Immigrant America In this course we will trace American immigration history from the late 19th to the turn of the 21st century, and examine the essential place immigration has occupied in the making of modern America and American culture. The central themes of this course will be industrialization and labor migrations, aftermaths of wars and refugees, constructions of racial categories and ethnic community identities, legal defining of "aliens" and citizenship, and diversity in immigrant experiences. To explore these themes, we will engage a range of sources including memoirs, novels, oral histories, and films.

Asian Americas In this course we will investigate cultural transformations, cultural politics, and the cultural productions of and about Asian Americans. The themes of immigration, nation, and citizenship are central to the construction of the U.S. racial category of Asian. Those addressed within the category are highly diverse and differentiated along class, gender, and generational lines, yet the racial category structures particular kinds of experiences and possibilities for subjects.  Historical transformations and contemporary issues in a variety of Asian American contexts will be investigated through a variety of texts including historical accounts, cultural studies, anthropological studies, autobiography, and fiction.

Devouring Difference: Race and Food In this course, we will discuss how the connections between food and race are articulated at different moments in United States history. We begin with an exploration of the relationship between slavery, capitalism, and food. We then discuss how foods like bananas and spam have functioned as objects that forge colonial, imperial, and military relationships between the United States and various sites around the world. The course ends with a discussion of contemporary politics around food by centering racialized subjects situated within both national and global markets of food production, marketing, and consumption. Informed by queer theory, this course foregrounds the centrality of embodiment and desire when interpreting the connections between food and race.

The Immigrant Memoir In this seminar, we will explore memoirs focused on the writing of memories about immigrant experiences in the United States. The memoirs we cover will detail subjective understandings of immigration revealing how immigrants navigate cultural, social, economic, and political challenges. The course will be an advanced seminar in immigrant history and experience in the United States as we investigate the contexts of migration of each story. We will discuss the power and the pitfalls interpreting memoir writing as social critique. The course will cover a variety of conventions within the genre of immigrant memoirs. In addition to studying book-length memoirs, we will approach how authors use poetry, short story, film, and graphic novels to tell personal stories.  Students will also write memoirs in a variety of styles. This course is part of the Public Humanities Labs Initiative administered by the Axinn Center for the Humanities./

Critical Studies of Sport Sports offer important contexts for the study of social relations, inequalities, and differences in North America. Sports exist as an important arena where ideas around class, gender, sexuality, race, ability, and status are embodied and performed. In this course we will discuss the significance of sports to ideas of the self as well as in broader cultural, social, economic, and political realms. We will analyze a variety of issues including the relationship of sports to media, celebrity, money, religion, and education. We will also investigate the significance of sports and athletes to contemporary processes of globalization. (Not open to students who have taken AMST 1003).

Asian American Food Studies In this course we will discuss how food shapes a sense of belonging and identity in Asian America. Going beyond how Asian American cultures are consumed through food items and restaurants, we will focus on how Asian Americans have defined themselves through food. Required readings will engage questions about the production, circulation, and consumption of food. We will critically engage the genres of memoir, recipe books, fiction, historical accounts, cultural criticism, and food criticism as we write pieces in each of these styles. There will also be a limited amount of cooking involved in the course.

Cultural Formations of the 1980s In this course we will investigate cultural formations of the United States during the 1980s through a critical examination of fiction, music, television, art, advertising, and film. We will connect texts produced during and about the period with social, political, and economic transformations that began with the so-called “Reagan Revolution.” Social issues concerning race, class, gender, and sexuality will be analyzed through topics including the Culture Wars, globalization and outsourcing, the ascendance of Wall Street, the rise of AIDS, attacks on the welfare state, the emergence of hiphop, and the War on Drugs

Formations of Race and Ethnicity in the U.S. Historical memories, everyday experiences, and possible futures are powerfully shaped by racial and ethnic differences. Categories of race and ethnicity structure social relationships and cultural meanings in the United States and beyond. In this course we will track the theoretical and historical bases of ideas of race and ethnicity in modern America. We will investigate how race and ethnicity intersect at particular historical moments with other forms of difference including gender, sexuality, nation, and class. The course offers an approach informed by critical studies of race including texts in history, political theory, cultural studies, and anthropology.

Theory and Method in American Studies (Junior Year) A reading of influential secondary texts that have defined the field of American Studies during the past fifty years.  Particular attention will be paid to the methodologies adopted by American Studies scholars, and the relevance these approaches have for the writing of senior essays and theses.

Rachael Joo

Reviews and ratings for Rachael Joo at Middlebury College.Rachael Joo teaches Immigrant America, Asian Americas, Devouring Difference:Race&Food and more.  Explore top rated instructors and find the best for you.Is Rachael Joo good ? Find out on MiddCourses.

Took this class as one that would ease my overall workload and it did. The papers were easy but sort of a pain, but considering how little work was needed overall it was worth it. One of the easier classes I've taken here. The prof is a little unorganized at times so you may need to be on top of your schedule in terms of inconsistent due dates for weekly assignments.

The content itself was very interesting, though Professor Joo didn't seem super enthusiastic / passionate in class. There are a lot of readings, but she goes over the content again in class so you can kind of pick and choose which homework you want to do. Interesting a laid back.

The coursework is for sure interesting and relevant although at times It feels like we are beating a dead horse. Joo is a really wonderful and knowledgeable professor and person,  however, I find her lectures boring and uninteresting. As long as you put in just enough effort, you're golden. 