As of AY2021/2022, what has characterised a Senior Seminar has been its focus on a significant issue that may be productively discussed from both Asian and global perspectives, and its openness to interdisciplinary debates and input. A Senior Seminar places a focus on:
As of AY2023/2024 both UTS-coded and UTC-coded Senior Seminars can fulfill the Communities and Engagement (C&E) Pillar, Type B: Field/Project-Work Courses. These C&E courses have field/project work integrated into the course, focusing on specific disciplinary skills and/or specific sectors of the community. The field/project work would typically require engagement with a community through dialogue, research, analysis, and/or formulation of an action plan (preferably, together with implementation of that plan) to bring a direct or indirect benefit to the identified community. The amount of effort required is 60 to 80 hours of work, usually be completed within one semester.
All Tembusu UTCP students must read at least one Senior Seminar fulfilling the C&E requirement.
Small-group discussions, facilitated by fellows from diverse backgrounds, are at the heart of the Senior Seminar. These are complemented by interactive sessions with guest speakers with deep expertise on pertinent aspects of the seminar topic. The overall aim of these seminars is to foster critical engagement with a topical Global-Asia issue that exerts a profound impact on society. These courses do not have final exams.
There are few things that impact our lives as much as our sense of time. Singapore is a ‘fast-paced’ city where deadlines, time-saving apps and fertility clocks shape people’s actions and experiences, and where many feel ‘time poor’, even if they are cash rich. In this course, we examine the ways in which we take time for granted through analysing the ways in which our lives are temporally grounded. We do so particularly through tracing connections between individual experience, social life and technologies such as clocks and watches, electric lighting and the internet. Is time-stress inevitable in this day and age? What does it mean to use one’s time well?
This course introduces students to health as a complex social scientific phenomenon beyond biology. It explores the meaning of health in scientific, social and institutional contexts in the Singapore context, as well as the latest biotechnologies of diagnosis and treatment. It also develops a critical awareness technology in healthcare through the perspectives of ethics and equity and discusses the role of health literacy. It draws on a complex understanding of health, through working with a healthcare community partner in Singapore to identify current social and public health issues in the Singapore community, proposing possible responses to these issues.
This course fulfills the Communities and Engagement Pillar.
This course invites students to probe the concept of ‘intelligence’ in relation to Singapore’s ongoing development as a nation. The idea that smart minds are essential for survival has shaped domestic policies and international positioning strategies. We ask: in what ways has human intelligence been defined, measured and harnessed? What counts as intelligence, and what does not? Beyond notions of intelligence centred on the human individual, we will also consider forms of collective and artificial intelligence, mediated by science and technology. What kinds of intelligence are needed for the future and how can Singapore develop them?
A ‘global city’, a ‘city in a garden’, a ‘city of 6.9 million’… what do these and other models say about Singapore and its relationship to its past and future? This course facilitates critical and multi‐disciplinary engagement with the imagination and organization of Singapore as city. Students will examine visible aspects of the urban environment together with what is (treated as) invisible, and explore what is at stake in meeting Singapore’s ambition within its borders and beyond. The course culminates in a project that allows students to situate ideals of the liveable, sustainable, inclusive (etc.) city in particular urban sites.
This course fulfills the Communities and Engagement Pillar.
This interdisciplinary course involves studying science fiction (SF) as a resource for thinking about the future in Singapore. As existential risks often dominate media imaginations of the future—often accompanied by narratives of coming insecurity, radical change, and uncertainty—the focus of this course is on the possibilities of SF to imagine a better world. Students will explore the history of SF, in Singapore and abroad, the ways SF reveals a society’s hopes and fears, and its capacity to imagine hopeful futures and apply what they learn to imagine solutions to contemporary challenges.
By Dr Eric Kerr, Ms Samridhi Aggarwal
We live in a world where complex negotiations take place daily. Navigating these complex negotiations requires one to be conscious of the psychological, historical, sociological, economical, and other contextual factors that shape each unique encounter. The rapid advancement in science and technology adds to the challenge of interpreting highly technical, domain‐specific information, which is critical in rationalizing decisions and persuading counterparts. In this course, we adopt a case study approach to dissecting complex negotiations. Students will learn to adopt both a macro and micro perspective in analysing such negotiations.
In this seminar, students examine some of the beliefs humans have held about knowledge throughout history, with a particular focus on technological change and the idea of expertise. Through a socio-historical treatment of figures associated with knowledge, students will discuss how experts are created, challenged, and replaced. This course will enable students to critically appreciate various forms of knowledge, analyse and respond to current issues related to expertise, understand the context in which our methods and processes for acquiring knowledge are situated, and assess how they shape individual and collective lives and experiences.
This course partners with a social enterprise such as Happiness Initiative in Singapore, to contribute social research for developing ‘well-being skills’ in community programs. Students conduct literature reviews, design surveys, and analyze variables shaping the experience of well-being by local stakeholders — communities or workplaces in Singapore identified by the partner. To stimulate creative ideas for improving research design, students critically appraise modern and historical literature on ideal societies and human flourishing, and learn to apply theory to encourage positive behaviors through designed interventions. Through collecting feedback and responses, students test the effectiveness of their proposed design and translate their findings into policy recommendations.
This course fulfills the Communities and Engagement Pillar.
By Dr John Wee
This course considers how development is pictured, visualised and textualised through a focus on rural communities overseas for eg. in Cambodia in aspects such as education, economy, public health, and the environment. The course explores the intersection and interplay between organisations, bureaucracies and communities. Development is ‘seen’ through the perspectives of performance, experience, equality, and practice via first-hand engagement. Primary research on sustainable development enhances students developing a critical perspective on how development is imagined, performed and carried out in village communities in conjunction with partner NGOs that run participatory development projects. Visual engagement facilitates sharing these findings with the community through film.
