NUS AY 2024/25 Semester 2 Course Review (Y3)
My review follows the order outlined above, so feel free to just scroll to whatever section you're interested in reading about!
My criteria for rating the courses are as follows:
Learning Outcome (1 - Useless 🙄 / 5 - Enlightened 🤯)
Workload (1 - Dying 😵 / 5 - Manageable 😌)
Personal anticipation/dread for attending class 🧍
Below each review, I will provide individual ratings (out of 5) for the first two criteria: (1) Learning Outcome and (2) Workload. The third criterion, (3) Personal anticipation/dread for attending class, is super subjective, so I won't be rating it. However, it will greatly influence the Overall Rating (out of 10).
Introduction
Uhm also, a warning. I’m VERY MUCH a yapper. You can tell how much I enjoy a course based on how much I yap about it. I’ve put disclaimers at the beginning of paragraphs where I feel like I’m rambling A LOT and also isn’t SUPER important. Of course, I encourage you, my dear reader, to read everything, because that’s how you’d get my most unfiltered thoughts. Nothing here was Chat-GPT-ed so it’s 100% organic. Tee hee hee hee.
I made fancy little title posters for each course so hope you enjoy that too,,
HY4242: History of Evil (FASS, Seminar)
A/P Taran Kang
This is most definitely my favourite course taken at NUS. I REALLY recommend it. This is an intellectual history course (rarely, if not never, offered!) Intellectual history is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualise, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. It’s taught by Prof. Taran Kang who was a Yale-NUS College professor, and I think he’s absolutely brilliant! Every week I’m blown away by how knowledgeable he is, how well he articulates himself, and how he is able to facilitate and make sense of our discussions.
This paragraph isn’t very related to course reviewing as I want to first describe my thoughts leading up to the course. Alright, so, I was really desperate to get into this course because I had a pretty strong interest in the topic of morality, broadly speaking. I do Philosophy as my second major, and my favourite niche within it is ethics, which is necessarily concerned with the ideas of good and evil (evil!). Unfortunately for myself, everyone and their MODTHER was also interested in taking this course, so the bidding competition was TOUGH... Up to this point, I've never had to compete in bidding for a history course because of how small the cohort is. But among the 4ks offered last semester, this was the most popular by far. Probably because it was a brand new course, and also because… the title just sounds so COOL. BUT because it’s a 4k course, most people who were bidding for it were Year 4s and therefore had senior priority. So unfortunately I (a pitiful Year 3) was part of the like, FIVE people that couldn't make it in. There were about 20 slots for reference. BUT since I'm writing this review, you know that I eventually managed to grovel my way in!!! I did so by writing a really lengthy and REALLY cringey email to Prof Kang expressing how I was REALLY interested in the topics offered. I also had a friend that grovelled her way in (using the same tactic) and I can’t imagine how my semester would have been without her in the class. She’s such a joy to be around!!! I had a blast with my friends in this class. Us year 3s, about six of us, would sit at the back of the classroom together. The collective bonding (and trauma) over this course was the highlight of my semester 🥹.
Back to reviewing the course... The course content is divided into 3 sections, and I’ve jotted some of the author’s covered per section to give you a cursory understanding of who we’re dealing with.
Part I: Theodicy and the Origins of Evil (e.g. Kant, Byron, Schopenhauer)
Part II: The Psychology of Evil (e.g. Nietzsche, Freud, C.S. Lewis)
Part III: In the Aftermath (e.g. Arendt, Horkheimer & Adorno, Camus)
I think the headers are pretty self explanatory, except for the Part III, so I’ll explain this briefly. The “Aftermath” refers to the aftermath of World War II. More specifically, we examined works that were written in the wake of the holocaust, where unprecedented levels of evil were, seemingly, arbitrarily carried out. Intellectuals explored what led to and the consequences of facism, how this climate allowed subsequent evils to happen, and naturally, its implications on how one may reconcile how a supposed omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God could ever allow something as evil as the holocaust to happen. For many, the answer was that God didn’t exist at all. Some, however, concluded that, perhaps, God was never omnipotent to begin with.
This paragraph is somewhat related to the topic discussed in the above paragraph, but, again, it isn’t very related to course reviewing, so please skip this part if you’re not interested in hearing about my personal reflections! I feel that up to this point in my university career, I’ve never come across an assigned reading that has made a very lasting impression on me. Until now! I was really shaken by “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil” by Hannah Arendt. Arendt, a Jew who fled Germany during Hitler's rise to power, reported on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organisers of the Holocaust, for The New Yorker. The nucleus of her book, however, is better summed up in her subtitle, “the Banality of Evil.” An article by Aeon Media Group summarises this brilliantly:
Arendt found Eichmann an ordinary, rather bland, bureaucrat, who in her words, was ‘neither perverted nor sadistic’, but ‘terrifyingly normal’ … he performed evil deeds without evil intentions, a fact connected to his ‘thoughtlessness’, a disengagement from the reality of his evil acts. Eichmann ‘never realised what he was doing’ due to an ‘inability… to think from the standpoint of somebody else’.
Indeed, you’d realise that much of the evil in this world isn't committed by figures who are particularly villainous or satanic; or "evil" as we know it. They’re banal. It is one’s thoughtlessness that allows evil acts to be committed, and perhaps more commonly, allows evil acts to be glossed over by the masses. When I summarise Arednt’s work here, it loses a lot of the original’s impact, so I recommend reading it for yourself.
Lessons are structured such that every week, we’d read texts reflecting the intellectual thought of certain philosophers, historians, psychologists, and the like. You’d find that we have a very multidisciplinary cast of thinkers. Usually we’d only cover one, sometimes two, authors per week. Our readings generally follow a time-based chronology, such that as the course progresses, the date of when the author writes our readings becomes more recent. I believe we cover texts spanning from the 17th to the 20th century.
It should also be mentioned that this course covers only the intellectual thought of European educated thinkers. ANYWAY enough yapping, here’s the assessment breakdown:
In-Class Reading Responses (20%)
At the start of every class, you'll complete an in-class writing exercise, in which you will be asked to identify and describe important issues and themes in the readings assigned for that seminar. And based on how well you’re able to demonstrate an understanding of the reading, Prof will give you between one to three ticks. I’m ngl, the most challenging part of the course was probably trying to UNDERSTAND the readings. Some were SO DIFFICULT to read. Sometimes I began to doubt whether I was even fluent at reading English. Guys… I'm going to be very vulnerable… TEARS WERE SHED THIS COURSE. The context is that I would spend about four to six hours every week trying to understand the reading, and sometimes, even after rereading the same lines over and over again, I still felt as though I didn’t get it. My most painful reading was IMMANUEL KANT. He was one of the first few readings, so I wasn’t too frustrated with myself YET (keyword: yet). What was most aggravating, I think, was that as the weeks passed, I didn’t find myself reading the course readings any faster. It felt as though I wasn’t improving at all!!! So by the time I got to Sigmund Freud's reading, I WAS AT MY LIMIT. I actually TEARED UP while reading it because I WAS SO UPSET that I couldn’t just,,, get it.
Oh yeah, and YOU HAVE to read the readings. As in, not doing the readings isn’t an option because the class discussions revolve around these author’s intellectual thoughts (recall: intellectual history). GIRL… I'M GONNA BE SO FR. last sem… I was a FULL TIME history of evil student. I think I spent 70% of my academic effort that semester on this course. It's not a joke. This was my entire personality. I WAS INSUFFERABLE.
Class Participation (25%)
Class is structured such that the first 15 minutes is dedicated to the reading response test; the next 30 minutes to a lecture where Prof will introduce the background(s) of the author(s) of the week as well as the historical context surrounding the intellectual thought for the week; the next 5-10 minutes to a break; and the remaining time (about an hour) to class discussions. During this time, we try to make sense of the text(s). Prof will first ask us how we felt reading the text, and then we close-read. So most of the class part is Prof probing us what we thought the author meant when they say,, a thing. Honestly,, say reals, I feel like I’m someone who gets things WEALLY slowly. That's why when we go through the text in class, I’ve already forgotten what I’ve internalised the day before; I need to process it again on the spot. Because of this, I often felt as though I couldn't keep up during class discussions, especially compared to my peers who were able to spit bars of analyses at a moment's notice. I do try to speak at least once or twice every class though, since participation is a really big component—more than the mid-term literature review, even!!
