English

This course provides an overview of the various forms of popular culture in East Asia. It focuses on the question of how the rise of East Asian popular culture reflects the desire for "modernity" and "modernization" in each East Asian country and affects the interactions among them. The course explores numerous popular cultural forms such as music, film, TV drama, manga/anime, novels, entertainment, food, fashion and design in Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The course also examines the increasing global fascination of or craze for East Asian popular culture and how such East Asian "soft power" has inspired and transformed the global aesthetics and popular imagination or understanding of East Asia. 

The world's knowledge is defined by hybridity between oral traditions and written texts. This course is an introduction to Scotland's rich oral/aural traditions of song, storytelling, instrumental music, dance, and folklore. Key concepts and theories relating to the interaction between orality and print, transmission (sharing) of oral material, and intangible cultural heritage as defined by UNESCO are explored in the context of modern (cultural) ethnology. Students learn fieldwork techniques, archival research skills and oral history interviewing. Themes can include children's song, ballads, political song, Robert Burns and Walter Scott, Highland bagpipes, Gaelic folktales, and Scottish legends, and special material is drawn from printed collections and the School of Scottish Studies Archives.

This course examines the social, economic, and political processes that maintain hierarchies, drawing on both classical and contemporary theories. By exploring topics such as class, power, race, gender, elites, and cultural capital, the course highlights how inequality shapes opportunities, behaviors, and outcomes. The course investigates both historical and contemporary mechanisms that create and perpetuate stratification, drawing on empirical evidence and theoretical frameworks from sociology and related disciplines. In addition to academic inquiry, the course fosters critical observation and visual analysis, encouraging students to interpret and critique depictions of inequality in everyday life and in cultural media. By connecting abstract concepts to real-world phenomena, students gain a nuanced understanding of the dynamics of inequality and the tools to engage with contemporary debates. The course equips students to reflect on possible solutions to reduce disparities and promote equity in various social contexts.

This course examines the role of popular distrust (e.g., perceptions of government corruption, waste, abuse) in contemporary democratic and electoral-authoritarian regimes. It probes contradictions in how scholars approach distrust within democracy. It explores how distrust gets politicized and interacts with institutions and inequalities to drive participation and political violence; reactions to public spending, taxation, public-health risk and conspiracy theories; and voting behavior among groups who feel threatened (economically, culturally). By foregrounding questions of power and state capacity—and what remains of them—in the minds of voters facing new social risks, this course offers a path to harness the mobilizing force of distrust within a neo-republican framework.

The course builds upon ECO1011S and provides the analytical tools and formal models to explain the behavior of output, inflation, employment, interest rates, and other economic aggregates. These tools are used to understand current economic issues, forecast the behavior of the economy, and assess the impact of policy choices. The course allows students to understand the behavior of households, firms, governments and Central Banks. It starts with analyzing the short run behavior of the economy and then moves on to explore the open economy and exchange rates. Finally, it looks at the long run and assesses the role of technology and population growth on aggregate economic growth using the Solow growth model. Course entry requirements: ECO1010, ECO1011 and MAM1010 (or an equivalent) or MAM1031F or MAM1032S. 

The audio-visual essay (or video essay or videographic criticism of videographic film and moving image studies) is a prominent 21st Century methodology and form of pedagogy and research in film and media studies. With its roots in a variety of moving image practices, from video installation to fan vids, the audio-visual essay has emerged to occupy a range of forms (supercuts, desktop documentaries, deformative, poetic, explanatory, to name a few) and is produced by a range of practitioners in differing contexts. This course explores this variety while foregrounding what the audio-visual essay offers the film and media scholar, in both theory and practice. Students engage with key audio-visual essays and scholarship in the field as well as creating their own audio-visual work in a series of practice-based workshops. No prior experience with video editing or video essay making is necessary.

This course explores the formation and development of educational thought throughout Western history. It analyzes the influence that the rise of modern democracy - and the social, philosophical, and political transformations it entailed - had on our vision of education. As the Church's authority gradually declined in the eighteenth century with the emergence of Enlightenment ideas, new ways of thinking about the role of the state and the purpose of education emerged. Education became increasingly tied to political life and was seen as a central element for the development and stability of modern democratic societies. A central theme throughout the course, therefore, concerns the political function of education: Who should control education? Why should the state intervene? For whom is it intended? The course studies the way various thinkers have thought about the purpose of education, whether it is to shape moral character, to prepare citizens for civic life, to train workers for economic productivity or to foster personal emancipation and freedom. By studying the long and complex history of educational thought in its political and social contexts, this course offers an invaluable training for thinking critically and flexibly about the political challenges of our own time.

This course introduces undergraduate students to the labs in the chemistry department. Through the lab visit experience as a small group, students learn the diverse aspects of research in cutting-edge chemistry. Groups will visit 9 labs. Students produce two term-reports and a summary regarding lab visits. 

This course introduces key concepts and theories in organizational behavior (OB), examining human behavior and behavioral issues in organizations from both individual and organizational perspectives. Topics include perception and decision-making, motivation, team dynamics, leadership, power and influence, and organizational culture. Through application of OB theories, the course develops the ability to critically and creatively analyze management issues at the individual, team, and organizational levels, evaluate risks and benefits of alternative solutions, and apply concepts to real-world business problems. Emphasis is placed on clear and professional communication, effective functioning in multicultural organizational settings, and reflection on personal strengths and areas for development within organizational contexts.