In/out of China: Exercising Positionality through Mental Maps

This paper explores critical pedagogical practices through a case study on China as spatial alterity, analysing students’ creative mental maps in an undergraduate E-Tourism course. As part of a decolonial effort to reframe curricula, the study interrogates students’ positionalities toward China, the act of mapping as a (bio)political gaze, and the complexities of engaging geopolitically diverse classrooms. Building on literature on cognitive mapping and spatial imaginaries, it foregrounds drawings as expressions of (geo)political stance. Using a constructivist socio-semiotic approach, the paper argues for a renewed role of human geography in Italian higher education, where geographic literacy is often marginal. It contributes to debates on Western versus Sinocentric cartographies, highlighting mental mapping as a critical, situated methodology for knowledge co-production.