The research paper will consist of a 7 to 8 page paper, incorporating outside research, on one specific aspect of Asian American popular culture that we have not studied in class. The topic can be from any time period in US history and from any specific Asian American group, but it must be relevant to Asian Americans — so no doing a paper on the meanings of The Dark Knight or something.

The final draft of the paper will incorporate a minimum of 6 outside sources, with at least half of those being scholarly, academic sources. “Non-scholarly” sources might include newspaper or magazine background on your case study, texts produced by the members of this cultural group themselves (their personal web pages, ’zines, communications, or the actual “text” or object you are studying).

Scholarly articles might be giving background on the cultural group or making arguments about how this trend in popular culture functions. They might also be more general articles about an aspect of culture that you are “translating” to the situation of the Asian American group. (For example, taking an article that documents higher levels of hostility on online message boards in general and then “translating” that in an analysis of Asian American online gaming culture.)

Since this paper is so short, it is best to focus the topic down to a single “case study” — a snapshot of a particular group at a particular time. Not all Asian Americans watch television in the same way and with the same intentions, for example, and the experience of watching television has changed over the past 60 years or so as “television” itself has changed. This is especially important to think about in relation to subcultures, who constantly change in cycles of resistance and recuperation — at any particular moment in history, a subculture may be subverting the dominant culture, being absorbed into it, resisting it, or simply dying out.

In this essay, you will be presenting research on a particular facet of Asian American popular culture and explaining what is important or interesting about it. Use any of the theoretical concepts we have touched on in class as a way of showing how this phenomenon functions and why it is significant. Be sure to focus the essay as an argument. There are many aspects of Asian American popular culture we have barely touched on that would make an interesting research project — sports? music? food? other popular community festivals and events?