National University of Singapore

This course traces the business history of Singapore from its origins as an East India Company outpost, as an entrepôt for regional and international trade routes to its current status as a global city and center for international finance and business. The course offers an introduction to business history and explores different case studies in the local context. These case studies range from ‘rags to riches' stories of early migrant communities, popular local brands, and present day entrepreneurs. Major topics include: trading communities, commodities, networks and migration, entrepreneurship, business culture, heritage, globalization, state, politics and business.

The course introduces students to important grammatical features of Classical Chinese. Lexical study and some knowledge of Chinese writing system will also be examined for their contribution to the understanding of Classical Chinese. The course focuses on the analysis of Pre-Qin literature. Classroom activities include lectures, group discussions and some take-home assignments. The course requires students to take a prerequisite.

This upper-level seminar course focuses on the history and historiography of the most consequential imperial nation-state in the world today, from its founding at the supposed end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 to the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre in 1989. After a brief, synoptic overview of modern Chinese history until 1989 in the first two weeks, students spend the rest of the semester working through chronologically and thematically the major periods and issues in PRC history.

This course introduces and develops a financial geography perspective, understood as the study of the spatiality of money and finance, and its implications for the economy, society, and nature. It introduces students to the complexity and controversy of financial globalization, vocabulary of finance, drawing on research relating to the global financial system, financial centers of London, New York, Shanghai, and Singapore, and their geographical footprint. 

This course introduces the students to the basics of quantitative finance and targets all students who have an interest in building a foundation in quantitative finance. Topics include term structure of interest rates, fixed income securities, risk aversion, basic utility theory, single-period portfolio optimization, basic option theory. Mathematical rigor will be emphasized. The course requires students to take prerequisites.

In this course, students gain a fundamental knowledge of microbiology, and the experimental tools used. The course focuses on microbes and techniques for studying them, through a combination of theoretical knowledge and hands-on experiments. Students examine the invisible world of microbes, investigating microbiomes of skin, soil and water, and exploring the role of probiotics. The course includes visits to a microbiology-related industry and witnessing real-world applications of their learnings. The course requires students to take General Biology as a prerequisite.

This course examines the influence and impact that magic and myth have in Southeast Asian society. Students examine the duality of magic as a norm and a taboo, and explore magic’s role in righting injustices, recording denied history, and gender inequality. Students conduct a comparative study between aspects of magic and mythmaking between Southeast Asia and other regions in the world. The course applies themes and theories from academic material to the real world. 

This course introduces Asian, European, and American material from the late nineteenth century to nearly the present day, concentrating on social and cultural themes such as industrialization, colonialism, science and race, technology and war, computers and global telecommunications and biotechnology and the human genome project. It is taught as a series of cases illustrating important events and multiple themes. The proposition that modern science and technology have been 'socially constructed', reflecting political and cultural values as well as the state of nature, is examined closely. The course includes theoretical material and an empirical focus.

This course introduces the diversity of crime fiction and film, with a dedicated focus on the linkages among different geographical regions and cultural traditions. By examining common or similar plot elements and artistic techniques, the course conveys how authors and filmmakers employ them in tales about crime to arouse audience interest. Students sample Western detective fiction and Chinese court-case fiction, as well as their adaptations in Japan and Latin America. The emphasis on grasping the tenets of adaptation will also be imparted through analyzing the relations between print media and moving images.

This course examines various historical networks that flow across the Malay world from the 11th to the 21st centuries. It introduces students to the evolution, characteristics, and impact of commercial, diasporic, political, religious, educational, and media networks on the lives of Malays and other communities in the region. The three themes that recur throughout the course are: how networks are formed and sustained; how they interact with one another; how insights from different disciplines can aid in a more holistic study of these networks.