English

This course is to help the students to

Understand concepts and theories of political parties in the United States.

Understand the various functions of political parties in the United States.

Understand and explain how partisan polarization has contributed to the crisis of democracy and the crisis of governance in the United States.

Analyze how partisan polarization in the United States would affect Sino-US relations.

The United States is one of the most important countries in the western world. Its domestic partisan politics have global implications, affecting the Sino-US relationship. This course is intended to give an overview of the scholarly works and popular debates about political parties in the United States. Topics include the theories and the development of party system in the United States, party organization, the role of parties in mobilizing voters, party and governance, partisan polarization, parties and foreign policies, and party politics and Sino-US relations.

This course reviews algorithms and machine learning techniques such string pattern matching algorithms, PCA, decision tree, artificial neural networks, support vector machines, and frequent pattern mining techniques. It also reviews computational tools for algorithms and machine learning (mostly with Tensorflow, PyTorch), and surveys how these techniques are used for practical applications.

This course provides an advanced understanding of the python programming language and its main features through various applications in many fields. Students use procedural and object-oriented programming language concepts in real programs; combine programming techniques to solve problems of varying degrees of difficulty in applied fields; find and understand programming language documentation to learn new information needed to solve programming problems; and implement problem solving strategies. Course topics include input/output in Python, classes, databases management with Python, computer simulations, and agent-based modeling. Prerequisites: an introductory course on python programming or similar language (e.g. Java, C, etc.).

This course examines how GIS is used to address and analyze pressing health problems from the geographical perspective. It covers such topics as theoretical and practical issues, simple disease mapping, disease pattern analysis, and environmental association through spatia modeling techniques. 

This course examines institutional change in non-democratic and emergent and established democratic states. Students develop an understanding of democratic transition and consolidation (or a lack of them), and the breadth of institutional types in global politics.

This course examines social and political issues involving Indigenous Peoples in Canada, historic and contemporary. It covers an examination of the concept and political condition of Indigeneity in relation to questions of knowledge and place; the problem of state power and violence for Indigenous peoples within Canada; and the Indigenous political action as a response to the state projects of incorporation and dispossession. 

In this course, students study literature produced in the context of settler nations, focusing in particular on writing and visual art from Canada, Latin/South America, Australia, and New Zealand. Students look at writers and artists of settler descent as well as indigenous and immigrant narratives and how each of them negotiate issues of place, race, and belonging. Texts include poetry, novels, and short fiction, as well as theoretical engagements with settler colonialism, landscape painting, and histories of migration.

This course will introduce students to important concepts, processes, and debates in World History (and Global History) from ancient times to the end of the 15th century. A fundamental goal of this course is to recognize that the premodern global past was not a Eurocentric phenomenon. It will de-center Europe in it's study of the past and will pursue a greater plurality of perspectives than what historians have often traditionally examined. Students will be introduced to the practice of history: our goal is not to absorb random historical “facts” but to learn how to think historically and to strive to understand how past people understood the world around them. Throughout the course, students will reflect on the enduring relevance of the premodern past to their own lives and society in the 21st century.

This course introduces factors that affect the Earth's climate system, oceans, landforms, and living things. The primary emphasis is on earth’s paleoenvironment, geomorphology, and the study of landforms and processes in different environments. The key landscape characteristics of Asia are covered, along with crucial environmental challenges.