Literature Review (15%)
For this assignment, we had to find two pieces of secondary scholarship on an assigned course reading and compare them with one another. These two pieces must offer different and/or competing perspectives on an important topic in the selected text. So the task is to provide a comparison (1500 words) of the two in which you identify and explicate significant points of divergence and convergence between them.
(WARNING: I will be yapping about Nietzsche the remainder of this section). My chosen reading was Nietzsche's “On the Genealogy of Morals” because I found his work very provocative but strangely compelling. Nietzsche’s “Genealogy” is his attempt to answer how morality came into being. He does so differently from the philosophers who strove for objective answers. Instead, he turns to history and etymology. Nietzsche argues that there are two fundamental types of morality: "master morality" and "slave morality," which correspond, respectively, to the dichotomies of "good/bad" and "good/evil". In master morality, "good" is a self-designation of the aristocratic classes; it is synonymous with everything powerful and life-affirming. "Bad" has no condemnatory implication, merely referring to the "common" or the "low" and the qualities and values associated with them. In slave morality, the meaning of "good" is made the antithesis of the original aristocratic "good", which itself is relabeled "evil". This inversion of values develops out of the ressentiment the weak feel toward the powerful. Nevertheless, what Nietzsche shows us is that both Master & Slave Morality stem from the same source—the desire to be powerful (“Will to Power”). Those who occupy a powerless position in society WANT power just like everyone else. The only difference is that they can’t get it in the real world, so they take refuge in an imaginary world: Christianity. If they tolerate worldly oppression, God will punish their oppressors and reward them in the afterlife. He shows how deeply revenge and cruelty are woven into the christian idea of salvation. So Nietzsche sees Christianity as the ultimate triumph of the slave revolt and thus labels priests as the greatest haters in world history.
The two authors I chose was Allison Merrick's “We Need a Critique of Moral Values” and Richard White’s “The Return of the Master." Merrick interprets Nietzsche’s critique as immanent to the historical account itself, as his genealogy exposes how our evaluative frameworks are historically conditioned and not metaphysically guaranteed. On the contrary, White interprets Nietzsche’s critique in the Genealogy as incidental to his historical account, arguing that Nietzsche’s genealogy instead functions as a psychological allegory: figures of Master and Slave represent the basic modalities of the human psychology and its consequences on our present flourishing. Merrick’s and White’s opposing views hinge on whether Nietzsche’s genealogy is to be taken as historically accurate. Merrick’s argument collapses if Nietzsche’s historical account proves insufficient, whereas White’s interpretation is strengthened if the genealogy is understood as symbolic rather than factual. Ultimately, both interpret the Genealogy as advancing a normative project to transform the reader's understanding of morality given the threat of nihility.
[Assessment Grade: A]
Final Paper (40%)
For the final essay, we were to put forward our own interpretation/argument about a topic pertaining to one of the course readings (with the exception of the one you wrote for your literature review). I wrote mine on Byron's “Cain - A Mystery.” Byron dramatises the story of Cain and Abel from Cain's point of view. It was an attempt to show the contention about the issue of the existence of evil in the world created by God. I think my favourite quote from the entire text is when Cain declares: “I judge but by the fruits – and they are bitter – which I must feed on for a fault not mine.” I love this quote sooooo muuuucccchhhhhhh oh my gooodnesssss… words can’t describe my adoration for this play and the WORD PLAY in this play om nomnomnom its so tasty and yummy…
(WARNING: I will be yapping about Byron the remainder of this section). Anyway, the topic I chose was the characterisation of Lucifer specifically, and how Byron uses this characterisation to forward certain normative claims. I argued that in “Cain,” Lucifer is neither simply good nor evil. He is a tragic figure—tragic by the circumstances of the world he inhabits and the principles he stands for. This tragedy stems from what I argue he fundamentally is: the mouthpiece for pure reason, and one who strives to pursue its ideal to the extreme. It is through this configuration that I argue Byron is able to stage a two-fold critique. On one level, Lucifer’s reason—here meaning reason in general—is doomed from the outset because reason and divine faith are irreconcilable within the play’s theological universe. This forwards a meta-critique of religious orthodoxy that demands an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God. Rejecting this premise frees us from the absurdities that structure Cain’s (biblical) world. This brings me to the second level of Byron’s critique, that Lucifer’s commitment to pure reason necessitates a rejection of love. While any reason necessarily rejects divine faith, the pursuit of pure reason necessitates the loss of love. As the mouthpiece of pure reason, Lucifer embodies the Enlightenment ideal that modernity inherits, while Cain reflects the modern condition—an awareness of our finitude coupled with a longing for absolute knowledge. For Byron, this trajectory has disastrous consequences, and he cautions that reason must be balanced with love. Thus, even as Byron advances convictions about the limitations of religious orthodoxy, it simultaneously subjects those very convictions to scrutiny by examining the process through which they are articulated.
