Sociology

The course covers key aspects such as website analysis, game design, and avatar interactions. Students learn to measure and analyze digital engagement via metrics and analysis and to understand and evaluate ethical and privacy issues. They attend a series of lectures from world-renowned scientists to get a deeper understanding of how the algorithms behind digital engagement work and what data they use. They identify approaches to maximize the effectiveness of media engagement in areas such as immersive games, and social media, and evaluate case studies with respect to digital engagement usability and effectiveness.

This course introduces the sub-discipline of economic sociology and discusses how this field is related both to other branches of sociology and to economics. It introduces core concepts and approaches in contemporary economic sociology, particularly sociological perspectives on markets, money, and the social embeddedness of these phenomena. The course also analyzes various types of social and economic phenomena by means of economic sociological concepts and theories. It is structured around the reading of Mark Granovetter’s SOCIETY AND ECONOMY: FRAMEWORK AND PRINCIPLES (2017), which in an exemplary fashion rehearses many of the key concepts in contemporary economic sociology. The readings are supplemented with research papers that exemplify some of the issues dealt with in the book as well as additional concepts and perspectives in economic sociology. In parallel with the reading of course literature, students develop an economic sociological analysis of a case of their own choosing, applying and discussing core concepts in economic sociology.

This course exposes undergraduate students to the fundamentals of qualitative and quantitative research methods in sociology. It discusses conceptualization; operationalization; variables; hypotheses, and sampling. The course also covers types of research as well as fundamentals of qualitative and quantitative data analysis.

This course explores literary criticism and theory in Latin America and the theoretical foundations and critical and methodological contributions proposed for the study of Latin American literature. Topics include: Latin American literature in the 19th century and the problem of the formation of literature-- originality, independence, and nation; the professionalization of critical practice-- between tradition and modernity, nationalism and cosmopolitanism, and originality and dependence; theory and criticism of the testimony genre-- the problem of genres in literary theory, forms and types of testimony, subject and voices in testimony, and fiction in testimony.

This course introduces issues and ‘social problems’ in Singapore society from a sociocultural and political-economic perspective. It examines social trends, problems, and phenomena from a critical and multidisciplinary standpoint to understand their explicit and underlying causes as well as impact on society. The course encompasses separate lectures covering topics such as social class, race, gender, and ageing in Singapore.