CLIP Fellows Program Proposal (2024-2025) | Comparative History of Ideas

Internal and External Journeys: Journeys as Migration

This cluster explores the internal and external experiences of journeys as migration among diasporas in the face of imperialism, climate change, geopolitical wars, and individual lived experiences overstimulated by digital technology. Drawing from various fields, including immigrant and refugee studies, anthropology of grief and desires, Buddhist philosophy, Himalayan studies, policy studies, and communications, these courses will focus on the experiences of migrants in journey making. To provide students with theories, methodologies, and frameworks for understanding the transnational nature of journey making, they will engage in mixed methodologies such as creative art, storytelling, case studies, and trauma-informed methods to explore topics such as the science of adaptation, non-duality vs. duality, embodiment, nostalgia, grief, desires, and dreams to contemplate journeys from diverse perspectives. Based on the political economies of analog and digital communications, encapsulating connectivity, access, and agency, students will engage in immersive and contemplative living by exploring the ethics of care exercised in internal and external journeys. Choden's work on Tibetan Himalayan communities and network infrastructure studies, particularly using autoethnography, indigenous knowledge, contemplative/immersive practices, and participatory research, brings in both personal experiences of migration from a young age and scholarly understanding of transnational migration. This complements Nguyễn's research on refugee studies, American Ethnic studies, and mis-/disinformation, in efforts to acknowledge the complex interplay of intergenerational information sharing due to forced and chosent migrations. Through a scholarly knowledge-based approach, this course series will offer non-linear knowledge and wisdom exchange with perspectives from graduates, faculty, and community members who approach learning and pedagogy with an open and empathetic dialogue.

Description of Proposed Courses

Winter 2025
Journeys as Memory: Migration Stories of Knowing and Not Knowing (Choden)

Central to the course is the question: What is known and unknown in the journey of migration? This exploration aims to delve into the dual and non-dual aspects of knowing and not knowing that characterize a migration journey. A significant focus of the course is on the impact of knowing these stories. The course also considers the broader impact of migration on personal and wishful feelings, as well as its effects on domestic and larger systems. Guided by scholarly works on migration such as From a trickle to a torrent: Education, migration, and social change in a Himalayan valley of Nepal (Childs & Choedup, 2018) and Indigenous research methods, students will engage in a variety of immersive activities designed to foster critical dialogue and reflection. These include craftwork that may encompass photo stories, oral history by connecting with elders, crafts emblematic of one's native land, and video storytelling. Furthermore, the course offers a unique opportunity to share personal migration stories through the universal language of food culture, culminating in a potluck event.

Migration and Media: Tools, information, and communications of migrations (Nguyễn)

This course draws from media studies, information science, problematic information, communications, political economies, accessibility, demography, and diasporic studies. In an exploration of the histories of media as a medium before, during, and after transnational journeys or migrations, this course aims to address the evolution of tools, information, data, and communication patterns which diaspora rely upon to process their chosen and forced journeys. We explore socio-technical power dynamics in which systems and data have upon migrants' origination and destination homes in regards to interpersonal, economic, political, technical, environmental, and social impacts. How has media played a role in migrations? Using the array of mainstream, local, ethnic, and social media as sites of study, students will engage in reading excerpts of text such as Micro Media Industries: Hmong American Media Innovation in the Diaspora (Lopez, 2021), Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media (Roberts, 2019), and Encoding race, encoding class: Indian IT workers in Berlin (Amrute, 2016). Analysis of archival and contemporary multimedia audiovisual pieces such as films, radio, podcasts, social media pages, and newspapers will be central to an interdisciplinary understanding of the vast range of information transmission in between time and place. Students will be encouraged to explore autoethnographic approaches to connect movement between places and their interactions (or not) with the tools and information that makes up media.

