ANTH 103: An Introduction to Hmong/American Studies (XS) (ES)

Course Description

There are 299,000 Hmong living in the United States, with most living in California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The Hmong are from Laos, a previously colonized country of the French. During the Vietnam War, the United States engaged in a covert operation in Laos called the Secret War, where U.S. CIA operatives recruited Hmong and other ethnic Lao minorities to fight as proxy soldiers for the U.S. against Communist regimes in Southeast Asia. However, the U.S.’s failed military intervention and withdrawal from SE Asia left many Hmong who allied with the U.S. to face reprisal from the new Pathet Lao Communist party that came into power. It is estimated that 150,000 Hmong left Laos. This course is a brief, interdisciplinary, and expansive survey of Hmong Studies from Hmong migration out of China, migration to Southeast Asia, French colonialism of Indochina, American intervention in Laos during the Vietnam War, exodus from Laos and refugee resettlement, and life in the U.S. This course examines the humanistic questions of displacement, trauma, economic inequality, gender and sexuality, race and racialization, as well as diasporic and imagined communities beyond nation-state borders.