Lehrende/r: Ashley Rae McNeil
Veranstaltungsart: Übung
Anzeige im Stundenplan: CS III - American
Semesterwochenstunden: 2
Unterrichtssprache: Englisch
Min. | Max. Teilnehmerzahl: - | 45
Anmeldegruppe: CS III AS
Prioritätsschema: Senatsrichtlinie Zulassung gemäß Richtlinie über den Zugang zu teilnahmebeschränkten Lehrveranstaltungen vom 07. März 2007. Nähere Informationen hierzu entnehmen Sie bitte www.info.jogustine.uni-mainz.de/senatsrichtlinie
Inhalt: While the African slave trade is the predominant focus of the discourse of the United States’ transatlantic ties and labor industry in the 19th Century, it is crucial to recognize that other racial minority groups were equally essential to the U.S.’s early processes of globalization and its concurrent building of nationhood. Although largely ignored as a blind spot in history, Asian laborers had a paramount role in plantation production in the U.S. south and the transcontinental railroad race of Westward Expansion during the era of post-Civil War Reconstruction. This class will introduce students to the underrepresented systems of labor—both indentured and forced—of Asian migrants to the United States from the mid-19th century (post-Civil War) through the mid-20th Century (post-WWII) and consider how this minority group was used to (literally) build the national identity of American Exceptionalism. As such, we will go beyond the study of Asian presence in and contributions to the laboring systems of the U.S., and ask instead how Asians complicate the historical binary of black and white race relations in the aftermath of Emancipation. Further, we will consider how a distinctly Asian American hybrid identity was formed during this period of extreme national and social upheaval: when we think about the grand narratives of race relations, identity formation, nation-building, independence, and belonging, how did early Asian immigrants figure their subject positions? We will focus our investigation of these queries through historical primary sources such as propaganda posters, pamphlets, census and congressional records, letters, and newspaper articles. We will also look at narratives of Asian immigrants and Asian Americans, from Sui Sin Far to Seiichi Higashide. This class is taught in tandem with a second Culture Studies III class that concentrates on the historical experience of African American slavery and abolition in the United States in the nineteenth century. This class participates in the global teaching cooperation between Johannes Gutenberg-Universität (Mainz) and Georgia State University (Atlanta). Student groups will collaborate online with American students from GSU Atlanta. This course will also feature a series of live transnational lectures and online video conferences between Mainz and Atlanta.