Spring 2025
Identity, Performance, and Journeys: Losing and (Re)making of Identities (Nguyễn)

Materiality of Care in Journey Making (Choden)

This interdisciplinary course draws from the fields of psychology, Buddhist philosophy, anthropology, geography, and information technology to explore the materiality of care in journey making. Materiality of care, in this context, encompasses physical tools used in journey making, materiality from cultural and spiritual perspectives, and the loss of materiality of care in both the making and unmaking of a journey. Throughout the course, students will engage in contemplative practices related to the materiality of care, reflecting on the tools we use, the values we hold, and the journeys we undertake. This will include exploration of internal journeys (such as self-care, daydreams, goals, memories, and yearnings) and external journeys (such as travel to places via trains, planes, and seas, as well as journeys undertaken through internet connectivity using phones and laptops) through case studies, class discussions, introspection, and journal keeping to understand not only migration as a form of journey but also the personal journey of living a mindful life in our overly stimulated world. The course will also examine self-initiated migration for employment and education, and forced migration due to climate change, scarcity of basic resources, or wars. Overall, the course aims to understand journeys as both affect and various forms of materiality, exploring the ethics of care within the journey of materiality and examining both human and non-human values.

Biographies of Applicants

Kunsang Choden Lama: Native to Nubri Valley, an Indigenous Tibetan Himalayan community in Northwestern, Nepal, Kunsang is a first generation third year PhD student in Information Science at the UW iSchool. Kunsang's research explores the intersection of infrastructure development, intergenerational digital literacy and experiences of migration in the Tibetan Buddhist communities of Nubri Valley using qualitative research methods. Her interdisciplinary scholarly work tries to understand the complex interplay between the introduction of broadband, migration, and community development in shaping and sustaining the socio-cultural, ecological and economic fabric of communities in the Nubri Valley and how ICTs can be tailored to incorporate community-specific cultural and spiritual values, while simultaneously enhancing intergenerational digital literacy by understanding how specific groups interface with digital technology in remote mountainous areas.

Sarah Nguyễn investigates information infrastructures and information disorder among immigrant diaspora and multilingual communities. They center archival, ethnographic, and community participatory methodologies to apply theory into praxis at the intersections of critical information infrastructures, information disorder, embodied memories, Asian American studies, and immigrant/refugee studies. Currently, Sarah contributes to the UW Center for an Informed Public' NSF Research about problematic information within Vietnamese and Latine diasporas, and to the AfterLab on community archives. Her research has been featured in Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, VICE, BuzzFeed News, KUOW Public Radio, NPR, and John Oliver's Last Week Tonight. Sarah is a doctoral candidate at the University of Washington's Information School.

2023-24 Academic Year Plan and Supporting Activities

Students will engage in various activities including memory work through storytelling, case studies, oral history, video story, journal keeping, guest lecture series, contemplative reflection, guest lecturers, field trips to community organizations and spaces. In addition, students will be encouraged to converse with elders to uncover migration stories, foster connections with past generations and deepen their understanding of personal histories. End of each course quarter, through the universal language of food culture, culminating in a potluck event, students will have the opportunity to share personal migration stories (optional). This immersive approach allows for a deep dive into the personal and collective narratives of migration, inviting students to explore, reflect, and share their lived experiences and stories of others within a supportive and enriching community setting.

Potential Connections to UW Faculty, Courses, and Programs

CHID380A: Theories in the Study of Religion (James Wellman);
CHID210A: The Idea of the University (José Antonio Lucero);
CHID250C: Narcoculture: Propaganda and Publicity in the War on Drugs (Vanessa Freije);
CMS 275A: Underground Comix (José Alaniz); CHID370A Cultural Impact of Information Technology (Anis Rahman);
DXARTS 200A: Digital Art and New Media (Tivon Rice);
Honors220C: Science, Technology, and Inequality (Kessie Alexandre);
Honors345A: Oral History, Immigrants from the Middle East (Melike Yucel-Koc);
GWSS 320A: Black Feminist Thought (Bettina Judd);
SOC401A: Global Migration - Lacomba, C;
AAS395: Critical Studies of Post-Vietnam War Southeast Asian Americans: Not Just Refugees (Connie So);
AAS250: Asian American Oral Histories (Linh Thủy Nguyễn);
COM578: Intercultural Communications (Jennifer Zheng);
JSIS103: Diasporas and Homelands: Theory and Practice (TBA);
JSIS537: Trends in International Migration (Kathie Friedman-Kasaba).