Abstract
Our speculative ethnography of Chinese student experience in the United States during COVID-19 weds the tradition of speculative fiction (exemplified by the likes of Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler) and digital autoethnography. The study is two-pronged: First, we articulate/map the methodological merits of speculative and digital autoethnography as particularly conducive to the crisis context of COVID-19 and its accompanying social isolation; second, we deploy said methodology within a population of nine Chinese students “trapped” in the United States during the COVID-19 period.
Highlights
Margaret Atwood (2012) wrote that speculative fiction contains details and contexts that “really could happen but just hadn’t completely happened.” Her novel The Handmaid’s Tale famously incorporated disparate historical atrocities, separated by time and distance, into one dystopic vision of what humanity was capable of, given the right conditions
In the United States, education institutions shuttered and/or converted to digital/hybrid pedagogical contexts, forcing students into isolated educational and social experiences (Soria & Horgos, 2021). These conditions disproportionately burdened international student populations: Travel restrictions prevented some from returning to home countries and made visa procurement for family more challenging, and institutional closures prevented them from forming social networks or from receiving supplemental instructional resources
American higher education seemed to overlook and/or misinterpret the specialized needs of international student populations during this crisis
Summary
Margaret Atwood (2012) wrote that speculative fiction contains details and contexts that “really could happen but just hadn’t completely happened.” Her novel The Handmaid’s Tale famously incorporated disparate historical atrocities, separated by time and distance, into one dystopic vision of what humanity was capable of, given the right conditions. We devised new approaches to data generation and analysis to build speculative reports on Chinese student experience in America during a time of crisis.
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