Made in the USA: Knowledge Construction and Social Action in the Philippines

This program will examine the United States’ occupation of the Philippines and its implications for how Filipino identities are negotiated, and ask what it means to live in the islands. The work of Filipino American scholars and community members has posited that the colonial mentality created by the effects of American educational policy in the Philippines from 1898 to 1945 has impacted Filipinos as they learned to behave like Americans, speak Americanized English, emulate American culture, and absorbed American democratic procedures. Students will have an opportunity to examine how indigenous and non-indigenous Filipinos respond to the legacy of American colonization through explorations of community organizing projects, conversations with artists and NGOs, engagement with Hip Hop culture on the Islands, and learning about contemporary education policy in partnership with the University of the Philippines.

The program will be based in Manila, with extended  field trips to some of the most beautiful locations in the country, including the Visayan Islands and Banaue's two-thousand-year-old rice terraces. Program activities and field trips are tied to the broad themes and questions of the course: students will have the opportunity to learn about how people in various regions of the Philippines negotiate the continuous pursuit of reconstructing their identity.