HIST 379 - War and Adoption

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

(Same as AMST 379 and ASIA 379) This intensive seeks to explore the links between war and adoption in Asia and the US. The consequences of US wars in Asia and the Pacific have been multifaceted and reverberating for adoptees through the formation of new families, institutions, and subjectivities-topics of which we are just beginning to study and theorize. Yet adoptees are more than their conditions of adoption. Through this intensive, we analyze the historical and legal origins of transnational adoption, the relationships between veteran fathers and first mothers, state, religious and civic institutions that facilitated adoptions, as well as the individual lives of adoptees. In particular, we aim to highlight the diversity of adoptee narratives through historical monographs, memoirs, films, photography, graphic novels, comics, oral histories, and performances. It will take a multidisciplinary historical approach to understanding the militarized aspects of adoption in the US by honing in on the interstitial figures that emerge out of war: the orphan, waifs and mascots, the adoptee, American GI fathers, social workers, Asian first/birthmothers. Robert Brigham

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: INT