Six courses (24 credit hours) are required for the completion of the Asian American Studies minor. Two courses (8 credit hours) are from the core courses and four courses (16 credit hours) are from electives.

Core Courses: Required

AAS 100: Introduction of Asian American Studies
This survey course introduces students to Asian American Studies— a distinct, interdisciplinary field which integrates Asian American perspectives into a range of disciplines. In highlighting the history of the thirty-five year old field, the course examines past and contemporary experiences of increasingly diverse Asian American groups including: Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Indians, Koreans, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Southeast Asians. Investigating the roots of Asian American Studies, the course will explore questions including: “What is the study of Asian Americans?” “What is the Asian American Movement?” “What is the relationship between the social movement and development of the field?” “What have been the major theoretical debates in the field?” The course will explore contemporary problems and issues affecting Asian Americans, and critically examine multidisciplinary approaches to addressing those issues.

AAS 200: History of Asian Americans
This course introduces the pre-1965 comparative histories of people of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Filipino, and Southeast Asian ancestry from their arrival in significant numbers in the United States beginning in the 19th century. Topics include migration and diaspora, labor and political economy, domestic politics and international relations, ideologies and socio-legal structures, gender and sexuality, family and community formation, and anti-Asian movements and pan-ethnic identity formation. Two questions orient this course: 1) whether there is an historical validity to the category of Asian American, and if so, the extent to which the category is relevant today in light of differences across gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, and religion, among others; and 2) how the Asian Pacific American experience challenges and redefines American race relations to provide a more complex understanding of existing structures of power.

Electives: Four courses at the 200 or 300 level from the following