Course Requirements

Seminar Presentation (20%): Each week a student or pair of students will begin class with a brief presentation (no more than 15 minutes) on the week’s reading, highlighting key issues in the texts and raising potential questions and challenges. Presenters will also help lead the subsequent classroom discussion.

Class Participation (20%): Students are expected to come to class having done the assigned readings and prepared to engage in critical discussion. Since your own responses to the readings will be the best engine for discussion, I have set up an online bulletin board. Each week two students will be asked to post brief response papers (no more than 500 words) to the week’s reading by 5 p.m. the day before class. These response papers should focus on a specific issue or argument within the reading, rather than summarizing the reading as a whole. All seminar members are expected to read these postings before attending class and are strongly encouraged to comment. These postings will also serve as material for classroom discussion.

Final Paper (60% of grade), due December 12: A 12-15 page research paper on a topic of your choosing in Asian North American studies. Possible approaches include a comparative study of several theorists, placing a theoretical work in historical and political context, or demonstrating the application of a theorist or group of theorists to a literary or historical case study.

Course Policies

Late assignments may be penalized up to 5% per day late. No extensions will be granted.

Academic integrity is expected from all students. All students should familiarize themselves with the University Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters, which defines plagiarism as a student’s knowing representation as “one’s own any idea or expression of an idea or work of another in any academic examination or term test or in connection with any other form of academic work.” The site “Writing at the University of Toronto” has useful tips for writing and proper citation, including “How Not to Plagiarize”.

When citing sources in your papers, please use the MLA style of documentation. For full details, consult Joseph Gibaldi, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th edition, or Joseph Gibaldi, MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing, 2nd edition.

Cell phones and pagers should be set to silent mode and should not be used during class.