BANERJEE Bidisha博士
Spaces of Precarity: Migration, Spatiality and the Refugee Graphic Narrative
The refugee crisis of the 21st century is one of the most challenging the globe has faced; today more than an estimated 68 million people are displaced from their homes. Postcolonial and diaspora studies have been slow to respond to the need to reconceptualize theories of migration in the context of the new age of migration. The traditional articulations of diasporic identity formation are lacking in theorizing refugee identities characterized by statelessness, violence and precarity. “Spaces of Precarity” addresses this lacuna in diaspora studies by drawing attention to the spatialities of refugee migration as delineated in several refugee graphic narratives. It considers the liminal and transitory spaces of migration such as refugee camps, borders and detention centres as well as the open seas often depicted in refugee graphic narratives. This project argues that the depiction of these spaces in graphic literature, offers us new opportunities to theorize migration and diaspora based on reconfiguring spatiality.
Project Start Year : 2022
Chief Investigator(s) : BANERJEE, Bidisha
Cultivating Students’ Global Perspectives through Course Design with an Emphasis on the Affective Aspect of Learning
The global challenges of our century underscore the need for students to be able to value diverse cultures and perspectives, empathise and work with others dramatically different from themselves and solve problems that transcend national borders. While the academic departments at EdUHK are being strongly encouraged to enhance their courses to cultivate students’ global perspectives, some lecturers remain uncertain about how to achieve this goal meaningfully. This TDG addresses an urgent need of empowering lecturers to improve their understanding of global perspectives and facilitate their reflection on appropriate course design and successful delivery. Over the past decade, the "affective turn" (Clough, 2007) in social sciences and the humanities has resulted in educational applications that show how emotional responses and sensory perceptions can maximize affective engagement in the classroom (e.g. Cavanagh, 2016). This project proposes that the integration of such an approach with internationalisation of the curriculum can effectively cultivate students' global perspectives, which includes not only knowledge of different cultures, societies and global issues but also affective attributes conducive to intercultural empathy, efficacy, and tolerance. The project will develop an instructional framework for cultivating students’ global perspectives. It will demonstrate the impact that a due emphasis on the affective aspect of learning has on students' development of intercultural competence (including knowledge and attitudes). Finally, the project will develop case studies and other resources highlighting the participating lecturers’ best pedagogical practices. This cross-disciplinary project will include team members from nine departments across all three faculties, including five Teaching Award recipients, together with two external Co-Ss from North America specialising in cultural psychology and global citizenship education.
Project Start Year : 2020
Chief Investigator(s) : BUCHTEL, Emma Ellen Kathrina 蒲安梅, CHATELIER STEPHEN ERIC , YU, Kwan Wai Eric 余君偉 (BANERJEE, Bidisha null as Co-Investigator)
Thanatic Ethics: The Circulation of Bodies in Migratory Spaces
The American ship the Sunny South carried “a freight of seventy dead Chinamen” from San Francisco to Hong Kong on May 15th 1855. It was a part of the large scale repatriation of human remains, fueled by the desire of Chinese emigrants to be buried in their native village. This paramount desire is not unique to the Chinese. A home burial encapsulates a widely shared perception of home among emigrants. Death imbues the meaning of home and therefore the meaning of what it is to be an immigrant. And yet, despite this willingness to be buried in the homeland, the life course of immigrants can take unanticipated trajectories and burial in the place of settlement instead becomes a reality. Others face untimely deaths as they undertake treacherous migration journeys. Literature, film and visual art is replete with discussions of thanatic themes related to migrants. Thanatic Ethics attempts to study questions of the circulation and repatriation of migrant bodies and the representation of these themes in literary and cultural texts.
Project Start Year : 2020
Chief Investigator(s) : BANERJEE, Bidisha
Investigating Hong Kong Students' Aspirations for the Future
In recent months, school students have organized school strikes, class boycotts, human protest chains, joined front-line protests, been arrested (30% under 18 years) and shot (2 students; 14 & 18 years), with more than 300 school students involved in the PolyU siege. For other students, the protests disrupted their schooling and their relationships with family, peers and teachers. The longer-term impact on their aspirations, futures and sense of belonging/connectedness to Hong Kong is unknown.This project seeks to map Hong Kong adolescents’ (15-18 years) aspirations and views on the resources/capital needed to achieve their aspirations for the future, and how Hong Kong schools and society can help.
