National University of Singapore

This course examines the ways in which theory can be used as an interpretive practice in literary criticism and how literary scholars think, read, and write with theory. It focuses on how to generate and sustain a dialogue between literary and theoretical texts and trains the ability to identify the resonances and tensions that exist between these distinct registers of writing. Through the overlapping exigences of race, gender, and ecology, the course explores how theory—as critically engaged with literature—might clarify and fundamentally transform how to make sense of the world.

This course is the continuation of the intermediate level and serves as a bridge to further study of Spanish language and culture. Students work on refining their writing and speaking skills by engaging in a variety of integrated language tasks. Nuance grammar concepts will be explored in complex sentences and structures using discourse markers and connectors.

This course examines how optimization principles are of undisputed importance in modern design and system operation and illustrates how algorithms can be designed from mathematical theories for solving optimization problems. Topics include fundamentals, unconstrained optimization: one-dimensional search, Newton-Raphson method, gradient method, constrained optimization: Lagrangian multipliers method, Karush-Kuhn-Tucker optimality conditions, Lagrangian duality and saddle point optimality conditions, and convex programming: Frank-Wolfe method. The course requires students to take prerequisites.

This course deepens understanding of Singapore history through an examination of different representations of history: academic scholarship, social memory and oral history, heritage. Each section incorporates fundamental concepts and debates behind the production of history, together with the application of these ideas to specific Singapore case studies. At the end of the course, students will be able to critically analyze Singapore history as a whole in terms of historiography and heritage studies, whilst gaining familiarity with the treatment of key issues in Singapore's past.

This course introduces students to the basic concepts of fluid mechanics. Starting with fluid properties and fluid statics, students’ progress to the conservation laws which allows them to analyze various fluid problems encountered in engineering practice. The second half of the course introduces students to basic fluid flow concepts. Students learn how to apply the prior concepts and laws to pipe flows, hydraulic machinery and pipe networks. At the end students should be able to estimate frictional losses for flows in pipelines, design pumping systems and apply the obtained knowledge to other engineering applications.

This seminar explores China's place within the larger maritime world, beginning with the voyages of Ming dynasty eunuch Zheng He and culminating in the South China Sea dispute. The course focuses partly on states and societies that claimed China’s coastal regions and the oceanic spaces surrounding it, and partly on the networks, institutions, and economies linking China to a wider maritime sphere. Readings will be drawn from both primary sources and scholarship on topics such as the Zheng organization on Taiwan, steamships, overseas migration, fishing, smuggling, and reform and opening in the late 20th century.

This course explores the common ground between the discipline of history and art history by considering images as historical evidence, exploring both Western and Asian art from 5th century BC to the 20th century. Students acquire the conceptual tools to understand the meaning of images and read visual narratives as historical texts. Topics include art and democracy; art and empire; art and world religions; art and the modern world; art and absolutism; art and Imperialism; art and industrialization; art and dictatorship; and art and consumer society. 

This course examines the celebrated Chinese novel Journey to the West - the story about the dispossessed, marginalized, and demonized, Journey to the West exemplifies a sort of plurilingual, multicultural cosmopolitanism that is deeply resonate with the world today. Drawing on recent movements in literary studies—ecocriticism, gender and sexuality, food studies, animal-human interspecies interaction, the bureaucratic turn—students explore in the text English translation and study its global reception and why the novel continues to be popular.

This course introduces students to the world of poetry, which includes both composition: inspiration, methods, forms and reception: reviewing poetry, statements of poetics, writing for poetry outlets, and public readings. Students examine shifting conventions, evaluation, and how poets write about poetry. Coursework involves a combination of written assignments, peer workshops, and public readings.

This course introduces the modelling and analysis of time series data. A computer package is used to analyze real data sets. Topics include stationary time series, ARIMA models, estimation and forecasting with ARIMA models. The statistical software R is used to implement these methods on real-world data sets. The course requires students to take prerequisites.