MCLC: Asian urbanization course suggestions (1,2)

[MCLC LIST]

MCLC LIST
Asian urbanization course suggestions (1,2)
One film I would highly recommend is Land of Many Palaces. It is a documentary of the 'ghost city" of Ordos but the subject matter goes beyond just that location. We invited one of the filmmakers Adam James Smith (a Brit living in China)  to our campus to screen the film after its release last year and the student/faculty response was extremely positive with discussion that continued long after the film was over. It is very well done, thought provoking, and sensitive. The film provides food for discussion on the rural-to-urban shift in China; how do we define culture or civilization; issues of the ill and elderly; the role of the government in relocation projects; disruption of social fabric; and so much more. Here's a website for the film:
http://www.thelandofmanypalaces.com/
Pamela Herron <pgstover at utep.edu>
==============================
That sounds like such an interesting class. I would consider Shenzhen as it is the first city of its kind in China. Along with that, Peter Hessler's "Oracle Bones" features Shenzhen and may provide a useful tool or outside reading. As for places outside of Asia, I think that Auckland would make for an interesting comparison. For one, there is a huge real estate problem at the moment because Chinese buyers are flooding the market and driving up prices. This is also causing the city to grow very quickly. On top of that, there is a large and growing Korean population, not to mention diasporas from other Asian countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Philippines. Speaking of Southeast Asia, urban areas such as Jakarta and Bangkok could be interesting and might provide different insight than Tokyo, for example, because their timeline of development and the issues they've had to deal with are unique to them. With Thailand's thriving movie industry, I would be surprised if urbanization hasn't been represented cinematically yet. I hope some of these thoughts can be useful. Good luck!
Lehyla Heward <lehyla.heward at gmail.com>
by denton.2 at osu.edu on January 23, 2016
You are subscribed to email updates from MCLC Resource Center  
To stop receiving these emails, click here.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/mclc/attachments/20160123/a5fd2732/attachment.html>