History 792P - S-USculture&Conflicts/AsianPac

In this graduate seminar students will examine the relationship between the United States and their Asian Pacific neighbors since 1800. The course will introduce students to key themes, theoretical frameworks, and chronologies relevant to the United States' diplomatic relations with Japan, China, Korea, Hawaii, the Philippines, and Vietnam. We will then explore the transnational cultural histories of the US with each of these countries. Through the lenses of gender, race, religion, and education students will explore the important role that individual actors, organizations, and ideas have played in connecting the US and the Asia Pacific. This approach aims to complicate students' understanding of what constitutes transnational history and familiarize them with less traditional categories of historical analysis. Students taking this course at the 700-level will need to write an original research paper using primary source documents.