Project Start Year : 2020
Chief Investigator(s) : HALSE CHRISTINE MARGARET (Dr BANERJEE, Bidisha as Co-Investigator)
Thanatic Ethics: The Circulation of Bodies in Migratory Spaces
The American ship the Sunny South carried “a freight of seventy dead Chinamen” from San Francisco to Hong Kong on May 15th 1855. It was a part of the large scale repatriation of human remains, fueled by the desire of Chinese emigrants to be buried in their native village. This paramount desire is not unique to the Chinese. A home burial encapsulates a widely shared perception of home among emigrants. Death imbues the meaning of home and therefore the meaning of what it is to be an immigrant. And yet, despite this willingness to be buried in the homeland, the life course of immigrants can take unanticipated trajectories and burial in the place of settlement instead becomes a reality. Others face untimely deaths as they undertake treacherous migration journeys. Literature, film and visual art is replete with discussions of thanatic themes related to migrants. Thanatic Ethics attempts to study questions of the circulation and repatriation of migrant bodies and the representation of these themes in literary and cultural texts.
Project Start Year : 2020
Chief Investigator(s) : BANERJEE, Bidisha
Picturing Precarity: Migration, Spatiality and the Refugee Graphic Novel
Following critics like Simon Gikandi (2010) and Giorgio Agamben (1998, 2000) who have theorized the refugee as a new kind of Other that challenges global cultural flows, “Picturing Precarity” calls for an alternative migration framework based on spatiality as well as a more individualized and humanized visual frame for depicting the refugee. These I wager, can be found in the refugee graphic novels of the last decade. In particular, this project considers the depiction of “nonplaces” such as the open sea, detention centres and refugee camps as well as the utopian spaces of the imaginary homelands in refugee graphic novels, arguing that these offer us a new migration framework based on reconfiguring spatiality.
Project Start Year : 2019
Chief Investigator(s) : BANERJEE, Bidisha
“Learning to Read, Learning to See: Using Graphic Novels in the English Language Classroom” Received January 2019
This is a Quality Education Fund (QEF) project funded by the Education Bureau (EdB) of Hong Kong. It is a visual literacy project based on using graphic novels in the English Language classroom.
Project Start Year : 2019
Chief Investigator(s) : BANERJEE, Bidisha
“One City One Book Hong Kong, 2018-19: Shaun Tan’s The Arrival.”
This project funds Hong Kong's first ever One City One Book, a community wide reading initiative with research, teaching and knowledge transfer elements.
Project Start Year : 2018
Chief Investigator(s) : BANERJEE, Bidisha
“One City One Book Student Ambassadors.”
This grant has funded the training and activities of the One City One Book Student Ambassadors.
Project Start Year : 2018
Chief Investigator(s) : BANERJEE, Bidisha
“One City One Book: Exploring Across Cultures and Around the World.”
This grant was received to support 我城我書 / One City One Book Hong Kong and its internationalization in the wider Asian region beyond Hong Kong.
Project Start Year : 2018
Chief Investigator(s) : BANERJEE, Bidisha
"Traces of the Real: The Absent Presence of Photography in Postcolonial and Diasporic Literature"
Diasporic literature with its attendant themes of loss, longing, mourning and trauma, has obvious resonances with photography. By bringing together the multidisciplinary fields of postcolonial literature, migration studies and photography, this project aims to overcome the disciplinary divisions between these fields and shift the debate on the interactions between these sister arts. It attempts to study not the interaction of the written word and the visual image, but rather the written image which functions as a photographic metaphor to enhance the themes of the literary text.
Project Start Year : 2016
Chief Investigator(s) : BANERJEE, Bidisha
Good Teaching Practice – Incorporation of Development of Generic Skills into Course Teaching at Higher Education Context
The present project is related to Community of Practice (CoP). It aims to promote good teaching practice with the focus of incorporating the generic intended learning outcomes (GILOs) in course teaching and develop a peer sharing atmosphere on campus. It engages our colleagues in sharing and exchanging their teaching experience through an online platform.