[Assessment Grade: A]
Learning Outcome: 5/5
Workload: 1/5 (AS IN IT’S REALLY HEAVY - mainly bcs of the readings)
Overall Rating: 9.9/10
Final Grade: A
HY3242: Modern Imperialism (FASS, Lecture/Tutorial)
Lecturer & Tutor: Dr. Donna Brunero
Prof Donna Brunero is a real nice lady. She’s from Australia and, to be honest, I find the Australian accent very foreign, so whenever she speaks, I’ve really got to lock in. But she’s really accommodating, for example, when requesting for extensions.
Course content was structured like this (see below). We’d usually spend a couple of weeks on a singular topic:
Introduction to the British empire during the Victorian Era
Introduction to the British East India Company
Britain in India (the Mutiny, the Raj)
Imperial Anxieties: Race, Gender and Sexuality
Britain in Africa (Explorers, Conquest, Boer Wars)
Culture, Empire & Propaganda
The following is the assessment breakdown:
CA1: Individuals and Empire (15%)
This is a 1200-word research paper on examining to what extent an individual can help to tell the story of the British empire. I honestly wasn’t too familiar with anyone in the British empire, so I picked the first dude on the suggestion list, which was David Livingstone. This guy was a missionary, explorer, and scientist whose work profoundly influenced British perceptions of Africa, providing an impetus for imperial expansion. In his writings, one will find that he cast ideas in many directions. He was a missionary but also an explorer; a Christian who advocated for commerce; sensitive to African social customs while casting them as an ethnic “other.” It is these tensions that allowed for his memory to be adapted to various imperial agendas.
[Assessment Grade: A+]
CA2: Research Essay (35%)
Students are able to develop a topic of their own interest relating to the British Empire during the Victorian era (2500 words). I chose to write on… sports… UHM… I’ve had no prior experience nor interest in sports BUT. I was really enjoying this video game where one of the characters you get to play as is an Indian Cricketer during the Victorian-era so,,, that was my topic. God forbid a girl have her girly interests!!!! Specifically, my topic was on Cricket as an arena for nationalism in the late-Victorian British Raj.
(WARNING: I will be yapping about Indian Cricket the remainder of this section). I actually just re-read my work prior to writing this, and, in hindsight, it’s a really interesting topic! As Mihir Bose observed, “If everything about India were to be destroyed, a history of Indian cricket would serve as an outline of the history of the nation and give important clues to national character.” India’s obsession with cricket has invited two contrasting interpretations. One view holds that millions of Indians remain captive to a colonial mindset, embracing this relic of empire “like fish to water.” The other view, however, sees cricket as an import that fulfilled a deeper cultural need—helping Indians confront their rapidly changing modern world and reinterpret it through their own values and traditions. My paper therefore examines the extent to which cricket served to reinforce colonial authority or, conversely, to articulation of an indigenous brand of nationalism. In truth, it embodied both, shifting across time, in different amounts, across different social groups. The integration of cricket into Indian culture was neither swift nor straightforward. Initially promoted by the British as a means of instilling “English” virtues in their colonial subjects—most notably through the public schools of the Raj—cricket gradually outgrew its imperial function. By the late-Victorian era, cricket became a vehicle through which Indians reappropriated it for their own purposes for social mobility within the colonial order, a language through which they could negotiate with and challenge imperial authority on the very principles of fair play the game upheld, and ultimately beat their masters at their own game; undermining the foundations of empire.
