South & SE Asian Studies

This course introduces students to the geography of Thailand, its natural resources, its flora and fauna and the human response to it. It covers the physical, topographical, and administrative geography of the Thai nation-state and the importance of spatial analysis.

This course weaves together social themes and historical processes for introductory acquaintance with the people of South Asia through the lens of musical performance and its allied arts. While the focus is on the Indian Subcontinent, which largely falls into the nation-state of India, the course also thematically explores case studies from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. This course does not aim for coverage of all regions in South Asia, but rather introduces key concepts that can be applied to open up a window to understanding contemporary South Asian society and its diaspora.

Over the twentieth century, the most famous exports of South Asian music for global audiences have been the “classical” music and dance traditions of north and south India, Bollywood movie soundtracks, and ecstatic devotional singing such as qawwali and kirtan. This course engages students in appreciating these performances as sophisticated art forms; familiarizing them with a diverse range of folk and popular genres, but also delving into the historical and social processes that shape them into the way their exponents and audiences understand them today. 

The course examines how contemporary performers reenact theorization from ancient treatises; how colonialism, nationalism, and migration reconfigured people’s engagements with musical performing arts, and how social groupings such as caste, class, religion, gender, and sexuality shape the way people make and listen to music across different localities in South Asia.

 

This interdisciplinary course explores the diversity of the visual and performing arts in Southeast Asia, including ancient temple art, living traditional art (such as textiles, puppets, weapons, painting, theatre, and music), as well as modern and contemporary art. The focus is on understanding the arts as they are experienced in local contexts; and on change, cross-cultural inspirations, and global flows, in the past and today. In tutorials, students learn to play traditional music. On an overseas fieldtrip, students explore the arts in a particular area and interact with artists.

This includes an opportunity to intern with organizations across industries, including tech firms, non-profit and community-based social enterprises, retail brands, legal services, and more. 

This course introduces the art of Thai painting and drawing through an analysis of both scholarly texts and hands‐on sessions. The course provides visual journey through all the major periods of Thai classical art. Emphasis is also be placed on regional and folk styles of painting as well as with new forms of traditional art. The course focuses primarily on the Rama 3 style of Thai painting as developed in nineteenth century Bangkok and which has become the most common form of Thai classical art seen in the country today. Students enrolled in the class will be taught not only how to appreciate traditional Thai painting but also how to draw, create compositions, and critique art works.

This course provides an introduction to the history and establishment of ASEAN community. The overview of ASEAN countries in social, political, economic, cultural and ideological aspects.

In this course, lectures focus on how India is adapting to rapid technological advancements, fostering innovation and preparing for the future of work. The discussions highlight how emerging technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being harnessed ethically and inclusively to enhance education, health and governance.

This course introduces the making of modern Southeast Asia from the late colonial era through the Cold War through fiction and film. Fiction and films provide a means to access political history in an engaging way and for what they reveal about how outsiders as well as Southeast Asians themselves came to view the region. The course covers Southeast Asia integration into the global capitalist economy, national awakenings, colonial anxieties in the 1930s, World War II and the Japanese occupation, the Cold War and neocolonialism, the Vietnam War, and the promise of modernity.

This course examines the evolving economic linkages between Singapore and India in a post-Cold War setting and attempts to explain the factors that have led to their enhanced economic collaboration. It uses concepts such as economic regionalism, Singapore's regionalization policy, and India's ''Look East'' policies to explain the confluence of national interests that has enhanced bilateral economic ties between both countries. In particular, it examines bilateral collaboration in infrastructure developments such as ports and telecommunications and service industries such as airline and tourism to explain the successes and problems of bilateral economic collaboration.