AMST 338 - Debt and Indebtedness in Asian America

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

(Same as ASIA 338) The critical question of what is owed in return for the life you are given strikes at the heart of Asian American subjectivity. What sorts of debts are accrued in exchange for “a better life”? What type of contract is constructed to mediate this relationship? Debt has served as a point of legal, political, and economic departure for Asian migration to the US since the mid-19th century. From indentured “coolie” labor to paper sons to refugee sponsorships to transnational adoption—different types of economic, political, social, and moral debts have helped shaped Asians’ conditional belonging in America. Yet what happens when material conditions of debt turn into psychic relations of indebtedness? In this seminar, we explore this question of indebtedness through histories of labor migration from Asia to the Americas, legal cases concerning Asian personhood, transnational workplace ethnographies, literatures of immigrant family conflict, and multidisciplinary theories of debt to interrogate key themes of redemption, guilt, obligation, and responsibility. Amy Chin.

Prerequisite(s): ASIA 102 or ASIA 104.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS