I am a Literature major and Philosophy minor who believes that cultural texts can shape and store the worlds in which they circulate. I am broadly interested in exploring literary and cinematic production from East Asia and Southeast Asia (in particular Singapore) from the early twentieth century to the present. Through these texts, I want to think through regional interconnections and resonances on topics such as modernity, multilingualism, aesthetics, politics and queerness. The Literature major has given me the flexibility and theoretical frameworks to work in a variety of mediums including writing, film, performance and ‘new’ media. I enjoy creative writing, and attempts to write poetry, creative nonfiction, short stories—when academic writing is not constantly asking to be written.

My capstone project investigates a single trajectory of the HIV/AIDS ‘archive’ in Singapore theatre (1989–2015). The project attempts to track theatre’s development alongside queer history, the social history of HIV/AIDS and media history.

“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible form of magic” – Albus Dumbledore. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling.

Saluete! I am a wannabe Classics scholar disguised as a Literature Major. My love for reading has since grown into a fascination for excavating socio-historical contexts from mere words! In class I enjoy being the most knowledgeable person on Graeco-Roman myths (only because I have not taken a class on Roman or Greek literature in Yale-NUS… yet) and will stun you with my knowledge of the Graeco-Roman Pantheon. One of my most memorable moments in class so far was having my professors ask to talk about Greek Myths in class. I am currently attempting to learn two ancient languages simultaneously (no prizes for guessing which ones) in what I hope is a contribution to my capstone. Besides my dive into classical antiquity, I enjoy swimming, singing (choral and musical), and spilling tea.

My capstone compares myths from other traditions to the Greek or Roman one.

My name is Heeeun Monica Kim, a Literature student at Yale-NUS College. I am currently hooked on dystopian science fiction but have always been an avid reader of epic fantasies and Shounen manga. Apart from reading, I enjoy Netflix, drawing comics and playing basketball. I also particularly enjoy being outdoors, and will spend my free time watching birds, catching frogs, or chasing (from a safe distance) the occasional otter family. I have written about Singapore’s loveable lutrines in Eating Chilli Crab in the Anthropocene: Environmental Perspectives on Life in Singapore.

Hi there, I am a third-year student who is fascinated with the ancient world. Most of the Literature classes I have taken in Yale-NUS dabble in Graeco-Roman classics, and I have grown to adore Ovid’s wicked sense of humour as well as the beautiful eroticism of Sappho’s poetry. I am fluent in Classical Chinese (and hopefully Latin by next year) and am excited to delve more deeply into the works of these two great civilisations.

Why these old texts? As I become more familiar with the classics, I begin to understand where a lot of other books fit in. Identifying these references in my reading has allowed me to unpack depths I did not even know were there before. It is somewhat like developing an appreciation for wine–hidden floral, fruity and oaky elements begin to emerge, and I am better able to articulate my tastes!

I reside in the cross-section between Literature, fine arts, and… Mathematical, Computational & Statistical Sciences? I chose literature simply because I love literature seminars. The different perspectives around a table, the diversity of approaches in analysis, everything from philological to historical-contextual, provides a plethora of methods that yields fascinating results when applied to different texts via different individuals. There is always more that can be found, which is kind of like treasure hunting for adults except that everyone can share their nuggets of wisdom and everyone goes home richer than they began. My capstone blends my three main interests together.

Hey, I am Ritika. I grew up in Kolkata, India, and graduated in 2018 from Yale-NUS. I gravitated towards Literature as a major partly due to my lifelong fascination with multivalent texts, and partly due to the brilliant faculty in the department at Yale-NUS. My capstone revolved around post-WWII and post-partition film in Germany and India respectively, with a focus on emerging female identities. Film as a multidisciplinary text and screen as a lens were topics I wanted to examine, hence why I pursued this project despite it being rather unusual in a conventional literary sense. After graduating , I completed my MPhil in Film and Screen Studies from the University of Cambridge in 2019, where my thesis focused on non-human ecologies, race, queerness, and Southeast Asian film. Since then, I have been a curator at New Art Exchange in the UK, Artistic Director for the Busan Biennale’s Sea Art Festival 2021 in South Korea, and continued developing my curatorial, academic, and writing practices.

My time in the Literature major was nothing short of a complete revolution as to how I perceive the world. I love that in Yale-NUS, the study of literature is intertwined with politics, society and philosophy, creating a rich learning experience that ultimately takes the world at large as a text for analysis. In addition to books, plays, and poems, I have been blessed to study visual art, films, and TV as well; some of my favourite projects include my capstone thesis on Phua Chu Kang and Singapore nation-building (yes, that 1990s Singapore sitcom) and an analysis of the Magical Orient trope in 1960s Doctor Strange comics. This robust learning experience gave me the confidence to pursue an MA in Literary Studies at the National University of Singapore where I developed my interest in cinema further. As of right now, I have published one academic article in The Journal of Popular Culture on neoliberalism in The Greatest Showman and have an upcoming article with Asian Cinema on trauma and modernity in 1990s Singapore new wave horror films. I have been privileged to study with many excellent teachers, and it all started here in the Yale-NUS Literature major.

Hello! I am Felicia from the class of 2018. I scored really badly for Literature in my A Levels and I remembered thinking that I needed a break from the subject, which is why I always thought I was going to be a Psychology or Philosophy major. However, through the mandatory course of “Literature and Humanities” in the Common Curriculum, I found myself drawn towards literature again. I really enjoy the thought process required for literary analysis, the insights I glean from close reading, and how words can make me feel. It was no wonder that I eventually picked it as my major, with no hesitation. I always believed that literature should not be an esoteric subject and that it is more relatable than most people think. With the analytical tools I picked up, I decided to tackle the global phenomenon of fanfiction, more specifically K-pop fanfiction written by fans out of Korea, for my capstone project. Why do non-Korean fans want to write fanfiction about Korean idols? How are they able to capture the essence of these idols in fanfiction written in their own local settings? I looked into how one’s local culture is constantly being redefined with influences from other cultures, and how this is exemplified by the writing of real person K-pop fanfiction. I proposed that fans are actually interpreting these K-pop idols as text and recontextualising that into their own worlds. After graduation, I chose a career in the Singapore Police Force, and I am currently an Investigation Officer. I decided on this path because I wanted an environment where I would be exposed to the real world and be empowered to make a difference. Instead of analysing narratives from books, I now make sense of the accounts I hear from my victims and accused persons. An act of crime is not unlike a textual body which requires close reading and interpretation, along with a touch of nuance and context. I am grateful for my education at Yale-NUS College as a Literature major, for it has made me more open-minded and discerning.

Hi there! My name is Chris Tee and I am born and bred in Singapore (although this tends to raise eyebrows when others hear me introducing myself in person). I am currently studying abroad on the Yale in London programme in the UK, and living in another country makes you describe yourself in a different way. For instance, I think that “a poofy mug precariously balancing on two chopsticks” is the most accurate image of myself as a person from the tropics with four layers of clothes. I do not quite have a literary interest in the conventional sense of picking an author, genre, time period or geographical region. Instead, I am interested in the different ways a text can be read and how we make meaning from reading it.