Carlotta Rudolph joins the course

Carlotta Rudolph, having recently arrived in Singapore, now participates in the course “Modern Southeast Asia”. Being in exchange student, she is foreign to the region in an academic sense as much as in a personal sense. Before considering what this means in regards to her experience of Southeast Asia (SEA), here are some background information:

Carlotta studies at University College Freiburg, a very small (and the only) Liberal Arts College in Germany. There, she majors in Governance: a mixture of Political Sciences, Law, Economics and Sociology. However, her focus is mostly on International Politics and the topic of war in all its facets. Why she is now taking an Anthropology class is not very clear, yet, however, it might be because she needs a class with a regional focus to fulfil a module. Alternatively, she might just want to learn more about the region she is living in for the upcoming five months. Neither of these options could be proven yet.

Either way, Carlotta’s background knowledge on SEA is thus severely limited. In regards to this, she mentioned: “I am very willing to stare at a map until I finally know which city belongs to which country, but as of yet, I might get lost quickly.” Being foreign to Singapore as well as all of Southeast Asia, however, she hopes to bring the view of a foreigner on some of the topics. More though, she hopes to learn from her classmates and to get a perspective on a region without a euro/western-centric starting point. It would be great if she could combine her experience of being obviously foreign and unable to understand any of the regional languages, with an academic understanding of this diverse region - to finally get some of the things that appear strange to her (such as the extensive use of AC in all of Singapore’s public transport/the college).