University | 11:40 pm | January 22, 2012 | By

So you want to go to Yale-NUS?

You can get a Yale-NUS education without ever setting foot in Singapore!
You can get a Yale-NUS education without ever setting foot in Singapore! Photo by Wikimedia Commons.

Plane tickets to Singapore are expensive, but with the right course load, you too can get a Yale-NUS education — right here in New Haven!

Yale-NUS students will be taking a 10-course core curriculum, including four courses studying the “Great Works” of the Eastern and Western literary traditions, according to the college’s proposed curriculum. It’s really not so different from what most humanities majors at Yale do every single day. So if these students were at Yale, what would they be taking? Let’s check it out.

To get a full Yale-NUS experience, start with Directed Studies. This is ridiculous work, but on the bright side, it covers almost the entire Western half of the Yale-NUS reading list. Even better, the program is run by Jane Levin, easily the nicest first lady of any Ivy League university (hi Mrs. Levin!).

Next up is the Eastern tradition. Since Yale doesn’t have Eastern DS, you’ll have to mix and match a bit. Here’s your best bets:

SKRT 130a/LING 138a: Intermediate Sanskrit I

The first half of a two-term sequence aimed at helping students develop the skills necessary to read texts written in Sanskrit. Readings include selections from the Hitopadesa, Kathasaritsagara, Mahabharata and Bhagavadgita. After SKRT 120b or equivalent.

HUMS 418a/RLST 130a/SAST 367a, Traditional Literature of India, China, and Japan

Introduction to literary works that shaped the great civilizations of Asia. Focus on traditional literature from India, China and Japan. Readings range from religious and philosophical texts to literature of the court, poetry, drama and epics.

Now you have to take philosophy and poli sci classes. A little Steven Smith and Jay Elliot, and you should be fine:

HUMS 319b/PHIL 324b, Prudence and Ethics

Prudence as a central concept for understanding action, practical reason, and ethics. Focus on the tradition that flows from Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas and their twentieth-century inheritors and critics.

PLSC 114a, Introduction to Political Philosophy

A study of the first and most fundamental of all political concepts, the regime or constitution. Definition of a regime; evaluation of various kinds of regimes; the kinds of citizens that different regimes produce; differences between ancient and modern conceptions of constitutional government. Readings from Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Tocqueville.

And then bam! You got a solid Yale-NUS education, folks! Just take all the D.S., four semesters of humanities, Sanskrit and political science, and you’re golden like the Singaporean sun.

Comments