National University of Singapore

This course provides an introduction to political and economic geography. The course advances two key arguments, namely that politics and the economy are (1) tightly intertwined and (2) innately geographical phenomenon. It explores how politics, the economy, and the environment are constituted through different sets of actors and their interrelationships. It mobilizes core geographical concepts, notably place, space, scale and territory, along with notions of power and resistance, to offer a distinctive perspective on processes of uneven development in the contemporary world.

This course explores how forbidden romance —amorous engagement in fiction and reality—became the most volatile form of cultural expression in the modern world of revolution and enlightenment. Drawing on literary masterpieces across China and the West, the course examines how the modern lure of free will and emancipated subjectivity drove Chinese intellectuals, Sinophone writers, and their Western contemporaries to redefine terms of affect, such as love, desire, passion, loyalty, and sacrifice. The course also explores how the moral and political consequences of affect were evoked in such a way as to traverse or fortify consensual boundaries and their literary manifestations.

This course introduces the fundamentals of tropical horticulture, with emphasis on the situation in Singapore, a tropical garden city. Topics include plant growth and development and factors affecting them; pests and diseases and their control; growing media; plant nutrition; tropical urban horticulture of ornamentals; vegetable and fruit crops, and native plants; vertical and roof gardening; turf grass management; landscape design; organic methods and impact of horticulture on conservation. Field trips, demonstrations, and projects enable students to enjoy hands-on experience in cultivating plants.

In this course, students study postcolonial regions in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. The course discusses questions such as: what makes a region; who makes a region; how has the experience of colonialism shaped the region; what are the models of regional cooperation and integration, and whose models are they; and how do regions interact with postcolonial global structures and dynamics? Students are encouraged to compare different regional experiences and draw from this breadth of knowledge to critically evaluate the concepts and theories discussed in class.

This course examines the skills and techniques to effectively manage digital products from cradle to grave. It covers the core aspects of digital product management, from product strategy, planning and development, to product launch and support. The course address issues of managing an evolving digital product over its life cycle and using data from customer insights and competitive analysis for ongoing product iterations. Case studies and hands-on experience are provided. At the end of the course, students are able to effectively execute the product manager’s role in managing digital products.

This course introduces students to contemporary plant biology. It focuses on the flowering plants (angiosperms), one of the most successful plant groups that sustains all life on earth, and examines how they are organized, grow, and respond to the environment. A major theme the course highlights is that plant growth is highly dynamic – plants control growth and development through integrating intrinsic and external signals to best adapt to the changing surroundings. The concepts and techniques of gene manipulation for studying plants, as well as their applications in plant biotechnology, are also discussed.

The course introduces the basic concepts in search and knowledge representation as well as several sub-areas of artificial intelligence. It focuses on covering the essential concepts in AI. The course covers Turing test, blind search, iterative deepening, production systems, heuristic search, A* algorithm, minimax and alpha-beta procedures, predicate and first-order logic, resolution refutation, non-monotonic reasoning, assumption-based truth maintenance systems, inheritance hierarchies, the frame problem, certainly factors, Bayes' rule, frames and semantic nets, planning, learning, natural language, vision, and expert systems and LISP.

This course introduces the language and culture of the Hispanic world. This course is designed to help students develop the four linguistic skills in Spanish as well as to expand their cultural competency. The course focuses on the acquisition of basic structures in present tense, which is developed and reinforced in subsequent courses. This course is meant for students with no prior knowledge of the target language.

This course introduces the science of ecology and its role in understanding environmental processes. The course covers both the major concepts and their real-world applications. Topics include models in ecology, organisms in their environment, evolution and extinction, life history strategies, population biology, ecological interactions, community ecology, ecological energetics, nutrient cycling, and landscape ecology.

This course introduces information technologies (IT) in organizations and the interplay between IT, work, management, and organizations. The course examines the impacts of modern IT and the related artificial intelligence (AI) technologies on knowledge workers, teamwork, work design, management practices, and the organization. The course discusses the multifaceted roles IT can play to support communication, collaboration, and organizational improvements in operations, planning, and decision making. Students learn to apply strategic thinking to identify opportunities for IT-enabled innovations and issues involving information systems (IS) adoption and deployment.