Project Start Year : 2015
Chief Investigator(s) : CHENG, May Hung May 鄭美紅 (Dr BANERJEE, Bidisha as Team Member)
Developing Students’ Affective Attitude in Secondary EFL Classrooms in the PRC
The study investigates the beliefs, design and practices of secondary school teachers from the PRC when implementing the affective dimension of the English language curriculum, and finds out the extent the pedagogy and approaches suggested in the curriculum for developing students’ affective attitude are employed in teachers’ lessons. Twelve teachers from the 3-week Inservice Course for Guangdong Secondary School English Teachers held in the HKIEd in July 2009 will be identified and invited to take part in the study in which a combination of data collection procedures within the qualitative paradigm, for example, document analysis, interviews and observations, and the study of task materials, e.g. lesson plans and samples of student work, will be used.
Project Start Year : 2010
Chief Investigator(s) : LI, Ka Wo, Benjamin 李家和 (Dr BANERJEE, Bidisha as Co-Investigator)
Racialization of the Asian Female Domestic Worker in Cyprus
Given the complicated history of colonialism as well as a problematic postcolonial present in Cyprus, I am particularly interested in studying the racial othering of the Asian foreign domestic worker in Cyprus and comparing it with the kind of othering that happens in Hong Kong of migrant workers from the same parts of the world. While my study of the data collected on Hong Kong has shown the existence of human rights’ abuses of the domestic workers (ranging from underpayment of wages to physical abuse), in the case of Cyprus, I wish to analyze the issue of racialization of the other and study whether Cyprus’ problematic colonial past and postcolonial present (discussed above) as well as its attempts to conform to its obligations of EU harmonization (while still struggling with the “Cyprus problem”), has any bearing on the racialization of the Asian domestic workers. I also wish to study the comparative racial politics with regard to the Asian domestic worker that exist in Hong Kong and Cyprus.
Project Start Year : 2010
Chief Investigator(s) : BANERJEE, Bidisha
“Migrant Workers in Hong Kong.”
The purpose of this project is to connect classroom teaching with the real world and to educate students and heighten their awareness on issues of migration. To create a database (audio and video files) of material on migrant workers in Hong Kong and upload these materials on to a website for dissemination amongst students.
Project Start Year : 2010
Chief Investigator(s) : BANERJEE, Bidisha
In-service Programme for Guangdong English Teachers 2009
A total of 40 teachers and researchers from different parts of the Guangdong province participated in the programme, which was held at HKIEd from 6 July 2009 to 24 July 2009. This was the 10th Programme jointly orgainised by the Guangdong Education Bureau, the EDB and the Department of English of the HKIED since this kind of collaboration started in 1999. The major aim of the Course was to further develop the professionalism of these teachers and researchers through reflecting upon English language teaching theories and practice. The participants completed six modules on the Programme and participated in "Fun with English" - activities conducted by Graduate English Teachers from CLE - which aimed at enhancing their English proficiency. During the programme the participants stayed in our Jockey Club Student Quarters to experience the life as full-time students on campus for three weeks.
Project Start Year : 2009
Chief Investigator(s) : LI, Ka Wo, Benjamin 李家和 (Dr BANERJEE, Bidisha as Team Member)
Tin Shui Wai On Screen
In recent years, Hong Kong cinema has been overwhelmed with pan-Asian co-productions (mainly with China), resulting in several epic and martial arts blockbusters. However, such film portray a landscape outside the city and the authentic image of the city has been somewhat neglected, if not entirely erased from onscreen depictions. In 2008 and 2009, three small-budger independent films were released. These films served to revive the importance of portraying Hong Kong itself through their depictions of the alternative cityscape of Tin Shui Wai, a dislocated locale from the city hub and a town (mis)located on the borders between China and Hong Kong. In Lawrence Lau's Besieged City, Ann Hui's The Way We Are (2008) and Night and Fog (2009), we find the recurrence of themes such as urban violence, moral degradation, the collapse of traditional family structures and the uneasy existence of dislocated individuals in an urbanized, marginal space. In City and Cinema, Barbara Mennel argues that studying film and cities allows us to analyze particular locales with the emphasis on the "operation of power and the struggle of power". This project therefore, aims to explore how characters in these three films are disempowered and struggle to exist, hoping to re-vision and revisit the notion of metropolitanism that has always been associated with commercial Hong Kong cinema.
Project Start Year : 2009
Chief Investigator(s) : BANERJEE, Bidisha