Asian Institute

Students are connected with a digital practicum placement in partnership with local, national, or international not-for-profits or governmental organizations connected to Asia. Students work in teams of 2-5 students, and help partner organizations address key issues they identify. Student teams work actively on strengthening on-line networks with partner organizations, while developing mutual mentoring, critique, and exchange with the organizations. Students are expected to invest 5-7 hours per week in course projects, in addition to class time. Students are expected to help teammates, advise other teams, and contribute their skills and talents to their community partners. The course will emphasize how groups can work together to contribute to extending, learning from, and contributing to transnational networks that bridge the University of Toronto and a range of partners throughout Asia.

Instructor: Irene Poetranto, Senior Researcher, Citizen Lab, and Doctoral Candidate, Political Science

This course is designed for senior undergraduate students who wish to enhance their knowledge of Asia’s adoption of the Internet and digital tools, and how these tools and systems are reshaping Asian societies, including their politics, culture, and social movements. We will study how governments in the region regulate information flows online and experiment on new technologies that have the potential to either curtail or encourage public participation. This course will also examine the private sector’s outsized role in our digital economy and its consequences for human rights and good governance. Finally, we will shed light on the role of the Internet as a site of contestation, where representation, dissent, and resistance are developed and negotiated.

By the end of the course, students will be able to identify and distinguish the range of actors, institutions, and policies that constitute our global network society, and understand Asia’s impact on the future of technology. There are no exams in this course. Coursework required includes a quiz, a presentation, discussion board posts, essays, and class participation. Assignments in the course are designed to help students develop critical thinking and public speaking skills, and learn how to write to different audiences.

This joint undergrad/grad seminar is designed to provide students with an understanding of the underlying forces driving the political landscape in China and other Asian countries. We begin with the question why China has defied the modernization theory with the persistence of authoritarian regime. What are the nature of political institutions and state-society relations that explain this persistent outcome in China? We then examine the polities of South Korea, Taiwan and emerging Asian democracies to study the underlying patterns of state and societal forces that led to regime changes. This course seeks to understand the similarities and explain the differences of the hodgepodge of autocratic and democratic regimes in Asia, and ask “why” and “why not”. Students should be prepared to read course materials and engage in class discussion.

Instructor: Dr. Stephen Smith, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto

This course considers how China’s enormous Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has generated cultural, political, social, and economic transformations across Asian and Eurasian contexts. The course is open to senior undergraduate and early graduate students from the Center for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies and the Asian Institute, as well as the Master of Global Affairs program. Focusing on China, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia, we will explore specific cases of geopolitics, geoeconomics and geoculture along the Digital, Green, and Health Silk Roads, looking at everything from surveillance in smart cities, to debt trap diplomacy, to the future of democracy in a China-centric world.