English

This course offers an interdisciplinary perspective on influences on child and youth development. This course focuses on different societal issues related to child and youth development, such as the effects of being born preterm, minorities in classrooms, and vulnerability to substance abuse. This course provides a broad view on influences on child and youth development. In a series of lectures, experts from various disciplines discuss important findings of child research in their field (e.g., psychology, neuroscience, law, geography, animal models, philosophy, linguistics). Knowledge in integrated by discussing topical issues in child and youth development with other students during interdisciplinary working groups. Interdisciplinary knowledge is applied to a topic of choice by writing a literature review within a small group of students.

A flourishing modern society can be promoted by volunteerism and civic engagement. Considering that volunteerism is perceived as a crucial indicator of livable society, it has been a concern of many countries including Singapore to promote volunteering among citizens. Mainly through various non-profit voluntary organizations, volunteer workforce helps attain the goal of civic, livable, and harmonious society. This course thus pursues three main themes: (1) the relationship between civil society and civic engagement, (2) the precursors of volunteer workforce (i.e., what makes people volunteer?), and (3) the outcomes of volunteerism (e.g., life satisfaction, health, and status attainment).

Ranging from work in the nineteenth century to contemporary anthropological studies, this course analyzes evolutionary, psychological, materialist, structuralist, socio-linguistic, and reflexive approaches to understanding gender behavior and gender stratification. The course explores how anthropological data from around the world is crucial for questioning widely held assumptions about men and women in contemporary societies. Therefore, it examines the processes and practices of the construction of the categories of “woman” and “man” in different cultural and historical contexts. By presenting ethnographic and historical accounts of gender variations and how they are currently understood and displayed, the course reveals the social and cultural forces that have created changes in sex/gender systems. It pays particular attention to the ways in which categories of gender/sexuality are deployed in various discursive regimes such as nationalism, modernism, colonialism, and globalization.

This course covers the history, theories, institutions, and policies of economic development. It begins by considering development from classical Western perspectives (liberalism, neoliberalism, and the Washington Consensus), burgeoning Eastern perspectives (the “East Asian model,” the Beijing Consensus), as well as various heterodox traditions (postcolonialism, Marxism). The course then explores the doers of development in today's global economy and international system: the Bretton Woods and multilateral institutions, the private sector and private philanthropists, as well as individual countries such as the United States and China. Finally, the course dives deep into the particular problems and policies that define global development in low-income countries today: how they meet their domestic energy needs and attain a clean energy transition; how they meet their domestic food needs and maximize their agricultural export revenues; how they build the infrastructure they require for their rapidly growing populations and economies; and how they attract or create good jobs and high wages to ensure stable and equitable growth.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course focuses on the political, economic, and cultural European – mainly Iberian – expansion in America during the 16th and 17th centuries as one of the key phenomena that ignited the process of early modern globalization. Early modern globalization is analyzed from the perspective of historical anthropology, stressing how the global dimension of early modern colonialism, characterized by the worldwide circulation of goods, people, and ideas, fostered unprecedented processes of cultural interaction and hybridization as well as the creation of new political and cultural identities. A proper historical and anthropological understanding of such processes requires one to go beyond traditional Eurocentric notions of acculturation and westernization in order to adequately recognize the active role played by indigenous groups and individuals in the shaping of the emerging global world. The course contextualizes the European conquest of America within a global historical and cultural framework and provides a critical analysis of historical sources and early ethnographic records. The course includes notions linked to the popularization and public use of historical and anthropological knowledge. A section of the course is devoted to the analysis of the textual sources produced in the context of European/indigenous interactions in the New World, with a special focus on how indigenous voices can be glimpsed in those incipient forms of ethnographic records that, in turn, witness the early emergence of anthropology as a constitutive facet of early modern European colonial experience. Specific attention is devoted to the early circulation of ethnographic artifacts and how their observation and description by different social actors generated diverse discourses regarding the relationship between cultural difference and shared humanity.

This course introduces the law and practice of international commercial arbitration. It focuses on arbitration of business-to-business disputes, although much of the course material also applies to disputes governed by public international law, such as investor-state arbitrations. The course covers the intersection of international law, national law, and private contract that comprises the governing regime for the resolution of international commercial disputes. Specific topics include the drafting and enforcement of arbitration agreements, the laws applicable to different aspects of the arbitration, the jurisdiction, composition and powers of the tribunal, confidentiality, interim measures, the conduct of the hearing, and the recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards. Lectures are supplemented with class discussion and a variety of in-class activities meant to simulate real problems confronted by arbitration lawyers. Text: Gary B. Born, INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION: LAW AND PRACTICE. Assessment: Participation in in-class exercises (33%), Take-home final exam (67%).