[Assessment Grade: A]
CA3: Take Home Examination (30%)
This was a 48-hour take home exam. We were to answer three questions. One is a short-response analysis to an illustrated primary source. We were to respond to one of two sources. The remaining two questions are mini-essays. We were to respond to two of (I THINK) five essay questions. It was FINEE, I suppose…
Highkenuinely… I feel that this component should NOT be worth 30%. CA1 is more demanding (and interesting) and, I FEEL, is more reflective of a student’s understanding of empire and historiographical skill. THIS IS JUST MY OPINION THOUGH. I just don’t dig examinations, in the Arts, that's worth more than 20%. The purpose of examinations, for history courses especially, is to make sure the student has been paying attention to lectures throughout the semester, and isn’t just doing independent research for specific topics whenever a research essay calls for one. I just don’t think it should be worth 30%! Just a significant enough stake. If I could recalibrate the assessment breakdown, it would look like: CA1 (25%), CA2 (35%), CA3 (20%), CA4 (20%). And then I would increase the word count for CA1 by 500-800 words.
[Assessment Grade: Unknown]
CA4 Tutorial participation: 20%
This is just your standard tutorial participation... There will usually be Miro Whiteboard collaboration or google docs activities.
[Assessment Grade: Unknown]
Just going to put a finAL reflection here; not very course-review related. Uhm,, so… studying the British Empire makes me SOOO mad. I feel very strongly about the so-called “civilising missions” of empire (not just the British one), and closely examining the events, projects, and individuals that upheld those bigoted ideals honestly makes me feel so so zo zo upset. And I really cannot stress this enough: the ideals of empire may feel like distant history to some people, like something we should just put behind us (especially if you’re a White person living in a majority White society). But when you actually examine the history, and REALLY see what colonial peoples were thinking and doing to colonised individuals and communities, it becomes impossible not to feel disGUSTed, and the repercussions are damning frfr. The idea of “conquering” land that ISN’T yours, because you had POWER, desire more WEALTH, or believe you are somehow "morally superior" and entitled to “improve” someone else’s already entrenched community/society/civilisation. Just… the absolute audacity!!!!!! It makes me mad!!!!!! 😭😭😭. And the ripple effects of empire are SO VERY real. It wasn’t that long ago. To wilfully turn a blind eye to the dark histories of empire is, honestly, just stupid.. In fact, the history of empire is often SYNONYMOUS with dark. How many lives were displaced or lost? How many cultures suppressed, reshaped, or erased? I didn’t really have a direction writing this. My point is that people are and have been AWFUL, AND WE CAN’T FORGET THAT,,
Learning Outcome: 3/5
Workload: 4/5 (as in, it’s manageable)
Overall Rating: 7.8/10
Final Grade: A
PH3213: Knowledge, Modernity & Global Change (FASS, Seminar)
A/P Neil Sinhababu
I regret taking this course, and my review will be structured explaining the reasons why:
1) Lack of topical coherence
There’s no thematic strand to this course, other than,,,, it concerns us.. Which can arguably be any course ever. The terms “Knowledge,” “Modernity,” and “Global Change,” are insanely broad, and you bet this course covers anything under the sun. FYI… this was a recycled PPE course (WHICH I DIDN’T KNOW). The below is the course overview in the form of my examination notes’ contents page:
One week, we could be talking about free will, another on capitalism, another on Einstein’s theories, and another on Artificial Intelligence. Granted, the multiplicity of topics that are relevant to today’s “modern” problems is probably going to be appealing to some. I’m just someone who prefers a philosophy course that covers a niche. Granted, I don’t really know what I expected when I took a course that,, well,, has that title… so that’s on me, really. We live and learn,...,,
2) Lack of logic
Something I really enjoy about studying philosophy, and what I think is special to philosophy as a discipline, are rigorous logical arguments. An argument, strictly speaking, is a complex symbolic structure where some parts, known as the premises, offer support to another part, the conclusion. And the goal for us philosophers is to construct arguments that are valid, and of course, try our best to make these valid arguments as sound as possible. A valid argument need not have true premises or a true conclusion. On the other hand, a sound argument DOES need to have true premises and a true conclusion. It's a VERY tedious and meticulous process, but for me, that’s what makes philosophy so appealing!!! It’s about using logic to evaluate or critically examine other people's arguments to determine how good they are, and sometimes objecting to or resisting those arguments, or defending them against other people's objections. And of course, it’s the joy of trying your best in formulating your own bullet proof arguments.
