English

This is an introductory course for media and communication studies. It provides an overview of major theories concerning media and communication in order to analyze our everyday communications. Theories of interpersonal communication, persuasion, and mediated communication will be included.

This course seeks to answer the questions, How was the manorial system formed, and how did it mitigate incentive problems then? How were property rights of peasants formed and protected in early modern times? Finally, how was Japan industrialized after the Meiji Restoration? In the real world, the first best resource allocation, which is presumed to be realized under perfect competition, cannot be achieved anyway. Given the structure of informational asymmetry and other technological conditions, a better second best has been sought and has evolved over times. The aim of the course is to understand the economic development of Japan from the medieval times, through the Tokugawa period and the Meiji Restoration, to the industrial revolution in the late 19th century.

This course introduces the discipline of psychology as it applies to the study of crime and criminal justice; explores the contribution of psychology to the explanation, prediction, and reduction of crime; critically appreciates the strengths and limitations of the featured approaches and literature; and develops transferable communications and metacognitive skills.

Most processes in nature are complex and dynamical. This is also true for many problems encountered by engineers and scientists in their professional life. In this course students get tools to analyse such dynamical systems. They learn to determine if, when, and how chaotic behavior occurs. The course focuses on applications in fields such as physics, biology, chemistry, and engineering. The previous experience of the participants is taken into account and made use of in the course and the examples studied.

This course examines the evolving economic linkages between Singapore and India in a post-Cold War setting and attempts to explain the factors that have led to their enhanced economic collaboration. It uses concepts such as economic regionalism, Singapore's regionalization policy, and India's ''Look East'' policies to explain the confluence of national interests that has enhanced bilateral economic ties between both countries. In particular, it examines bilateral collaboration in infrastructure developments such as ports and telecommunications and service industries such as airline and tourism to explain the successes and problems of bilateral economic collaboration. 

The so-called “Marshall Plan” was only a four-year-program, and yet, it looms large in public memory, especially in Western Europe. This is not a coincidence: The influence that the US government had on the reconstruction of Western Europe after World War II came not only in the form of financial investments or material aid. The European Recovery Program (ERP) has also been considered ‘the largest single propaganda operation… ever seen in peacetime’ (Ellwood 2010, 113). This seminar is centered around questions like: What is the image that the US wanted to project during the Marshall Plan years, and why? What did these images, of the US, of Europe, and of the other, look like and how were they perceived? The seminar will be divided into two parts. Part I provides a historical and conceptual frame: It examines the motives behind Marshall Plan ‘aid' and traces the image of the US as ‘a benevolent nation’ (McCrisken and Pepper 2005, 89). Further, it introduces students to historical debates and perceptions of Americanization, and contrasts different conceptualizations of influence, ranging from cultural imperialism to ‘cultural transfer’ (Gienow-Hecht (2000), ‘Westernization’ (Nehring 2004), or ‘soft power’ (Nye 2004). Part II of the seminar will be dedicated to the actual (graphic) images that the US produced during the Marshall Plan years, especially propaganda films. Building on concepts and methods developed in the field of Visual Culture, students will learn to “read” images as primary sources and interpret them within the historical frame of the early Cold War.

This course introduces how games serve as a medium for communicating philosophical ideas. The course answers questions such as what is freedom? Are moral dilemmas possible? and What is reality? Equally, philosophy can shed light on the nature of games. For instance, can games be art? What is skill and luck? What is the nature of artificial intelligence? This course serves to explore some of these issues, using games and philosophical texts in tandem to explore various issues about what it is to be a human, and what it is to be a gamer.

The course deals with substantive, procedural and political issues relating to international criminal justice, its origins, reach, legitimacy, and articulation with (post-) conflict management and peace making. It covers historical and recent international and national efforts undertaken to address these crimes. After presenting the framework and principles of international criminal justice, the course discusses contemporaneous issues. Experts and practitioners contribute to equipping students with the tools necessary to understand the role and impact of justice in international affairs.

This course provides an introduction to demography focusing on developing basic demography methods related to the measurement of vital events. These methods are then applied to study empirically (and theoretically) how demographic and economic changes interact with each other over time. Topics include measures of and economic and social determinants of fertility, mortality, and migration; as well as macro- and microeconomic causes and consequences of demographic transitions.