Singapore (June and July)

SOC393Y0: Selected Topics in Sociological Science Research

This course examines Chinese communities around the world from two vantage points that illuminate each other: Singapore, where the program is hosted, and Canada, home of the University of Toronto. Singapore is a multicultural, Chinese-majority city-state in the heart of Southeast Asia. Its Chinese population is a majority at home and a minority in the region, its government has long defined the nation as multiracial rather than Chinese, and it sits between a rising China and competing great powers. Canada is a multicultural settler society with a large Chinese-origin population, shaped by histories of exclusion, official multiculturalism, and successive waves of migration from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China. Placing a Chinese-majority and a Chinese-minority multicultural state side by side enables students to triangulate what is particular to each setting, what recurs across them, and what each makes visible about the other. From this base, students will extend their view to Southeast Asia, Africa, the Pacific, Europe, and beyond, and to how Chinese communities relate to China and to one another.

Topics include the demography, culture, and family life of Chinese society in China; minority and Indigenous identities across China and Taiwan; Chinese immigrants in Canada and Southeast Asia; race and multiculturalism; Hong Kong as a distinct colonial product; China's rise and global presence; digital and AI-mediated performances of Chineseness; gender, sexuality, and queer lives; and ideas of home and roots. A central question is how China's growing global power and the current geopolitical rivalry reshape the position of Chinese communities: through Chinese state policy toward the diaspora, soft power, and digital governance; through host-state suspicion and foreign-interference legislation; and through racialization and anti-Asian hostility.

Prerequisites: None 
Breadth requirement = 3.  

2027 Course Syllabus (Tentative) 

Field Trips (Tentative)

In addition to formal lectures, this course will also include: 

• Guest lecturers such as world-renowned scholars and local experts.
• Chinatown Heritage Centre and Telok Ayer heritage sites
• Clan association or Chinese cultural centre
• Cross-causeway day trip to Johor, Malaysia, for comparison with Malaysian Chinese communities

Instructors

Professor Weiguo Zhang is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto and is affiliated with the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and the Institute for Life Course and Aging. Dr. Zhang specializes in social demography, social gerontology, and the sociology of families.  His work primarily focuses on social changes in China and the well-being of older Chinese immigrants in Canada. His research has covered a variety of topics including the Chinese "one child" policy and fertility, China's domestic adoption of children, the welfare of childless elderly, economic and political participation of women, marriage and family dynamics, and rural transformation in China. His current research investigates the effects of the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and migration status on intra-group dynamics and aging experiences of Chinese Canadians, the impacts of COVID-19 on Chinese communities, and anti-Asian racism in Canada. Dr. Zhang received his Ph.D. in Development Studies at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands, in 1998.

Dr. A. Ka Tat Tsang, Ph.D. (Toronto) is a Professor at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.  His scholarship focuses on the development of a knowledge base for human services in the global context, through the active integration of theory, practice, and research.  He teaches direct practice courses in the MSW program and courses on epistemology and social work research in the Ph.D. program.  He has been actively promoting social work and the development of human service programs in China since the 1980s.  He founded the Faculty's China Program in 1997 and has been the Director since.  He is the founder of the SSLD (Strategies and Skills Learning Development) System which supports a wide range of human service applications in Canada and internationally.  These applications cover personal, family, group, organizational, and community interventions.  

Summer Studio Abroad (Singapore) is an open-media studio art course where students will explore the multi-faceted urban fabric of Singapore as a case study for understanding the city as key subject for artists in the 20th and 21st century. Singapore’s intricate mix of dense neighborhoods, vernacular architecture, and tropical terrain offers a wealth of scenarios for studying how the urban environment shapes daily and civic life, social relations, and artistic production. Guided visits to artists’ studios, galleries, and museums will give students special access to Singapore’s growing artistic community and ecosystem of public and commercial galleries. Students will engage with Singapore’s urban dynamics as a laboratory for visual art projects including street photography, video, drawing, performance, and site-specific art.

This course is open to Daniels Faculty students and to students outside of the Faculty (especially UTSC Studio Art and UTM Art & Art History students)

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit at the 200-level in VIS courses (UTSC students: 1.5 FCE at either B or C level in studio) or with permission of the instructor
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1) 

2027 Course outline (TBD) 

Instructor

Will Kwan is a Hong Kong-born, Toronto-based artist and educator. Will joined the University of Toronto as a full-time faculty member in 2007, teaching courses in interdisciplinary art practice and time-based media at the University of Toronto Scarborough and serving as a faculty member in the Master of Visual Studies Program at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. Will’s work is held in the permanent collections of M+ in Hong Kong, Folkestone Artworks in Kent, England, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, and the Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Will’s work has been exhibited at triennial and biennial exhibitions in Folkestone, Liverpool, Montreal, and Venice, and at venues including MoMA PS1, Art in General, and the Cooper Union in New York, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin, the Zentrum für Kunst und Medien (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, the Musée d'Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne (MAC VAL) in Vitry-sur-Seine, France, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, the Polish National Museum in Poznan, the Zendai Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai, the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and The Power Plant in Toronto, and The Western Front and Centre A in Vancouver. Will has been an artist-in-residence at the Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella, the Duolun Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai, the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art in Manchester, England, and the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California. Information about his work can be found at www.studiowillkwan.com.