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 […]

This course engages with questions related to the economy as a whole. It starts with the analysis of the structure and operation of the goods, financial, and labor markets. The interaction between these markets is analyzed using the IS_LM ad AS-AD models/ We discuss the topics of inflation capital accumulation and the aggregate production function […]

In both English- and Vietnamese-language accounts of the Vietnam War, the Republic of Vietnam (or South Vietnam) has long been overlooked or dismissed as an illegitimate puppet government largely created and propped up by the United States. Nonetheless, both the First Republic (1955-1963) and the Second Republic (1967-1975) had millions of supporters and were shaped […]

How can we predict the future? Can we measure how likely an event could happen? Weather turns bad or good, Stock market rises or falls, Trump gets elected or not…, these are the events that no one can be certain of. Probability and statistics is a mathematical theory that can help us understand about the randomness […]

This course explores the genre of ethnographic film—its historical emergence, methodological innovations, and theoretical contribution to both anthropology and art. The course charts the evolution of ethnographic films from their initial concerns with representing the “Other” to their shifted attention to reflexivity and the politics of knowledge production across cultural boundaries. Throughout the course, we […]

The purpose of Music Appreciation is to deepen the student’s awareness and understanding of the different ways human experience is reflected in the musical arts. This is an overview course that introduces students to the elements of music and the engagement of music in historical and global contexts. In this course, students will seek to […]

This course introduces students to the microeconomic analysis toolkit. Using a combination of graphs and mathematical models, students will develop their abilities to analyze and evaluate the outcomes in markets due to the decision making of individuals and organizations. Applications in business, policy, and everyday life will be used to bridge the gap between theory […]