Sightseeing in Old San Juan on a recent trip to Puerto Rico.
Asian
American Studies is important because you have to understand where
you come from and how you got here in order to have any control
over your future. Because our history is so distorted or non-existant
in the mainstream, AAS is the only place where you are going
to learn your true history.
- Assistant Profesor
- Office: 340G Jerome Richfield
- Office Hours: Tuesdays, 2-4pm (Online Chat: Login as guest, chose Office Hours)
- Phone: 818-677-6098
- Fax: 818-677-7094
- Email:
- Campus Mailcode: 8251
- Curriculum Vitae [pdf download]
Education
- Ph.D. Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles (2003)
- M.A. Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles (1996)
- A.B. Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley (1993)
Spring 2008
AAS 201 OL Race, Racism and Critical Thinking - (M 4:20-6:50, #17270) Course Blog
AAS 201 OL Race, Racism and Critical Thinking - (MW 2:00-3:15, #17271) Course Blog
AAS 345 OL Contemporary Asian American Issues (W 4:20-6:50, #17696) Course Website
AAS 360 Asian American Immigration (T 7:00-9:50, #14309) Special Online Session 4/29/08
Scholarship Highlights
- “Globalización y familia transnacional Nikkei,” Convenio Fundación San Marcos para el Desarrollo de la Ciencia y la Cultura de la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos – Japanese American National Museum, Proyecto Discover Nikkei.
- “Globalization & Transnationalism Role-Playing Activity: Korean Immigrants and the Garment Industry,” in Teaching about Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders: Effective Activities, Assignments, and Strategies for Classrooms and Workshops, Edith Chen and Glenn Omatsu (ed.). San Francisco: Altamira Press. (2006).
- Polished Apple Award, CSUN University Ambassadors, May 4th, 2005
- “The “Nikkei” Negotiation of Minority/Majority Dynamics in Peru and the United States,” in New World/New Lives: People of Japanese Descent in the Americas. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2002: 279-295.
Students from AAS 345 performing a skit at the annual API Heritage fair (Photo: Ryan Purugganan
Professor Ropp joined the department in 2001 as a specialist in Globalization and Diaspora.
His research deals with race and nationalism and how ethnic and racial groups come to control, belong to or to be excluded from what we think of as the "mainstream," or the dominant culture of a nation.
In pursuit of such questions, he has conducted research in California, Belize, and Peru, focusing for the most part on people of Asian descent in Latin America and how their experience is different from that of Asians in the United States and what the history of Asian people in the Americas can tell us about the intersections of race, ethnicity and nationalism.
Here at CSUN, Professor Ropp can usually be found teaching his favorite course, AAS 360: Asian American Immigration, and online versions of AAS 345: Asian American Contemporary Issues. This year, he is taking on a new challenge, developing and teaching an online version of AAS 201.
My first experience with AAS was at a junior college in Oakland, California. I took an Asian American History to learn more about why my grandparents were interned during WWII.
In between teaching and serving as the department webmaster, Prof. Ropp is working on various articles and a manuscript based on his dissertation research on the Japanese in Peru and he is currently working on a new research project on indigenous political mobilizing in the Central Andes of Peru.