Global Orientation
The four Critical Competencies and three Global Orientation courses are the foundation of the NUS College curriculum and are intended to be read within the first two years. Although students have some flexibility in choosing their pathway through the curriculum, you are encouraged to complete the foundational curriculum while in residence to take advantage of in-house academic resources, and to immerse yourself in our close-knit intellectual community.
The Global Orientation courses- Global Narratives, Global Social Thought, and Science and Society – target interdisciplinary learning and cultivate a global perspective in students, preparing them for more in depth examinations of the issues that concern humanity in later courses.
The timetable and details of the foundational courses offered can be found here.
Global Narratives
This course introduces students to enduring works of the human imagination across many global traditions. It explores how these works represent cultural narratives, values, and questions that encapsulate historical moments and communicate beyond their specific contexts. Students will examine various media and genres across a variety of world traditions and periods.
Course Leaders
Bart Van Wassenhove
Bart Van Wassenhove bvw@nus.edu.sg
Dr Bart Van Wassenhove received his PhD in Classics from the University of Chicago with a dissertation on Moral Admonition and the Emotions in Seneca’s Philosophical Works. His research interests include history of philosophy, especially ancient Greek and Roman; cultural history, particularly the history of the emotions; ancient rhetoric and historiography.
Carissa Foo
Carissa Foo carissa.foo@yale-nus.edu.sg
Dr Carissa Foo is a literary critic and fiction writer. She received her Ph.D. from Durham University. Her main research interests include twentieth-century and contemporary women’s writing, spatial theories, queer studies, and phenomenological approaches to literature. She has published on modernist women’s writing, and is the author of two novels, and the recent short story collection, No Wonder, Women (Penguin SEA, 2022).
Global Social Thought
This course explores perspectives on power and society by engaging with influential currents in social thought and their relationship to contemporary global concerns. Students will examine the ways in which these ideas have been taken up in contemporary social analysis and political practice in different parts of the world over time.
Course Leaders
Bjorn Gomes
Bjorn Gomes bjorn.gomes@yale-nus.edu.sg
Dr Bjorn Gomes received his PhD in Political Science (Political Theory/International Relations) from Columbia University. His research focuses on the struggle for recognition in modern political thought, as well as subjects falling within the fields of political theory and international relations.
Kathryn Elizabeth McHarry
Kathryn Elizabeth McHarry kmcharry@nus.edu.sg
Dr Kathryn E. McHarry received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. Trained in socio-cultural and medical anthropology, as well as science and technology studies, her ethnographic research explores how neoliberal governance reshapes political economy, data politics, and family infrastructures in the global south. Her many research interests include: technoscience; care, health, biomedicine, ethno-medicine; the politics of labour and leisure; human capital and skill-building projects; innovation and entrepreneurialism; institutional cultures, bureaucracy, management; age, ageism, childhood, youth; French colonialism, post-colonialism, development studies; gender studies; Sub-Saharan Africa; and Islam and Sufism.
Science and Society
This course explores the intersection and interplay of science and society. Students will examine how scientific knowledge and technological development influence and shape institutions, peoples, and environments. In turn, they will survey how social, cultural, political, economic, and material realities instigate scientific discovery and research. The complex interactions among society, science, and technology will be examined in the context of some of the most pressing problems humans and non-humans face.
Course Leaders
Chan Chi-wang
Chan Chi-wang cwchan@nus.edu.sg
Dr Chan Chi-wang was trained as a physicist and obtained his PhD from the New York University. His training in Science has motivated him to make sense of the world in a more quantitative way.
His research interests are in the fields of Theoretical Statistical Physics and pedagogy in teaching Science.
Loo Yoke Leng
Chan Kiat Hwa kiatchan@nus.edu.sg
Dr Chan Kiat Hwa received his doctorate in Chemistry from Princeton University in 2010, under the auspices of an Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) National Science Scholarship (PhD), after working on developing chemical tools to explore iron trafficking by Mycobacterium Tuberculosis in human macrophages. Thereafter, and prior to joining Yale-NUS College, he carried out postdoctoral research at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, A*STAR, where he worked on exploring the versatile properties of water-based peptide gels in biomaterial applications.