1. Introduction to Asian American Studies
ETHN 14:
Introduction to Asian American Studies
Department of Ethnic Studies & Asian American Studies Program
California State University, Sacramento
Welcome
Introductions: Rikka (Leadership Organization Advisor, Program coordinator); Danny (Ed.D. student and scholarship coordinator); Paolo Soriano (EOP counselor, program coordinator)
Week 3 Session 2
Phenomenology and Experience

2. Last Time Described the emergence of the term “Asian American”
Question and Answer with Dr. Greg Mark
Omi and Winant’s notion of racialization

3. Today Describe experience from a phenomenological perspective.
Introduce an interdisciplinary framework that we will use to explore racialized experiences in the United States, with special focus on the Asian and Pacific Islander American experience.

4. Service to vulnerable populations
Historical Events and Social Movements
Asian American Experience
Emergence of Ethnic Studies
World War II
Civil Rights Movement
War in Southeast Asia
Free Speech Movement
Change Curriculum
Diversify faculty
Service to vulnerable populations
Theory, research, and practice/service centered on the “experience” of marginalized peoples

5. Phenomenology
Phenomenology studies structures of conscious experience from the first-person point of view.
Scholars who work from a phenomenological orientation are concerned with the relevant conditions of “experience,” or what shapes experiences.

6. Experience and Ethnic Studies
In ethnic studies and related fields, the notion of experience is often central to how researchers analyze complex social dynamics.
African American Experience
Chicana/o Experience in Post-World War II United States
Deaf Experience
How the industrial revolution altered the working class American Experience
The experience of Asian American gay men
The experience of high school drop-outs

7. What are my own understandings about another’s experience?
Major Stance in Ethnic Studies and Asian American Studies: Examine your own experience first.
What are my own understandings about another’s experience?
What assumptions are embedded in these understandings?
Where do these understandings and assumptions come from?

8. What are my own understandings about another’s experience?
Major Stance in Ethnic Studies and Asian American Studies: Examine your own experience first.
What are my own understandings about another’s experience?
What assumptions are embedded in these understandings?
Where do these understandings and assumptions come from?

9. Interdisciplinary Framework for Exploring and Analyzing “Experience”
Power/Resistance
Overt and Covert control
Identity
How groups and individuals see themselves and are seen by “others”
Culture
Bounded system of values and traditions shared by a group
Structure
Institutions and patterns of social interaction

10. “Experience” in Country of the Blind
Select a key moment in the story and discuss how it relates to one or more of the key ideas: power, social structure, culture, and identity.

11. Interdisciplinary Framework for Exploring and Analyzing “Experience”
Power/Resistance
Overt and Covert control
Identity
How groups and individuals see themselves and are seen by “others”
Culture
Bounded system of values and traditions shared by a group
Structure
Institutions and patterns of social interaction

12. “Experience” in The Spirit Catches You
Analyze a key moment in Fadiman’s text by situating the event on the framework.

13. Power/Resistance
Overt and Covert control
Identity
How groups and individuals see themselves and are seen by “others”
Culture
Bounded system of values and traditions shared by a group
Structure
Institutions and patterns of social interaction 5 2 1 11 7 8 13 10 12 4 6 9 3

14. To Prepare for Next Session
OBD – Fadiman, Ch 11-14
Reading Notes on Zinn’s “The Politics of History”