English

This course offers a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the politics, economics, and foreign policy that constitute international politics of the Korean Peninsula. It explores how Korea dealt with its first encounters with imperialism and tackled the complex task of modernization, to understand how these prewar historical legacies continue to affect the domestic politics, society and international relations of South Korea today. 

Topics include ethnic nationalism in Korea, imperial Japan, territorial disputes in Asia, the Comfort Women issue, South Korea’s industrialization, the LGBTQ movement in Korea, feminist and anti-feminist movement in Korea, North Korea and its nuclear weapons, to name a few. 

Prerequisites: A course in political science or in Asian Studies 

This course introduces the essential software engineering body of knowledge, including software project management, software requirements and specifications, software design, and software testing and maintenance.

Labor markets connect individuals to the global economy, and earnings from labor are key elements of household income. This course uses theory and data to understand labor market responses to trade and globalization and to track consequences for individual and household well-being. It studies labor mobility and migration; the market for skills, and decisions on the school-to-work transition, with its empirical and policy focus on developing Asia.

By the end of the course, the class should be familiar with canonical models of economic growth, trade, labor markets and education, utilizing these models together with data to analyze the effects of real-world events such as resource export booms, global market shocks and domestic policies on employment, earnings, and educational decisions. The class is expected to interpret these for policy purposes and connect these analyses to broader narratives of economic development.

The course tells the story of life on earth from its first emergence, around 4 billion years ago until the present day, focusing on how complex life evolved from simple structures to produce the rich diversity of organisms found in ecosystems: from the smallest microbes to blue whales and giant redwoods. Students learn about the range of plants and animals and about the key evolutionary innovations that led to their emergence. Students also learn that organisms should not be considered in isolation but that they interact in ways that affect each other's form and function and how they have come to shape the physical world we live in.

This course provides an outline of developments in children’s literature in England and parts of Europe through the study of some essential, central texts as well as recent books for children. The uses of fantasy and the educational aspects of books for children is discussed, along with notions of childhood and the nature of children. Through close reading of set texts students engage in critical techniques applicable to most literature, for the best texts for children satisfy sensitive adult readers too.

This course covers in some detail theories and research on issues currently topical in Organizational Psychology from job motivation, leadership and stress to the future of work. The course provides an overview of the theorizing and research in organizational psychology and familiarizes students with the literature on aspects of behavior in the work-place.

There are two limits to our sustainable economic growth: one is the limited capacity of the natural environment to receive waste and the other is the limited quantity of non-renewable energy and resources. This course provides an overview of the status quo and policy solution to those limits. The first part of the course discusses the data and policy examples of environmental problems. The latter part discusses the reason why these environmental problems occur as well as how to solve these problems in terms of economics. 

Required Prerequisites: Basic Microeconomics and Basic Macroeconomics.

This course examines the use of psychological assessment methods and psychotherapeutic approaches in treating individuals with psychological difficulties. It explores major theoretical frameworks, practical techniques, and key issues in clinical practice, providing insight into the application of psychological theory to assessment and intervention.

This course introduces population issues, concepts, theories and methods by encompassing the entire field of demography, including principle and practice. It offers an overview of various aspects of demographic growth and transition relating to changes in health and mortality, fertility, migration, age structure, urbanization, family and household structure. This course examines the relations between population and development and their potential consequences from a sociological, economic and geographical perspective. Other topics include global variation in population size and growth, various demographic perspectives and their modern implications, environmental impacts, and population policy. Special emphasis is placed on demographic transition in Hong Kong and its neighborhood region.

This course is concerned with how people, governments, organizations, and businesses understand environmental problems, negotiate interests, create policies, and implement solutions. It blends environmental studies, political science, political theory, law, social psychology, and economics. Its central aim is to analyze the structures and mechanics of power, knowledge, solidarity, cooperation, disagreement, and conflict as they are operate in different societies and at different scales of social organization. 

Its focus is on Italian environmental politics, which provides a complex case study given the many urgent issues Italy has to confront (including accelerating climate change, energy dependence, new challenges to food and urban systems, pollution, and rapid ecosystemic transformation and landscape degradation), its peculiarities (including its morphology, its centrality in the Mediterranean region, the constant entanglements between natural and cultural heritage on its territory, and the long shadow of criminal activities profiting at the expense of localities), its pugnacious, multilayered politics and highly bureaucratized policy-making, high levels of internal socio-economic and cultural diversity, and its evolving international relations.   

The course asks questions like: who and what causes environmental problems, and how? Who is affected? Who decides what should be done, in whose name, and with what authority? What power do different actors have? What values guide environmental policy? How do national and local environmental policy-makers interact with regional and international institutions?