Asian Studies

This new course in the Exploring Taiwan series introduces agriculture and food biotechnology. The course begins with Taiwanese traditional products and methods, such as salt production in salterns and its transformation; rice, a staple food; tea, and exotic fruit crops grown by cultivation technology. Then, the course introduces fermented foods and how microbial fermentation is utilized in food technology, and orients on food safety monitoring and the use of plants metabolites for pharmaceutical purposes. To gain insight on how to develop business ideas and products, the course features a guest speaker CEO from a renowned food company. Students also participate in a factory tour to experience modern plant operation and maintenance, as well as their research and development. 

This course introduces the history of Korean Americans from the early 20th-century to the present. Students explore how major social, political, and economic forces in the United States, Korea, and around the world—such as immigration law, the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the U.S. civil rights movement, feminism, and religion—impact the ways in which Korean Americans develop their identities and communities. Using a variety of sources, including oral histories, autobiographies, photographs, music, and film, the course investigates how Korean Americans have and continue to negotiate the intersections of race, class, gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and sexuality. 

In this interdisciplinary seminar students conduct research in small groups and prepare reports from a comparative perspective, especially a comparative analysis of Chinese and Western views. Research topics include current affairs; political, economic, societal, moral, technological, and art issues; university, Hong Kong, and global issues; and developments and discoveries in various fields. The course objectives are to conduct collaborative research, develop an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective, and achieve cross-cultural team building skills. Students prepare written reports, make an oral class presentation, and participate in discussion of the presentations. Assessment: oral presentation (20%), a 6,000- to 10,000-page written report (50%), and participation in class discussion (30%).

This is a historical survey of three thousand years of Chinese visual arts with emphasis on painting. The course covers the historical transformation of Chinese art from the classical towards the modern and contemporary, as well as key aesthetic and philosophical conceptions underpinning the production of visual arts in the Chinese culture. In addition, the course provides some comparative studies of Chinese and Western visual arts. There will also be a component introducing the special linkages between the history of Singapore art and the Chinese context.