This LAB explored stories, archives, and imaginaries of interconnection, exchange, and transaction in Singapore and Malacca.
With a focus on small Portuguese-Eurasian communities in both cities, the group delved into the particularities and oceanic qualities of Eurasian history and culture in the region. The LAB used writing techniques to examine and compare different modes of cosmopolitan imagination and the ways they reflect on the production of memory and heritage along the Strait of Malacca. Through these activities, students explored topics of difference, racialisation, and forms of urbanity that have developed out of transcontinental networks.
Like the Common Curriculum itself, this LAB was created to be interdisciplinary and to drive critical, creative and active thinking. The programme bridges the humanities and the social sciences and relates directly to two first-year Common Curriculum courses: Literature and Humanities (LH) and Comparative Social Inquiry (CSI). More specifically, the LAB explored myths and stories in Eurasian history and culture as both a way of understanding how writers represented and shaped the worlds in which they and their audience lived (LH). The LAB also asked students to examine the social forces that determine how we live, how we exist in cities and interact through networks and question why societies are the way they are (CSI).
