Course Description

[Classroom sessions and tutorials of this course will be delivered online.]

[This is a certified Communication-intensive (Ci) Course which meets all of the requirements endorsed by HKU’s Senate, including i) the teaching and assessment of written and visual ‘literacies’; and ii) at least 40% of the course grade assigned to communication-rich assessment tasks.]

Today, we are told that ‘family values’ are seriously under threat. There are fewer marriages, easier divorces and more children born to single parents. Wars give rise to displaced families, whose households are constantly on the move. We are told that the nuclear family ideal has become out of date. Multigenerational families, single parent families, queer families and childless families have become increasingly popular globally. We are Family explores the possibility that the more diverse the families we live with, the more obsessed we are with the myths of family, the stories that are so regularly depicted across our media. Rather than a static institution, the family must be understood as an imagined construction with a long history and politics.

This course, which moves across multiple disciplines, considers a series of intriguing questions such as: What makes an ideal family? Should a single-person household be considered a family? How do queer families work? And how do technologies of reproduction impact the idea of family? 

Each interactive class session revolves around such philosophical questions and engages with historical and contemporary case studies of family across global settings. Methodologically, the course adopts an intersectional approach by exploring how categories of gender, race, class, disability and sexuality simultaneously empower and oppress individuals in the realm of family. 

What is your concept of family? What social forces helped shaped that idea? How might you shape your own future toward your most desired version of family? Let’s explore with each other the history, meaning and future of the family!

Course Learning Outcomes

On completing the course, students will be able to:

1. Analyse the historical role of various stakeholders in shaping family dynamics.
2. Examine the family as a historical concept and how it serves political, social and cultural roles in a global setting.
3. Explore how individuals formed families of their choice by conforming and resisting to the state’s intervention at different historical points.
4. Apply an intersectional approach to examine the political, social and cultural issues that underlie current family debates and present them in written and digital formats.

Offer Semester and Day of Teaching

Second semester (Wed)