Taiwan

This is a course about the study of birds that covers the classification, evolution, physiology, behavior, ecology, research methods, conservation and management issues of birds. The course introduces the birds of Taiwan and issues surrounding their conservation. Classes include lectures, video viewings, and discussion of current events. The course also requires at least one bird watching trip. Text: F.B. Gill, ORNITHOLOGY. Assessment: midterm, final exam, field trip participation, in class participation.

Evolving management practices and the proliferation of an online, interconnected, global business world have led to greater interaction between employees, management, clients, and the public at a global and intercultural level. These include written correspondence with clients; messages targeting mass public audiences; critical business and product presentations, and event self-presentation. It is no surprise that Business Communications skills are listed as a top workplace skill by employers and recruiters. This course aims to develop written and spoken communication proficiency for various scenarios in the business setting. 

The course begins with the basics of derived categories including semi-orthogonal decompositions and Fourier-Mukai transforms. The course then discusses some recent developments related to derived categories of coherent sheaves, such as homological projective duality, stability conditions, noncommutative crepant resolutions, or derived categories and GIT.

With increased trade and deeper market integration, the legal issues of international economic relations are becoming more complicated. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only and the most important institution addressing the rules of trade between nations. The WTO agreements cover goods, services, intellectual property and dispute settlement. This course is designed to introduce the major legal disciplines under the WTO legal system. Assessment: class participation (30%), group presentation (30%), final exam(40%).

This seminar engages with key moments in the development of Asian American critical discourses. It takes as its starting point Chih-ming Wang's contention that much of the Asian American critical work that has been produced in Taiwan so far has downplayed or neglected the interdisciplinary and internationalist character of Asian American studies. We will ask: what, then, would constitute an adequate form of engagement with Asian American critical discourses and texts? Our working hypothesis will be that Asian American culture is not a stable pre-constituted object awaiting excavation and recovery; we will instead approach it as a process of contestation and critical reformulation that is not yet settled. Our starting point will be critical accounts of the Asian American movement including the 1968-1969 student strikes at San Francisco State College and UC Berkeley. We will then examine other key moments that may include the following: the controversy over the canonization of Maxine Hong Kingston's _The Woman Warrior_; the murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit; “the fall of the International Hotel” in San Francisco; the heated debates surrounding Ronald Takaki's popular history _Strangers from a Different Shore_; the politics of ethnicity; the near implosion of the Association for Asian American Studies following the granting of a book award for Lois-Ann Yamanaka's novel _Blu's Hanging_; debates concerning the internationalization of Asian American studies; and the stakes involved in reading Asian American literature after the catastrophic events in Japan on March 11, 2011. We will conclude our seminar by asking (following a forum published in the _Journal of Asian American Studies_): has Asian American studies failed? Students in this seminar will be expected to read widely across interdisciplinary debates and to write regularly about the texts in our course readings. Students will have a chance to learn about and use key Asian American studies library resources available in Taiwan.

This course teaches basic Chinese vocabulary used in a business environment. The class is limited to students who are capable of more than 1500 Chinese vocabulary or have taken Chinese classes for more than 800 hours (which equals to finishing the textbook Practical Audio-Visual Chinese II). The textbook used for this class is Far East Business Chinese (L.1~7). This class is taught only in Chinese.

This course introduces students to fiction and other critical and cultural perspectives from the postcolonial world.  This course discusses selected texts from postcolonial Africa, beginning with examining what Ngugi wa Thiong’o has called the “struggles to move the centre”—that is, the political and cultural struggles to “correct the imbalances of the last four hundred years” of colonization. The course then turns to fictional writings and other cultural texts that come out of various decolonization struggles in Nigeria, Algeria, Kenya, and South Africa.  The course seeks to answer the question: Why should these texts and ideas matter to us today?
 

This course examines the characteristics of construction management. Topics include productivity management, cost control and reporting, contract type and administration, cost estimating, planning and scheduling, engineering economy and finance, construction accounting, legal aspects, bonding, insurance, risk management, quality control and TQM, and labor relation and construction safety.

This course offers a study on the development of bioengineering principles applied to the cardiovascular system. This course covers: the anatomy of the human cardiovascular system; cardiovascular and neurovascular diseases; diagnostic tools and treatment strategies; cardiovascular medical devices; biofluid mechanics, and biomaterial behavior.

This course covers scientific laboratory techniques and the underlying physical principles of natural phenomena. Each class focuses on a particular experiment described in the lab manual, Laboratory Experiments in Physics. This is a one-credit hour class that meets almost once a week for about three hours.