English

This course explores various facets of modern Japanese society and culture, including family, education, gender, work, and life cycle through readings and (feature) films. The course considers the relationship between cinema and society, critically analyzing a body of film texts from the contexts of their production and reception, and considers what one can -- and how one can -- learn about any society through its feature films. Each semester focuses on different themes. 

This course provides an introduction to the diverse and dynamic history of the United States. Through a range of historical approaches—including political, social, cultural, and foreign policy perspectives - students investigate the forces that have influenced the development of the United States. Themes such as popular culture, multiculturalism, the role of the state, sexuality, gender, race, religion, class, and varied identities are explored, alongside foreign policy, the presidency, and the evolution of America as a global power. The course provides a broad yet nuanced understanding of how power, politics, and different groups of people have intersected across different eras, equipping students with the analytical tools to engage critically with historical narratives and debates. The course is designed to encourage students to think critically about the forces that shaped American politics and culture and empower them to engage with debates about its past, present and future.

This course explores various aspects of media ethics through the study and discussion of recent case studies, helping students build a universal foundation for ethical judgment as they encounter ethical dilemmas as media professionals or consumers. This course aims to help student better understand the ways in which media ethics affects our daily lives. Students develop their presentation and critical thinking skills through class activities such as group discussions. This course aims to engage students in some of the major issues in media ethics. Topics include Advertising Ethics, Public Relations Ethics, Journalism Ethics, