SATA Vietnam 2008

Academic Program and Courses

Vietnamese women making bricks.

SATA Vietnam 2008 is open to students of all majors. It offers an immersion experience in the rapidly changing and extraordinarily interesting country of Vietnam, including coursework, exploration of Hanoi and the surrounding area, and substantial travel throughout the country.

Students will take four courses, two required and two chosen from the options below.

Required courses:

Vietnamese Language and Culture — 6 credits. Each class has only 3 to 5 students and meets for 2.5 hours each morning, Monday through Thursday. Students learn from a textbook and close interaction with young language teachers from Vietnam National University (VNU). Emphasis is on speaking and listening competence. Guided by their language instructors, students in this course are introduced to the life and culture of Vietnam.

Vietnamese History — 4 credits. This course introduces students to the long and rich history of Vietnam. It will be led by a professor of history from VNU but will also include a number of guest lectures as well as field trips to historical sites in and around Hanoi. 1 meeting per week.

Elective courses (choose two from among the following options; each course meets once a week for 2.5 hours):

ECO 208 Economics of the Informal Sector in Vietnam
Students will learn about the informal sector in Vietnam by conducting surveys among urban informal sector workers. They will compile their data and write about their findings in the context of readings about the urban informal sector in Vietnam. This course is taught only in Vietnam during SATA programs.

ECO 216 Political Economy of Postwar Vietnam
Study of the interaction between economic theory and policy formulation in Vietnam. Topics include: transition to a market economy, urbanization, industrial policy, and rural economic development.

ECO 215 Gender and Development
Examination of women’s role in development and impact of different economic development strategies on the status of women in developing countries. Particular focus will be paid to issues relating to gender and development in Vietnam.

GWS 224 Transnational Women’s Movements
A gendered examination of twentieth-century social movements and the emergence of autonomous women's organizations and networks worldwide. Emphasis on violence and the state, anticolonial movements, communist and postcommunist states, feminism vs nation building, women in industrial and postindustrial economies, and the challenges and opportunities of non-governmental women’s organizations in the twenty-first century.

GWS 315/SOC 315 Gender and Higher Education
Examination of higher education as a gendered social institution in structure, curriculum, campus life, and history. Focus will be comparative, with particular attention to US higher education in comparison with models of other developed and developing countries, including Vietnam. Topics include sex-specific policies and practices, admissions policies, coeducation, affirmative action, women’s studies and related curricular initiatives, sexual harassment, and others.

SOC 212 Sex, Gender, and Society
What is the difference between sex and gender? How do we act out, perform, recreate gender? This course is designed to familiarize students with the prominent discourses and major issues related to sex stratification. It examines how notions of masculinity and femininity evolve and how they affect social reality in such spheres as culture, work, politics and the family.