Course Description

Modern people are global people – we are people on the move. About 1 out of 5 us who live in Hong Kong came from somewhere else, and many more of us have family who did. Yet these days global people are also falling under suspicion as refugees, immigrants, and dual citizens are targeted as alien, disloyal, and even dangerous. In this course, we ask what it means to have a global identity: to be a migrant, a cosmopolitan, a border-crosser.

We start by thinking about “home”: what makes us think we belong somewhere, and what makes us feel like outsiders? We then look at the ties that bind us beyond borders: What allows us to think of ourselves as part of a diaspora? How do we find love and create families, even when our loved ones are very far away?

We also investigate migration using gender, race, and class. We look at Hong Kong’s domestic workers/“helpers” to think about the intimate spaces inside homes. And we ask how migration helps to define race through law, science, and everyday interactions.

Throughout the course, we will use fun and interesting examples from movies, fiction, photos, and oral histories to understand our global identities, all with the goal of asking: how do we understand the world differently when we “see” as global people? And how does this help us become engaged citizens of the “world city” where we live?

Course Learning Outcomes

On completing the course, students will be able to:

1. Reflect on and articulate a critical understanding of global identities by examining issues such as identity, love, safety, hierarchy, and war.
2. Analyze the connections and comparisons between our daily experiences and the experiences and concerns of global people through the lenses of class, gender, regional, and colonialism.
3. Analyze how refugees, migrants, cosmopolitans, and other globetrotters are embedded in networks; and see how our identities connect with these networks. Gain expertise on how people move around the world, and how our exercises of power affect their movement.
4. Demonstrate critical creative thinking and collaboration.

Offer Semester and Day of Teaching

Second semester (Wed)