get the 25th anniversary edition).

Week 4: Immigration

• Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
• 1917 Immigration Act
• Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act (1943)
• Angelo Ancheta, Race, Rights and the Asian American Experience (Rutgers University Press, 2001), ch. 4.
• Gish Jen, Typical American (Penguin, 1991), read entire novel.

Week 5: Citizenship

• United States v. Wong Kim Ark (Supreme Court of the United States, 1898)
• Ozawa v. United States (Supreme Court of the United States, 1922);
• United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (United States Supreme Court, 1923)
• Leti Volpp, "American Mestizo: Filipinos and Antimiscegenation Laws in California", U.C. Davis Law Review, Vol. 33, No. 4, Summer 2000
• Leti Volpp, “Obnoxious to Their Very Nature”: Asian Americans and Constitutional Citizenship
  Citizenship Studies Vol. 5, No. 1, 71–87 (2001)

Supplementary Reading: George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (Temple UP, 1998), ch. 1-2.

Week 6: Who's Included in Asian America? (Part One)

• Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities, (Temple University Press, 1992), ch. 1 and ch. 5
• Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (Verso, 1991), ch. 10
• Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts (Duke University Press, 1996), ch. 3
• Angelo Ancheta, Race, Rights and the Asian American Experience (Rutgers University Press, 2001), ch. 6.
• Frank Wu, Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White (Basic Books, 2002), ch. 7.
• Henry Yu, “Tiger Woods Is Not the End of History: or, Why Sex across the Color Line Won’t Save Us All,” American Historical Review (vol 108(5), Dec 2003), p. 1406-1414.

• Begin reading Kandice Chuh's Imagine Otherwise for week 7.

Week 7: Who's Included in Asian America? (Part Two)

• Kandice Chuh, Imagine Otherwise: On Asian Americanist Critique (Duke University Press, 2001), read entire book.
• Lavina Dhingra Shankar & Rajini Srikanth, "Closing the Gap? South Asians Challenge Asian American Studies" in A Part, Yet Apart: South Asians in Asian America (Temple University Press, 1998), p. 1-22
• Lisa Suhair Majaj, “Arab-Americans and the Meaning of Race,” in Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity and Literature (University Press of Mississippi, 2000), p. 320-337.

Week 8: Internment (Part One)

• John Okada, No-No Boy (University of Washington Press, 1976)
• Revisit chapter 2 of Kandice Chuh, Imagine Otherwise: On Asian Americanist Critique (Duke University Press, 2001)
• Frank Wu, "Difficult Decisions During Wartime: Letters from a Non-Alien in an Internment Camp to a Friend Back Home" (2002 Frank J. Battisti Memorial Lecture)
• Mona Oikawa, “Cartographies of Violence: Women, Memory, and the Subject(s) of the “Internment” in Race, Space, and the Law (Between the Lines, 2002), p. 71-98.

• Film: Days of Waiting (1990) - will watch in class

• Supplementary websites to skim:
• Manzanar National Historic Site - visit NHS site for the former Manzanar internment camp
• National Park Service, "Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocations Sites" (2000)
• National Park Service, "The War Relocation Camps of World War II: When Fear was Stronger than Justice" (2000)

Week 9: Internment (Part Two)

• Gordon Hirabayashi v. United States (1942)
• Minoru Yasui v. United States (1942)
• Toyosaburo Korematsu v. United States (1943)
• Ex parte Mitsuye Endo (1943)
• Angelo Ancheta, Race, Rights and the Asian American Experience (Rutgers University Press, 2001), ch. 3.
• Mari Matsuda, "Looking to the Bottom: Critical Legal Studies and Reparations", 22 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 323 (1987)

Week 10: Remembering the Body

• Film: Who Killed Vincent Chin?
• Helen Zia, Asian American Dreams (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2000), ch. 3
• Sheng-Mei Ma, The Deathly Embrace: Orientalism and Asian American Identity, ch. 4
• Paula Johnson, "The Social Construction of Identity in Criminal Cases: Cinema Verite and the Pedagogy of Vincent Chin", 1 Michigan Journal of Race and Law 347 (1996)

Week 11: The Model Minority

• Neil Gotanda, "Tale of Two Judges: Joyce Karlin in People v. Soon Ja Du; Lance Ito in People v. O.J. Simpson", in
• Frank Wu, Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White (Basic Books, 2002), ch. 2
• Sumi K. Cho,. "Converging Stereotypes in Racialized Sexual Harassment: Where the Model Minority Meets Suzie Wong", 1 J. Gender Race & Just. 1777 (1997)
• Robert Lee, Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Temple University Press, 1999), ch. 5-6
• Angelo Ancheta, Race, Rights and the Asian American Experience (Rutgers University Press, 2001), ch. 5.

Week 12: Empire and Transnationalism

• Ien Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West (Routledge, 2001), p. 1-92 and choose two chapters from the remainder of the book.
• George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (Temple UP, 1998), ch. 9.
• Russell C. Leong, “Asians in the Americas: Interpreting the Diaspora Experience,” (Amerasia, vol 15(2), 1989), vii-xvii
• Aihwa Ong, “On the Edge of Empires: Flexible Citizenship among Chinese in Diaspora,” positions (Duke, vol. 1, issue 3, 1993).
• Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts (Durham: Duke University Presss, 1999), ch. 7.

Week 13: Asian American Legal Scholarship

• Robert S. Chang, "Toward an Asian American Legal Scholarship: Critical Race Theory, Post-Structuralism, and Narrative Space", 81 California Law Review 1241, 1265 (1993).
• Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), ch. 2 & 5.

Week 14: Contemporary Politics

• Margaret Chon and Eric Yamamoto, "Resurrecting Korematsu: Post-September 11th National Security Curtailment of Civil Liberties" (2003)
• Julie A. Su, "Making the Invisible Visible: The Garment Industry's Dirty Laundry", 1 Journal of Gender, Race and Justice 405 (1998).

Week 15: Wrap up

• Film: Twilight, Los Angeles (2001)
• Iris Marion Young, “Political Responsibility and Structural Injustice” (Kansas, 2003).

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Copyright 2004
Last updated: March 31, 2004
University of Maryland, College Park