This component was entirely missing from this course, largely because of the assessment style (which I will expand upon later) that doesn’t provide a platform for us to exercise our previously acquired philosophical inquiry skills in our 1k and 2k courses. Throughout the course, it really was just an info-dump covering the aforementioned topics. Kind of like… “capitalism is XYZ… people think capitalism good because XYZ… people think capitalism bad because XYZ.” We didn’t need to exercise our own discretion to attack or defend certain claims. That's what I mean by info-dumping. Because of this, this course often felt like a political science or economics course.
3) Assessment style
Weekly Discussion Messages (50%)
I find it quite ridiculous that half the assessment is attributed to weekly discussion messages that are 100 words or less. We were to reflect and probe questions regarding the readings for a given week. It’s marked out of 5 points, and most people would get a 4 by default, even if you waffle. No one gets a 5. That's 80% in the bag. What that means is whether you get an A or A- is heavily dependent on the remaining assessments.
Attendance and participation (15%)
This is a seminar-style class, but it’s basically a 2.5 hour lecture. Of course, Prof wants students to speak up, so he’d periodically probe for questions, or ask us to interject him if we ever have a question. But somehow… The atmosphere of the class really isn’t conducive for class participation 😭. I think what makes, for example, The History of Evil class conducive for a very happening class discussion scene, is that Prof Kang would fish for students to answer pretty specific questions e.g. “What do you think the author meant when he said X?” rather than fishing for vague responses e.g. “Does anyone have any thoughts/questions up to this point?” Moreover, the Evil class had a designated lecture and discussion segment even though it was a seminar, which gives the lesson more structure. Finally, the discussions in the Evil class revolve around the reading, chronologically. In comparison, in this class, Prof kind of just… talks about what he feels about the topic the entire 2.5 hours. In doing so, it’s a lot harder for students to follow or interject his train of thought. The end result is a really passive class, which made it seem like we all DGAF about education 😭😭😭. But this is far from the truth!!! Evidently so, when we conducted our presentations during the final week.
Presentation (5%)
For the final seminar, Prof wanted each one of us to spend 5 minutes presenting any (ANY) philosophical topic that piques our interest. And, say reals,, everyone who presented was SO passionate and eloquent about their interests. Like, you’d never guess this was the same class where no one would speak up. It kind of shows that people, maybe, aren’t very engaged during lessons,, because of,,,, other reasons…..
Final Examination (30%)
It’s an MCQ closed-book in-class examination that tests our knowledge on the concepts taught in the readings. It was 30 questions over 2.5 hours IIRC. Again: the recurring info-dump problem. No use of our own opinions, arguments, or the like. There’s no essay where we can argue for a topic of interest. If you’ve read my review for Modern Imperialism, you’d recall that I have a bit of a bone to pick with examinations in the Arts that are worth 30% and more. I firmly believe the largest component of any Arts assessment should be an argumentative essay, and I will die on this hill!!!
