Courses & Students

Inequality is a persistent yet complex structural issue in modern societies. As a critical theory, intersectionality explains how inequality is informed by the interaction of multiple identities, including gender, class, race, sexuality, and nationality. By drawing on intersectionality theory, this course examines patterns, implications, and solutions for social inequality in the Asian context. What is intersectionality? How is intersectionality enacted in the way we interact with others in various social and professional settings? What does intersectionality imply in making a fair, sustainable society? By answering these questions, students will develop writing a critique of inequality and identity in their everyday lives.

The term, Diaspora, originally referred to the forced dispersal of Jews from Israel, and connoted loss of homeland. Now, it is applied to people who have moved away from homeland and live elsewhere. Studies have shown that such movements have displaced people and led to a loss of identity for them. By engaging with issues of diasporic movements, the students will learn to view global identities in insightful ways and be enabled to empathetically evaluate identity formations. Using the framework of hybridity, the course explores diasporic displacement from an interdisciplinary perspective to understand complex meanings of home, belonging and identity.

Our identities and socio-cultural relations are shaped through real and imagined interactions with animals. We regard animals as pets, pests, predators, sources of food, clothing, labour and entertainment; sometimes embodied and sentient like us, but less worthy of ethical consideration. Increasingly, our perspectives are shaped by media images of animals, animality and human-animal relationships. Are “human” and “animal” fixed categories? How are they defined? What are the implications of maintaining or unsettling their boundaries? How does popular media represent these ideas and influence public opinion? We will critically engage with these questions by drawing on scholarship from different disciplines

Since the 20th century we have witnessed the increased intimacy between science and violence. Eugenics and nuclear warfare, for example, demonstrate the violence of rationalized progress when in the service of war. The increasing threat of rationalized violence today undermines sustainable development by hindering practices necessary for human vitality. In this course, students examine cultural expressions of modern warfare, critically reflecting on what they suggest about the relationship between science, technology and war. Students are thereby encouraged to reflect on the circumstances of armed violence and the need to prevent it.