Tag: 2012

Of Music, Community Service and, Internet Fiction

Song Yu Chuan is a freshman Architecture student at Tembusu College. He is a singer-songwriter and member of the Composers and Authors Society of Singapore (COMPASS). In 2008 he won Best Composition and Best Performance at the National Inter-JC Chinese Songwriting Competition. In 2010 he officially entered the music industry through a long-term songwriter contract with VI Music, under Warner Chappell Music. Since then, Yu Chuan has been actively involved in the local mandopop music scene and has been featured on Playlist. Yu Chuan firmly believes that good music and good performers do not seek to impress others, but to express themselves.



Yeshey Choden is a freshman Civil Engineering student at Tembusu College. She was raised and taught in an authentic Bhutanese environment where she learnt about Buddhism and own her culture and tradition. Two distinct features of the Bhutanese are their dedication and loyalty to the King and the government and their pursuit of a unique path of development: Gross National Happiness. In 2011 Yeshey came to Singapore to pursue her tertiary education through the King’s Scholarship. Since being in Singapore Yeshey has developed particular interests in social work and community service.



Cedric Chin (ejames) is a senior Computing student at Tembusu College. He works on web-based books. In 2006 he started Novelr.com, a site devoted to Internet fiction and in 2008 he helped create the Web Fiction Guide. His latest venture, founded in 2010, is Pandamian.com, an online publishing service. He was the youngest speaker at the Books in Browsers conference in San Francisco in 2010 and 2011, and currently contributes to the OPDS and Readium working groups. Cedric is a member of the Reading2.0 mailing list, an invitation-only listserv of book technologists maintained by Peter Brantley, founder of the Open Book Foundation.

The Elephant in the Room

The Elephant in the Room

With Singapore Press Holdings having a near-complete monopoly over the print media and with the Media Development Authority reviewing material to be consumed by the public, Singapore has been accused of being a soft autocracy with regards to media. Many internet-savvy citizens have taken to the domain of the Internet to air their views and provide alternative news for the public.

Is the government being so invested in the media the best-fit solution? Or should the media be more liberalized to allow for differing viewpoints and opinions?

Monday, 15 October 2012, 7.30pm
Common Lounge, Level 1
Tembusu College
No registration required

Moderator:

Nafis Ahmed

Panel of speakers:

Mr. Alex Au (Blogger – Yawning Bread)

Assoc. Professor Elizabeth V. Cardoza (Department of Communications and New Media, NUS)

Tan Pei En (Student)

Shubhendra (Student)

WIP with Dr. John P. DiMoia

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Dr. John P. DiMoia
Reading North Korea: What does North Korea Propanganda Reveal?
25th October 2012, Monday, 6.00pm

Register Here

Abstract:

Since South Korea’s popular culture and the /hallyu (K-wave) /phenomenon has attracted the attention of young people throughout East and Southeast Asia, what does its neighbour to the North have to tell us about contemporary life in northeast Asia?

Using film clips and propaganda images taken from a range of sources, this talk explores some of the dominant themes embedded in North Korean popular culture, arguing that underneath the official rhetoric of anti-American and anti-Japanese imagery, North Korea holds a strong sense of nostalgia for its own triumphs as a nation, including the period of successful reconstruction after the Korean War (1954-early 1960s) and the high tension present during much of the 1960s. With these materials, it is possible to glimpse the human, even playful, side of the “other” Korea, even as the North remains a state with an uncertain future.

WIP with Dr. Ingmar Lippert

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Dr. Ingmar Lippert

Managing the environment
13th September 2012, Thursday, 6.00pm

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Abstract:

Since the 1970s governments increasingly attended to so-called environmental problems. Within the last two decades companies joined this movement to gain more attention. In the early 1990s discussion of so-called sustainable development emerged within global policy discourse. In this historical context we can identify that both nation states and corporations institutionalised environmental protection and sustainable development. Ministries formed, agencies were founded, firms employed corporate environmental managers. Environmental work needed to be done by particular people. Here they are: agents who are supposed to bring about sustainable development; some frame their project as the greening of capitalism. I study their day-to-day work practices. This talk surveys the work of environmental managers in corporations or nature reserves. What generalizations can we make from these cases?

WIP with Dr. Graham Button

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Dr. Graham Button
Marrying Sociology and Systems Design: The Road to True Happiness or the Divorce Courts?
23rd August 2012, Thursday, 6.00pm

Register here

Abstract:
I am a sociologist who works with engineers, computer scientists and designers of computer systems. Computer systems are everywhere- in Facebook, Twitter, SMS or e-mails. However, anyone who has used a computer system will have been frustrated by it because it either will not let them do what they want to do, or makes them do something in an annoying way. This talk is about how I, as a sociologist who is interested in how people go about doing the things they do, can make the those building systems take notice of the people who use them.

Work In Progress Seminar with Prof. Gregory Clancey

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Title: Japanese and their Earthquakes

Speaker: Associate Professor Gregory Clancey

Abstract:
My talk will be about a project that I thought was completed, but has become a ‘work-in-progress’ because of events. I published a book on the history of Japanese earthquakes in 2006, but then turned my attention to other topics. But with the ‘Great East Japan Earthquake’ and tsunami in March of this year, I was pulled back into discussions, and discovered I had more to think about, and more to say. The people who initially pulled me back in were reporters, who wanted to interview me about the Japanese peoples’ response to the disaster, and to previous ones. My talk to all of you will start with controversial questions that came up in these interviews and my reactions as an historian of Japan.

Fellow’s Tea with Mr. Younes Bouadi

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Tembusu College Master’s Tea

Mr. Younes Bouadi

3pm, Wednesday

24th October 2012

Master’s Common Lounge,

Level 3, Residential Block

Refreshments will be served.

Only 30 seats available!

Please register at: dev-tembusu-nus.pantheonsite.io

Mr. Younes Bouadi is an independent producer and researcher of contemporary art based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Bouadi’s theoretical engagement is toward an excavation of the layers of bureaucratic resistance to pinpoint ideological forces that drive and obstruct artifacts displaced from their site of origination. Bouadi’s artistic productions put theory into practice as his focus on displaced art in the context of a globalized world gives rise to a broader conversation about the role of art in the 21st century.

Younes has organized artistic exhibitions on multiple continents in a variety of stations and currently works as the producer of the renowned Dutch Artist Jonas Staal, while simultaneously earning a Master of Philosophy of Science in Art History with The University of Amsterdam.

More information at dev-tembusu-nus.pantheonsite.io

 

Work In Progress Seminar with Assoc. Prof. John Phillips

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Topic: Pop Music (John Cage, Elvis and 2NE1)
Speaker: Assoc. Prof. John Phillips

Abstract:
This talk is an overview of the meaning of the “popular” in the evolving context of pop music from the early days of the twentieth century to the present. The word popular, implying the communal, practical and often political activities of a people, has evolved during more than a century of rapid media development. I aim to show why there exist invariable principles behind what may be called the pop music event (e.g., Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Dusty Springfield, Bob Marley, Utada Hikaru, S Club7, 2NE1). The talk puts critical theory to work with a selection of pertinent cases to show the argument of the book I am currently writing.