Asian Identities

School of Cultures, Languages, & Linguistics: Asian Studies

 

City Campus, Semester 1, 2019

COURSE DESCRIPTION

 

Who am I?  Who are we?  Who are they?  Questions of identity drive the relationships between individuals, societies and nations.  This course will examine a range of theorisations of identity and explore how these can be applied in modern Asia.  Our exploration will embrace two themes: nationalism and gender and then continue to examine the way identity can be multiple, hybrid, fractured or contested, with particular reference to minorities and diaspora.

National identity in the region is a striking issue.  Where does China begin and end?  Can Indonesia be considered a single nation?  What does the division of the peninsula mean for Korean nationalism?  How is Japanese nationalism expressed?

Gender identity raises issues of the traditional or expected role of men and women in societies undergoing rapid change.  How are customary notions of male and female roles being challenged or undermined?

Our approach to these issues combines two pathways.  The first is the reading and discussion of key theoretical works on the main themes.  The second is the examination of these themes in works of popular culture from the societies and nations involved. 

 

Short Loan texts       

*Colin Mackerras, ed., Ethnicity in Asia. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.  

*David Birch, Tony Schirato and Sanjay Srivastava. Asia: Cultural Politics in the Global Age, New York: Palgrave, 2001.

Supplementary recommended reading

Erich Kolig et al. Ed. Identity in Crossroad Civilisations: Ethnicity, nationalism and Globalism in Asia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009. 

 

Lectures:         two hours per week (Nearly all the lectures are recorded to be streamed via Canvas) 

Tutorials:        Asian 200 12:00-13:00 in 421W-501 (Architecture) beginning week 2

                      Asian 303 11:00-12:00 in 421W-501 (Architecture) beginning week 2

 

Coordinator:  Dr Lawrence Marceau    email: l.marceau@auckland.ac.nz 

   Office Hours: Tuesdays from 2:00-4:00pm and by appointment (please email) in 207-431.

Tutor:            Dr Ian Fookes                email: ifoo001@aucklanduni.ac.nz

   Office Hours: Mondays from 11:00 to 12:00, in 207-313C.

 NOTE on equity and impairment issues

 

Students are urged to discuss privately any impairment-related requirements face-to-face and/or in written form with the course convenor/lecturer and/or tutor.

Concurrent teaching statement

This course is taught concurrently as Asian 200 and Asian 303, and lectures are common to both courses. However, please be aware that the course requirements, assessment tasks, and expectations for achievement are different. Please be sure to complete the assessment requirements at the appropriate level outlined below.

 Learning outcomes Asian 200

• building on Asian 100, you will develop further your knowledge of events, developments and trends in East and Southeast Asia focussing on the post-World War II era;
• you will explore and use theoretical ways of examining identity as applied to the main themes;
• you will gain familiarity with analysing visual, historical and contemporary  texts as representations of issues of identity;
• you will gain practice in expressing your new knowledge in reports and essays formatted in standard scholarly ways.

Learning outcomes Asian 303

• building on Asian 100 and other study for the major, you will develop further your knowledge of events, developments and trends in East and Southeast Asia focussing on the post-World War II era;
• master academic theories and scholarship on issues of identity to analyse topics of your interest and to advance your own arguments;

 

Your responsibilities

• Lectures viewed before your tutorial meets;
• Completion of the weekly readings specified in the schedule in preparation for lectures and other assignments relating to the discussion class as directed by the course organiser;
• Optional, but recommended: Canvas provides a function for group discussion. If you take advantage of this, it will help you prepare for tutorial, and help answer any questions you may have related to the readings and discussion topics. Also, especially since we are not meeting regularly in lecture, the online group discussions can help provide you with a sense of community.
• Completion of coursework as follows:

Asian 200

• One assignment of 1,500 words                    25%
• One mid-semester class test                          25%
• One essay of 2,500 words                             50%

 

Asian 303

• One assignment of 2000 words                     25%
• One mid-semester class test                          25%  
• One essay of 3,000 words                             50%

 

Course Prerequisites

ASIAN 200

ASIAN 100 or 30 points in Gender Studies or 45 points in BGlobalSt courses

ASIAN 303

Prerequisite: ASIAN 100 and 30 points at Stage II in BA, or GENDER 100 and 30 points at Stage II in BA courses, or 30 points at Stage II in BGlobalSt courses 

This course is available to the following majors in the BA:

Asian Studies, Chinese, Gender Studies, Korean

and to students in Asia-related Area Studies in the Bachelor of Global Studies.