**Compulsory overseas trip included as part of the course. More details will be available later**
This course fulfills the Communities and Engagement Pillar.
Our life expectancies have increased dramatically over the last hundred years due to improved and advanced technology. With a rapid growth in ageing population, there is an increasing need to improve the health and social needs of elderly in Singapore. Through collaborating with local community partners focused on elder well-being this course will consider how students can help elders achieve a sense of worth, confidence and productivity. Specifically, how do technologies empower and disempower the elderly to have a stronger connection to their community and improved social life? What are the opportunities and threats of technological advancements in addressing the needs of Singapore’s growing ageing population?
This course fulfills the Communities and Engagement Pillar.
The course enables students to reflect and build on how rhetoric and performance are deployed by migrant workers to demonstrate their productive contributions to society beyond paid labor. Through partnership with non-government organizations that focus on helping migrant workers, students will understand how discussions, artistic expressions, and cultural productions are fashioned and organized by the workers to highlight their specific needs while demonstrating their talents, rhetorical skills and creativity. As they develop the skills and dispositions in partnering with communities, students will collaborate with a group of migrant workers to co-design activities meant to cultivate inclusion, community building, and empowerment.
This course fulfills the Communities and Engagement Pillar.
What are universities for? A university education was traditionally exclusive to the elites but is increasingly seen as crucial to professionalization and social mobility; democratic citizenship; fostering debate and the pursuit of scientific knowledge. This course examines recent debates chronicling how growing trends of neoliberalism have led to changes in how universities and higher education are viewed. We also examine the confluence of historical, political and social factors that shaped the establishment and development of universities in postcolonial society like Singapore. Students will investigate how universities in Singapore relate with their overseas counterparts and with global trends in higher education.
Working from the position that skin belongs as much to the person as to the society in which they live, this seminar reflects on how much our identity and our sense of self is produced by the interaction between biological, cultural, political, and economic, forces that play out through and on the skin. Thus, skin is a playground — at the very same time that it is a battle field — where identity is constantly reshaped through interaction of words, categories, values, body techniques and emotions.
Made popular by TV dramas such as C.S.I., forensic sciences have gained much attention in criminal investigation. However, fictional dramas spread many misconceptions about the real world of the forensic science. This course explores the use of scientific methods, specifically in forensic sciences, of collecting, experimenting and analysing the evidence of crime scene, to be used in the court of law in solving crime. Finally, it encourages students to critically examine the use and value of forensic sciences in the legal system and how it contributes to addressing crime in society.
Maps blend perspectives, values, and experiences in composing identities for physical and conceptual spaces — portraying space as place. This course explores the visual syntax, intertextuality, and narrative discourse of maps on Singapore and throughout human history, depicting cities, land and sea, sky and time, the body, science, religious cosmography, and fiction. Students scrutinize maps as artworks, historical palimpsests, stories-in-motion, and conceptual models. They examine thematic maps, map projections, emotive designs, object-oriented cartography, and symbolic geographies. Among its many lessons, the course teaches students to exercise empathy in designing tactile maps for blind users, understand how science is historicized through methods of charting star constellations, map out the process of moral decision-making using the Laws of Robotics and, particularly, contemplate issues in cultural conservation through experiential mapping of Singapore heritage neighborhoods
By Dr John Wee
This ‘Senior Seminar’ course will consider one of the most pressing problems of our time from multiple viewpoints. Merging insights from the sciences and humanities, students will be introduced to problems, conflicts, and debates over the causes of, and solutions to, the phenomenon of global warming and its implications for humanity. The seminar will meet weekly in small groups of 15‐20, with periodic full‐class meetings to hear guest speakers.
This course concentrates on the Asian built environment – architecture, urban planning and sustainable development. The theme of the archaeology of the future considers the many layers of the city, from examining its past to identifying its already emerging possible urban futures. Discussions and readings that provide in-depth, analytical, and critical perspectives on urbanisation and urbanism in Asia will be supplemented with a field trip to Singapore City Gallery and workshops on Futures Thinking. In particular, students will be taught the Casual Layered Analysis (CLA) methodology to help them think critically and deeply about present trends and the multiplicity of future scenarios. Through Singapore as a case study, students will gain a deeper understanding of challenges facing a rapidly-urbanising Asia, cultivate intellectual tools to evaluate these challenges and embody solutions through a hands-on creative project.
With a focus on Asia, this course draws on a diverse range of literatures to provide a broad context for understanding the dynamics between humans and animals. Southeast Asia is one of last regions in the world with extensive rain forest habitat for wild animals, but these creatures are threatened by burgeoning urbanization and agriculture. The course will go beyond a focus on wildlife, however, to consider our relationship with ‘urban animals’ of many types. Through seminar-style classes and fieldtrips conducted around Singapore, the course will test new perspectives from international and regional studies of human animal interaction.
Games are a fundamental aspect of our everyday lives — they permeate disparate fields of knowledge; involve, and are involved in, the creation of cultural practices; are part of ways of seeing and being in the world; might well be integral to relationships between peoples and the worlds they are a part of. This seminar attempts to meditate on the idea of games to develop an appreciation of gaming in life — with an accent on gaming life. Games, including specific games, are explored in theoretical and practical ways to develop questions involving — interrelating — tekhnē, technologies, cultures, epistemologies, and human communities. Further explorations potentially lead us to gaming cultures, including strategies, tactics, entanglements, addictions, pleasures, desires, délices, jouissances — exploring them in domains such as ‘political’, ‘social’, ‘familial’, ‘academic’, games, amongst many others — with play and praxis being echoes resounding through this seminar. Seminarians will engage in the construction, critique, and creation of games —imagining, and bringing forth, concepts in relation to the worlds in which we live.
By Ms Cera Tan
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