Afro-Asian Encounters: Reading Comparative American Racial Experiences

Afro-Asian Encounters: Reading Comparative American Racial Experiences

Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine
Africana Studies/Asian Studies
Spring 2013

Wendy Thompson Taiwo, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Africana Studies

Surveys a breadth of historical and contemporary encounters between African Americans and Asian Americans in the United States. Begins with the earliest waves of Asian immigration in the mid-nineteenth century and ends with contemporary critiques of Blackness and Asianness in what some call a post-racial era. Students learn how various political, economic, and social shifts have contributed to the racial positioning of Black and Asian peoples in relation to dominant white American culture and to each other and what this means in relation to the stratification of racial identities in America. Readings center on themes of shared experiences with and conflict over labor, community-building, interracial relationships, foodways, popular representations, and public perception.

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