Course Description
This seminar asks students to adopt a sociological understanding of Asian Americans by exploring the “edge cases” of this vast population. Students will engage with academic works to inform and fuel reflection and dialogue about the experiences of Asian undocumented immigrants, adoptees, refugees, and more. We will build on this academic understanding through our engagement with various media and guest speakers to contextualize these experiences. We will not only learn who they are, but where they are situated in the social fabric of the U.S. Assignments will include a series of small research-oriented projects.
This course will require students to simultaneously focus on both individual biographies and macro processes. Students will be prompted to connect the lived experiences of their friends, family, and peers with a body of works that tell the multi-faceted story of the Asian American community. By the end of the quarter, students will be able to situate the unique nature of Asian American experiences at the margins within broader social processes, complicating their understandings of race and immigration.
Meet the Instructor: Esther Cho
“Growing up as a child of Korean immigrants in Los Angeles, I witnessed the beauty and the pain of what it means to be an immigrant in the United States. Motivated to further examine the inequalities within our vast and vibrant community, I completed my PhD in Sociology at UC Berkeley, where my research explored the ways in which the lived experiences of undocumented Asian and Latinx young adults are racialized in the United States. My work has been published in various outlets including the Asian American Law Journal and Social Forces. Currently I am the Research Programs Director in Undergraduate Research at Stanford University.”
