This course offers students an interdisciplinary introduction to issues and methods relevant in the fields of Asian and Asian American Studies. This course uses films focusing on the life of an ordinary family as a starting point for examining lived experiences and social struggles of Asians and Asian Americans since the twentieth century. Also important in our analysis is how concepts such as race, ethnicity, and national identity were articulated in their relations to class and gender as these groups navigated their lives through political, social, and cultural changes and expectations.