Course Catalogue

What makes life worth living? Which people are the happiest? Can money buy happiness and wellbeing? How can we maximize our wellbeing? This innovative course is designed to answer these questions and more by examining the fundamentals of happiness and wellbeing. You will also have an opportunity to develop a range of evidence-based practical skills […]

This course cross-lists with Vietnam Studies. It will allow students to replace Vietnam in the context of Southeast Asia, explore its relationship with its neighbors and new perspectives of its modern historical development. It will help Vietnam Studies students understand regional differences in culture, cultural values, social attitudes, and approaches to history and politics.This course […]

The title of the course suggests two important themes that will orient our discussions and readings: First, how does literature reflect and represent the super/natural world? Second, how do those representations differ across cultures and geographies? What does that tell us about human relationships to the world around us, as well as how heterogenous those […]

This course will brief the key processes of hydrology and meteorology, two intertwined Earth-science disciplines that focus on the terrestrial water cycle. The students will first be introduced to the fundamental sciences governing the climate and hydrological systems, represented by a wide range of variables such as precipitation, wind, air pressure, evaporation, (sub)surface water, and […]

With its expanding economy and ever-deeper international integration China is playing an increasingly significant role in the world affairs. Under such circumstances it is nearly impossible to foresee further international developments without understanding how China approaches the world and what shapes its behavior. How can we make sense of how China makes its foreign policy […]

This video and film production course will introduce students to the basic elements of recording and combining image and sound using various kinds of digital equipment. We will also explore important technical and theoretical concepts associated with the moving image, such as editing, dialectic, representation, and protest. We will cover basic narrative structure and script […]

Computer vision is gaining its applications from facial recognition, human pose tracking, and interactive entertainment to medical imaging and autonomous vehicles. This course provides students with fundamental concepts in computer vision including image formation, camera modelling, feature extraction, motion estimation and tracking, and classification. It also introduces basic methods for applications such as camera calibration, […]

This course introduces students to the modern and contemporary American stage since 1900. Students will read/watch canonical plays by Lillian Hellman, Tennessee Williams, David Mamet, and Arthur Miller, etc., and learn to appreciate theatrical and literary devices and American dramaturgy of the 20th and the early 21st centuries. Besides the selected canonical plays, students will […]

The Student Research Workshops aims to develop students independent research skills to prepare for the Capstone, write a proposal for their Capstone project as well as future research projects. There will be 12 weekly meetings, 90 minutes each. There will be four sections running in parallel by each faculty listed above. Students can participate in […]

In this second semester segment of our course, students will have the opportunity to develop and disseminate novel research projects which examine several legacies of the American/Vietnam War. Building upon Fall semester’s “deep dive” into key historical events of the American/Vietnam War, as well as existing scholarly and creative interdisciplinary works examining war legacies from […]

This course explores the beginnings of globalization and the coming together of all the worlds populated continents, but particularly Europe, Africa, and the Americas, the continents bordering the Atlantic Ocean, in the wake of the Columbian encounter of 1492. Special themes include legal changes, unfree and semi-free labor, religion and secularization, cultural hybridity, gender and […]

Since its first episode aired in 2009, RuPauls Drag Race has become a global phenomenon. Not without criticism, the show has been at the center of many debates surrounding the conversation about queerness, authenticity, and the commodification of queer identity. In an age where queerness, like the show, is as ubiquitous McDonalds corporatized branding of […]