Special Topics in Film

What does it mean to leave one’s homeland and create a new home elsewhere? How do immigrant families across generations negotiate the meanings of “home” amid displacement and mobility? This course explores the complex experiences of the Asian diaspora by focusing on the immigrant home as a microcosm of social change: the dreams and longings of the first generation, the in-between and evolving identities of the second, the affective and often physical labor of sustaining new homes in unfamiliar worlds.

Building on scholarship in Asian American studies, inter-Asia studies, and transnational film studies, the course examines narrative films by Asian American directors and filmmakers across Asia that portray diasporic life and identity. Screenings include Didi (Sean Wang, USA, 2024), Minari (Lee Isaac Chung, USA, 2020), The Namesake (Mira Nair, USA, 2006), The Joy Luck Club (Wayne Wang, USA, 1993), Pushing Hands (Ang Lee, USA, 1991), Song of the Exile (Ann Hui, Hong Kong, 1990), and A Time to Live, A Time to Die (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Taiwan, 1985). We will ask how filmmakers visualize the spatial and temporal dimensions of the immigrant home – whether as a lost origin, a site of return, or a resilient space of rebuilding – and how these homes witness generational tension, cultural conflict, and reconciliation.

Students will develop interpretive skills and cinematic vocabulary for analyzing how film form mediates questions of memory, migration, and belonging. Course requirements include eight screening-reading response posts (~250 words each) and two take-home essay-question exams (a midterm and a final, ~1600 words each). Films are in English or subtitled in English; all readings are in English. No prerequisites.