Course I am offering in the 2024-25 Academic Year
Exile, Migration, Diaspora
Increasingly people are on the move, but not on equal terms. In this class, we will study contemporary regimes of movement, explore the diasporic experiences of navigating and resisting these regimes, and reflect upon the broader environment these regimes are embedded in. In that process, we will learn to uncover our biases, expand our horizons with perspectives from different positionalities, and incorporate texts of different disciplines, times, and places into our research.
We will begin by interpreting the narratives of exile across space and time, engaging with exiles ranging from those in ancient Greece to those from contemporary Tibet. Through these narratives, we will discuss the implications of statelessness, rethink themes of political membership and belonging, and reflect upon the roles of exiles in transforming democratic and anti-colonial politics. In the second part of the course, we will zoom out from individual exiles and examine migration trends and policies. Drawing on migration studies and political theory, we will attend to histories of migrant categorization, emerging practices of bordering, and the politics of immigrant resistance. Thus grounded, we will scrutinize the normative grounds for the state to control its territorial and membership boundaries. In the final part of the course, we will turn to the theme of diaspora. In dialogue with scholars of sociology and international relations, we will interrogate competing conceptions of diaspora, parse the triangular relations between a diaspora, its “home state”, and its “host state”, and evaluate the promises and challenges of transnationalism as disclosed by diasporic politics.
Past Courses
Theories of Justice, UC Berkeley, Fall 2021.
Modern Political Thought, UC Berkeley, Spring 2021.
Special Topics in Political Theory: Sovereignty, UC Berkeley, Fall 2020.
Introduction to Political Theory: What is Political Freedom? UC Berkeley, Spring 2020.
Introduction to American Politics and Government, UC Berkeley, Fall 2019.
Fundamentals of Public Administration, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Spring 2018.
Issues of Political Philosophy, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Spring 2018.
Idea of Freedom, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Fall 2017.
Public Human Resource Management, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Fall 2017.