English

This course introduces the basics of Perl scripting as well as handling of bioinformatic data. Upon completion of the course, students should be familiar with basic usage of LINUX systems and experienced with Perl scripting. Students should be able to code basic scripts, handle external files, design data structure, execute regular expression tests, hash and array usage, use modules, create Perl subroutines and much more. The course features lectures and hands-on exercises every week.  

This course introduces students to the basic knowledge and understanding of the 19th and 20th century sub-Saharan African history.  This course will offer:

1. A basic narrative of sub-Saharan African history from 19th century to the present;

2. Detailed knowledge of the histories of selected African countries after assignment;

3. An understanding of the framework in which sub-Saharan Africa has interacted with the rest of the world throughout the last century;

4. A way to approach contemporary issues in African politics, society and culture through a historical lens;

5. Experience in interpreting sources, engaging in historical debates, delivering analytical arguments both orally and in written form.

The course allows students the opportunity to explore through embodied engagement a range of methods of movement practices in order to performatively understand place, movement, and cultures. Students study, through practice and seminar, some of the key writings and practices of movement and place in contemporary culture. This can include a range of contemporary and historical approaches to dance, choreography, physical theatre, somatic practice, and contemplative practices.

This course explores social themes in Taiwan’s recent history through the concept of “musicking.” It seeks to discover the communal meanings and effects created through a variety of sonic activities by people living on this island in recent history and contemporary times. Through careful listening and participation, the course aims to gain different perspectives and a more reflexive, embodied, and affective understanding of the social organizations and changes over the last 150 years that shape Taiwanese society today. 

This course does not to fully cover or define “Taiwanese music," but rather endeavors to understand how various themes--including community building, migrations and rights, settler-colonialism, colonial-modernity, politics and economy, ethnic identity, multi-culturalism and indigenous sovereignty, gender and sexualities, space and environments, and social activism--are voiced and enacted through diverse genres of music and dance, by the indigenous, Han, newly immigrated and visiting communities of people living in Taiwan. 

This course is an introduction to market design, a field of economics focusing on designing markets and mechanisms to allocate resources efficiently. The course covers various topics, including auction theory, matching markets, school choice, and kidney exchange. The course also explores the theoretical foundations of market design and examines how market design principles can be applied to real-world problems.    

Course requirements: basic game theory (keywords: (Bayes) Nash equilibrium, dominant strategy) and microeconomics.

Behavioral Ecology takes an evolutionary perspective to address the mechanisms and processes that have shaped the current form and utility of various aspects of animal behavior. The course includes lectures that cover major topics in Behavioral Ecology and introduce relevant research approaches; literature reading that provides a glimpse of cutting-edge research in the field, as well as a group project that allows students to experience the entire process of conducting a behavior study, practicing the theories and approaches learned from the lectures.    

Required Prerequisite: General Biology.  

Suggested Prerequisites: Ecology and Basic Statistics.  

This course covers major topics in deep-sea ecology, including the physical environments and history, sampling techniques, adaptations of deep-sea organisms, community composition and functions, major habitats, and anthropogenic effects. The course also explores Taiwan’s deep-sea environments and living resources.    

Ethnography as both the methodology and the set of methods by which anthropologists gather our data from the field has a long and controversial history emerging during European colonial expansion. Students critically examine the early ethnographic works, particularly in relation to Ireland as well as abroad. Contemporary texts comparatively show core issues and debates in how the "other" is written. As students move through these texts we engage with different ethnographic methods developing the student's own skills in collecting and curating social data.

In this course, students study contemporary issues of diversity and equality advocacy. Students explore the kinds of social movements and collective activism that have driven, shaped, or challenged human rights internationally, taking a bottom-up approach. Case studies are used for in-depth exploration of tensions between equality and diversity and to examine the forms, functions, and outcomes of collective action in relation to the cases considered. 

This course examines how working-class writers have represented themselves as well as how they have been represented by others. It pays due attention to the formal modes employed by working-class writing (realism, expressionism, surrealism, fantasy etc.) across a range of genres - fiction, poetry, drama, and film. The course moves from the 19th century to the present in order to understand how class identities change over time yet it also affirms how the reconstitution of class is not synonymous with its disappearance. The course focuses on key issues such as the relationship between culture and politics, the intellectual or writer as a socially mediated figure, solidarity and individuality, social mobility, gender, voice and vernacular, the politics of representation.