The aim of this course is to offer a “Maker Space,” in the spirit of Capstone Course, to assist students to synthesize their learnings from different classes and to incorporate the methodologies and techniques we offer in this class, to accomplish their own project, basing on their own problematics, through social practice and artistic production.

    We encourage our students to anchor their projects on contemporary social issues, such as migration (migrant workers, foreign spouse, statelessness), cross-strait relations, leftist tradition in Asia, complex histories of colonialism and decolonization in Asia, war experience, contemporary political-economic-cultural and social changes, neoliberalism and development, environmental pollution, land justice, aboriginal rights, agricultural and food autonomy, gender equality, class issues, and so on. Each semester, we will re-adjust the focus of our concentration according to the participation of students.
    This course is divided into three parts: (1) methodologies: archival research, field work, techniques of interviews, oral history, reportage, ethnography; (2) techniques of production: the making of documentary, multi-media curation, in-depth news report; (3) local NGOs: including human rights organization, aboriginal group, global citizen foundation, migrant fisherman union, and so on. The objective of the arrangement of these lectures and activities is to enable students to further develop their problematics and to search for ways to solve the question and to present their research result.
    Students will form their own study groups, according their problematics or research interests, so that they can discuss with one another during the process of this course. Students can choose their own forms of research production, such as ethnography, documentary, in-depth news report, multi-media curation, oral history, visual essays, and so on.