First Year Writing Seminar: Asian/American Labor: Past, Present and Future

Catalog description

This writing seminar will explore the role of labor in the making of Asian America. Much of the course will connect the past to the present, paying close attention to historical analyses and community-engaged research. The readings, discussions, and assignments will provide critical context in our collective understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it has affected Asian/American working people. Many of the readings will examine New York City. Each week, we will study interdisciplinary themes around work as it relates to Asian communities, such as “food and migration,” “race-making in New York’s nail salons,” “care work,” etc. Through close readings and film screenings, we will discuss the ways in which laboring Asian Americans have organized, resisted, created, and mobilized from the bottom-up, challenging their bosses and the state. How have Asian American workers shaped, pushed back against, and transformed New York? How can we understand racial formation and immigration in New York’s labor movements? Through discussions of the readings and films, we will reflect questions that unpack “work” and “labor.” Students will write reflective and analytical papers, making arguments with evidence to comment about the past, present, and future of Asian/American labor. Texts by scholars of Asian American Studies and labor histories, such as Vivek Bald and Miliann Kang, will guide students and encourage their writing. Film screenings will include From Spikes to Spindles (1976) and Nailed It (2019), which capture the stories of garment and nail salon workers (respectively), to facilitate our discussions about Asian/American labor studies.