Learning Outcome: 2/5
Workload: 4/5 (as in, it’s very manageable)
Overall Rating: 5.9/10
Final Grade: A-
NHS2100: Being and Becoming: Concepts and Practices of Childhood
(NUSC, Seminar)
Dr. Raahi Adhya
I enjoyed this course! It’s a brand new NHS from NUS College so we were kind of the guinea pig batch. This course forces us to rethink childhood not as a universal truth of natural innocence, but as a dynamic, evolving idea—sometimes even contested by children themselves. Course content is split into three parts over the course of the semester:
Literary and Visual Studies (e.g. Books, movies)
Anthropology (e.g. Objects, Fears and Spaces)
Communications and New Media (e.g. Children & video games, mobile devices)
I think I enjoyed the first component the most. I’d never read the original Peter Pan novel before, so it was quite shocking how much the animated Disney movie diverged from the source material. The original source was very, very dark. The idea of an eternal childhood is heavily romanticised in the film. In the original book, however, it’s much more nuanced. Eternal childhood for Peter Pan, for instance, means being unable to discern time, it means he’s narcissistic and immature, that he has very little concern about the well being of others for he never developed the mature capabilities to do so. It also means having no qualms replacing Wendy with her children, and then her grandchildren, and so on, when he so desires, because all he ever cares about, and will ever be able to care about, is his own gratification. My favourite text from the first component though, is a short story called “Little Tembi” by Dorris Lesling. So underrated! It tells of the complex relationship between a White female nurse, Jane, stationed in Africa, and a native African child, Tembi, that later becomes a criminal. It speaks volumes of the internalised degradation and “othering” of the colonial subject. Jane’s final question to the reader: “What is it he [Tembi] was wanting, all this time?” begins from the premise that the “benevolent” white woman and the “naive” Black native can never truly know one another under the colonial hierarchy, even as their lives are inexplicably intertwined.
If there’s one thing I would change in this class, it would be the submission dates and grade distribution of the assessments. Below is the overview:
Participation (12%)
3 short writing assignments (25%)
Midterm assignment (30%)
Presentation (8%)
Final assignment (30%)
I THINK the NHS participation grade distribution should always be minimally 20%. That’s how the more NUSC liberal arts classes are (such as NGT, NSW, NGN, and even other NHS’). Many even go up to 25%. This NHS is always centred around discussions anyway, and it’s one of the most discussion-heavy courses I’ve ever taken, so it feels like a waste to have it be just 12%. We’d always have at least one group activity per lesson (which is usually quite fun), and even when Prof briefs us using slides, it’s still really student-centred. That being said, I don’t have too many qualms with the weightage of the other components.
Here’s my proposed amended grade distribution:
Participation (20%)
3 short writing assignments (20%)
Midterm assignment (25%)
Presentation (5%)
Final assignment (30%)
I said I’d also change the assignment’s date of submissions because by the mid-term season, we’d not submitted anything except one short writing assignment. This is because the midterm assignment was due quite late, while the remaining two components were covered in the latter half of the semester. So I would just push the midterm due date in front. I think Prof said she didn’t want to overwhelm us during the examination season, but we’d just end up cramming the remainder of our assessments anyway…
The three short writing assignments are short write-ups (400-600 words each) that cover each of the three components. So the first was more of a literature analysis/close-reading, the second is an ethnography, while the third is a short paper on digital spaces. I did my first on a Lewis Hine photograph, second on a playground near my house, and third on Roblox.
[Assessment Grade: A-, A, A-]
The mid-term assignment (1200-1500 words) can be either an analytical paper on a field visit to a children’s museum in Singapore or a creative curation of a museum exhibit in relation to other course texts. I chose the creative option and my chosen course text was “Little Tembi.”
[Assessment Grade: A]
The final assignment (1500-1600 words) can be either a reflective/analytical/comparative paper, or a creative work that speaks to a childhood experience/identity of our choice to address the ways in which childhood experiences and identities are shaped by social, cultural, or technological forces. I chose the creative option, and illustrated an animatic depicting urbanising childhoods during Singapore’s nation building years using my father’s memory on top of the song 夜来香 (ye lai xiang) by Teressa Teng.
[Assessment Grade: Unknown]
The presentation is just a proposal for your final assignment.
[Assessment Grade: Unknown]
Learning Outcome: 4/5
Workload: 3/5
Overall Rating: 7.8/10
Final Grade: A-
HSA1000: Asian Interconnections
Lecturer: Dr. Clay Eaton
Tutor: Umairah
This course was such a fever dream... Wah… I feel so weird writing this because I am a year three humanities student taking a course that’s predominantly taken by year ones (that also probably aren’t in the humanities). In fact, if you’re reading this review, you’re likely a year one seeking advice yourself!
