English

This course examines the history and practice of electronic music from the early twentieth century to the present. It will explore a wide range of genres—from experimental forms like musique concrète and drone composition to popular traditions like rock and various forms of electronic dance music (EDM)—as well as the evolution of instruments, techniques, and lines of influence. Through the course students will develop a broad perspective of the history of the field and an understanding of musical techniques that will meaningfully inform their own listening and creative practices. The primary goal of the course is to establish an understanding of the development of electronic music, including prominent composers, musicians, technologies, instruments, aesthetic ideas, and genres. A secondary goal is linked to the methods and organization of the course as they set out these points of orientation. The course will introduce a wide and representative sampling of different sources for the study of electronic music: in addition to recordings of musical works and performances, these sources include artists’ statements, historical surveys, documentary film, science fiction, specialized musicological study, music criticism, writings on aesthetics and the philosophy of art, and virtual software for modeling analogue synthesis.

This course covers econometrics techniques for analyzing data to answer various economic and financial questions. The course introduces the nature of econometrics and economic data, then examines various types of regression analysis.

This is a largely practical course, which develops experimental skills. A selection of practicals and follow-up sessions designed for students taking Pharmacology PHAR0004 provide reinforcement of the material in that course. Students learn to conduct simple experiments on in vitro preparations and present their findings in a written account, use animals in medical research from the standpoint of animal welfare and ethics; set-up tissue preparations and use transducers and computers to measure tension or length changes in smooth muscle preparations; understand the experimental conditions required to maintain tissues in vitro and of the requirements to achieve stimulation of nerves using pulse generators; perform dilutions of stock drug solutions and calculate appropriate volumes to add to organ baths to achieve the desired final concentrations; follow experimental protocols accurately to generate reproducible results; and quantify results and present them clearly in graphical form.

This course focuses on the afterlife of a selection of controversial tragedies, which shocked their original audiences in Elizabethan and Jacobean London as much as they continue to challenge and entertain us today, both on the contemporary stage and on screen. The course focuses equally on the original context within which these tragedies were first written and performed, and on the history of their reception, with special emphasis on cinematic adaptations spanning over the late 20th and the early 21st centuries. 

This course provides and understanding of group theory and some of its applications. In this course, students work with cyclic groups, permutation groups, dihedral groups, equivalence classes, cosets, Lagrange's theorem, and direct product groups; are introduced to quotient groups, construct the groups of low order, learn about the conjugation map, and construct conjugacy classes; meet the classical matrix groups, which are examples of continuous (or Lie) groups; work with group homomorphisms, isomorphisms, automorphisms, normal subgroups, kernels of homomorphisms, and prove and make extensive use of the group homomorphism theorem (also known as the first isomorphism theorem); learn about the semi-direct product and semi-direct product groups; construct and investigate the Euclidean group; investigate the geometric structure of some of the classical matrix groups, in particular SU(2)and SO(3); work with group actions on sets, stabilisers and orbits; and prove the Sylow theorems.

This course explores how different kinds of outposts became key sites for directing and negotiating the different forms of US empire, from the early days of colonization to the recent past. Each week students explore a different kind of outpost, often focusing on one particular beachhead of American power. Likewise, they analyze the outsized influence of Americans abroad and assess how the creation and maintenance of different kinds of outposts helped form the structure and sinews of the US empire. This course combines different strands of transnational history, particularly the histories of empire, capitalism, and ecology. 

This course is focused on the topic of infant and early childhood cognition, and draws on our knowledge of the developing brain and findings from neuroimaging. It begins with an introduction to the field of infant cognitive development, an overview of brain development, and current methodology for studying infants and their brains. The course covers a new topic each week, including both domains of knowledge (objects, number, faces, social reasoning, morality) and mechanisms of early learning (information expectation, information seeking, statistical learning). The course provides a state of the art on cognitive development and focuses on the most recent research that has transformed our understanding of what and how infants learn.

This course examines the East Asian philosophical and religious traditions of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism both from an internal perspective – how did each tradition represent its own values, goals, practices and methods of devotion – and external perspectives – how did the traditions spread across the East Asian subcontinent, assimilate with traditional cultural norms, and influence art and architecture. In addition to these so-called “three teachings,” we also discuss popular religion in South-east Asia, new combinatory religions such as Aum Shinrikyo and Cao Đài, and the impact of East Asian religious ideas on the West. We will also address religion in modern times, understanding how traditions continue to carve out roles for themselves in a secular world.

This course examines the study of ethical considerations and issues in public policy making and implementation. The course addresses the question of how (best) to design and implement ethical public policy within a certain societal context? Students examine the different ethical perspectives, issues as well as tensions/dilemmas that arise during the public policy making and implementation phases in key policy sectors primarily, but not exclusively, within the Asia-Pacific region. These policy sectors are prominent sectors that are seen in many Asia-pacific societies, including the education, economic, housing, social and environmental sectors. Lectures focus on delivery of relevant concepts and perspectives relating to ethics in public policy making and implementation. Lectures in the first part of the course center around concepts and perspectives on ethics in public policy making and implementation. Lectures in the second part of the course situate the concepts and perspectives covered in the first part of the course in specific case studies that reflect key policy sectors. Extending from these lectures, the tutorials provide students with the opportunity to apply what is learned in the lectures and to analyze and evaluate the ethical considerations, dilemmas and tensions that arise within the respective public policy sectors under study. This course has a pre-requisite of Introduction to Public Administration and Policy (HA1003). 

This course provides an introduction to sets and functions: defining sets, subsets, intersections and unions; injections, surjections, bijections.; compositions and inverses of functions; an introduction to mathematical logic and proof: logical operations, implication, equivalence, quantifiers, converse and contrapositive; proof by induction and contradiction, examples of proofs. These ideas are then applied in the context of the real numbers to make rigorous arguments with sequences and series and develop the notions of convergence and limits.