Semester: AY18/19 Sem II
Professor(s): Kevin McGahan
Workload: Manageable
Overall: I generally enjoyed this course as well. Definitely helped that some of my classmates were my friends and that some of us knew Prof Kevin from STEER Myanmar already. The topics in this course covers many different areas families, age, ethnicities, gender, food etc and every week is a new topic so it does not get that dry. This course is also right up my alley as it is very relatable to sociology. The readings were not crazy and were also quite interesting. There is also a fieldtrip to the Japanese cemetery for this course. Was pretty cool as I never actually knew that we had a Japanese cemetery. One of the class sessions was also a screening of the movie Queen which was quite a fun movie to watch! One thing to take note for this course is that class participation is on the heavy side (20%), so speaking up is important. Although I would say that the classroom environment is generally quite supportive and friendly so it should not be too bad. Had fun for this course as a whole!
Assignments: There are 3 assignment components in this mod. One of them is the critical responses component (20%). To get 20% you would need to submit 4 responses on weekly readings (a template will be given) and each response is worth 5%. While I did not have much trouble doing the critical responses as I am a sociology student, some of my non-FASS friends mentioned that it was hard to relate topics in class to fields such as math, chemistry and physics (there is always one question that asks how the topic is related to one’s major). There’s also a 20% assigned to class presentation. Prof Kevin normally starts off the class with a student presentation then he takes over from there. You get to choose your groupmates and topic as well. A major part of this course grades goes to the research paper (40%). For this you can pretty much do anything that interests you. There is no assigned questions and the nature of identities is already very broad. I did my paper on one of my favourite food (Kaya Toast) and how it relates to the Singaporean identity. Hands down one of the most fun and yummy research paper I did in university!
Exams: No exams.
Professor(s): Prof Kevin is a really nice and friendly guy. He is also very helpful when it comes to clarifications. He did quite a bit to help me shape my Kaya Toast paper. I like Prof Kevin a lot!
Tutorials: All seminar classes.
Recommend? While I don’t think I will rave about this mod, I think it’s not a bad course to take to clear UTS. The topics are quite general and hence, anyone would be able to participate. Tho, I am not very sure how much I actually learnt from the module per se as these topics are often touched on and delved deeper during Soci modules. What I enjoyed the most was the research paper haha. But also take note that the experience differs depending on the Prof. I think Prof Anne’s identity classes might be quite different.
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