To be very honest, I knew this was going to be my “cushion” course—meaning, I wouldn’t need to put in a lot of effort to get the grade. SO it probably won’t be the most comprehensive of reviews because I was really doing the bare minimum. I only ever locked in during assignments and class participation.
Contrary to what the streets say on NUSMods (one guy called it a “nothingburger”,, I died leh 😭😭), HSA1000 REALLY isn’t as bad as some make it out to be. If we automatically discredit topics such as environment, heritage, language, religion, gender, race and social inequalities (yup these are all the topics) simply because “it’s not my interest,” then I think Singapore is quite screwed LOL. IFL I have the privilege of being surrounded by peers who generally care about… idk,, the longevity and wellbeing of this world and the communities that inhabit it??? That sometimes when I step out of my bubble and meet tech bros who only care about material gain or achieving greater heights of technological/scientific progress (i.e. the mentality of “just because I can, means I should”), that I remember why universities now have compulsory ethics courses for those in STEM.
For instance, I found it meaningful to read the poem “Tuk” by Firdaus Sani. It's written from the perspective of an Orang Laut kid probing questions to his grandfather regarding the rapid urbanisation of Singapore that subsequently resulted in the displacement of his people and the suppression of his culture. Topics like this aren’t a waste of time as they ask important questions. What had to be lost for the “Singapore” we know today to exist? How does the government frame the history of the Orang Laut versus what actually happened? We ought to question past, present and future policies, and consider whose histories and communities may have been marginalised or erased in the process.
Class participation, including group presentation (30%)
I felt that it was quite easy to speak in class? Usually, the TA will just ask us for a summary of the reading and our general thoughts on it. And the readings were all very short.
Every tutorial, one group will conduct a presentation that usually includes a quick brief of the week’s readings, and a class activity. The TA will pick your groupmates, and will make the extra effort to ensure there’s at least one Arts & Humanities student in the team to carry. No joke, when she screened the groups, there would be [FASS] written next to every FASS member. And there was exactly one per group in my tutorial. So naturally, I was the token FASSer. My group went first, and we covered the topics of heritage & language. It was chill…
[Assessment Grade: Unknown]
Two individual assignments (30%)
These two assignments are continuous. They want us to pick an event from Asia (with the exception of Singapore) that happened within the last month or so. The event had to be connected to at least one of the themes covered in class. The first assignment is more related to documenting the scholarly process of you picking the event, while the second is more about doing the actual analyses.
The region I picked was the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the event I picked was the Democratic Progressive Party (Taiwan’s ruling party) asserting that the Chinese Communist Party (China’s ruling party) made “no substantial contribution” to Japan’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War—a comment made right before the war's 80th anniversary.
[Assessment Grade: A+, A+]
In-class writing exercises (10%)
In the middle of every other tutorial, we’d have a 10 minute writing exercise. The TA will screen us a guiding question related to the theme of that week, and we were to draw on the week’s readings as well as our own experiences to answer the question. Lowk I wouldn’t do any of the readings except for the one covered in the tutorial specifically, so I would only draw on one reading per test. With regards to marking, we’d receive one of three stamps: Needs Improvement, Good or Excellent. Erm… Can I just say… the marking for this exercise is kinda arbitrary??? I’m confident that I’m able to discern what I wrote well and what I didn’t. So it isn’t the case that I’m upset that I received “good” for my first two writing assignments. More so, I’m confused why I received an “excellent” for my final writing assignment when I’m so sure that was my worst one bruh 😭😭😭.
[Assessment Grade: Good, Good, Excellent]
Final field-based group project (30%)
This was a video presentation on a chosen site in Singapore that represents at least one of the topics covered in this course. Group members for this project would be the same as the ones you got for your tutorial presentation. My group chose Chinatown as the site and we linked it to the topics of heritage, language & social inequalities. It was chill.
[Assessment Grade: Unknown]
Learning Outcome: 3/5
Workload: 1/5
Overall Rating: 7/10
Final Grade: A+
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