If you are majoring in another subject and you wish to include this course you should speak to the relevant undergraduate adviser.

 Tips for doing well in this course:

1. Attendance: If you are ill or must leave the area in an emergency, email and leave a message beforehand
2. Critical and thoughtful reading of written materials and viewing of lectures, films, etc. We suggest that you take notes as you view the lectures/films, as well as when you are reading.
3. Creativity and initiative in classroom discussions (don't let others do all the talking!)
4. Essays submitted on time (We downgrade late submissions five per cent a day, excluding weekends; after a week we do not accept them)

 

Academic Integrity

Libraries & Learning Services (LLS, Te Tumu Herenga) Websites for Referencing Information and Training

https://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/study-skills/referencing

(I have attached the passages below from the Libraries & Learning Services website http://www.cite.auckland.ac.nz/7.html)

Plagiarism

Plagiarism involves taking another person's ideas, words or inventions and presenting them as your own. Paraphrasing or rewording another person's work, without acknowledging its source, is also plagiarism.
In Western academic culture this is a totally unacceptable practice and considered a serious academic offence. There are heavy penalties, such as failing a course or even worse — being thrown out of university. See The University of Auckland's guidelines on academic integrity.

To avoid plagiarism

All material, whether directly quoted, summarised or paraphrased, MUST be acknowledged correctly.
To achieve this:

• Always clearly indicate the quoted material with quotation marks or indentation of the text as appropriate.
• Keep an accurate record of your sources of information while reading, surfing the net, and note-taking. Make a habit of recording the 'vital statistics' of all your reading. This means the author, date of publication, title, publisher, page numbers, URL, etc. Here's a pocket guide (link to PDF) on the information to record for different sources.
• Learn the appropriate referencing style of your department.
• Be totally consistent in all your references, as well as in your bibliography.
• Keep your readers in mind - research material you've used must be easily traced back to the original source.
• Also see the page outlining when you need to reference.

Three ways of incorporating other's work into your writing

1. A quotation is the words of another writer reproduced exactly in terms of wording, spelling, punctuation, capitalisation and paragraphing. More on quoting ...
2. A paraphrase is your version of essential ideas and information expressed by someone else. More on paraphrasing ...
3. A summary is less detailed than a paraphrase, and significantly shorter than the original, rephrasing just the main points.

All require a reference

The benefits of drawing on other people’s ideas
Quoting, summarising and paraphrasing are used to:

• Provide support for claims or add credibility to your writing.
• Cite different points of view.
• Integrate information by assessing, comparing, contrasting or evaluating it, to show understanding.
• Emphasise a position that you agree or disagree with.
• Refer to other research that leads up to your study.
• Highlight a pertinent point by quoting the original.

When to quote

• When the wording of the original is memorable or vivid and you can't re-write it to sound any better.
• When the exact words of an authority would lend support to your own ideas.
• When you want to draw attention to the author's opinion, especially if that opinion differs greatly from other experts' opinions.

When to paraphrase or summarise

• When the ideas are more important than the author's authority or style.
• When the original language isn't particularly memorable, but the ideas are.
• When the original language is too difficult to understand (for instance, when the particular jargon or complexity of the original work is so difficult to understand that you need to paraphrase it so that the meaning is immediately clear).

(End of quote from the LLS – Te Tumu Herenga website)

Also, I strongly encourage you to familiarise yourselves with the online resources available through the UoA LLS system—and explore! For research, the online databases of full-text articles from Asian Studies and other journals (JSTOR) are also available from the LLS website:  https://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/databases/record/?recid=233&record=jstor

Other helpful online databases for researching material for this course include Project Muse (recent books and articles, including those currently published: https://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/databases/record/?recid=409&record=projmuse)

and ProQuest (Master’s, PhD, and other scholarship: https://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/databases/record/?recid=406&record=pqd).

 

Well-being always comes first We all go through tough times during the semester, or see our friends struggling. There is lots of help out there - for more information, look at this Canvas page, which has links to various support services in the University and the wider community.

 

Finally

We are motivated to provide as high quality a learning experience for you as we can. There are few courses like this on the curricula of any tertiary institutions, so this is a valuable opportunity for us to explore issues of identity from multiple perspectives. Please let us know how we can work together to enhance this experience for you, as well as for future students enrolling in this course.

(Paraphrasing PM Jacinda Ardern when she ran for election) Let’s do this!     ^ ^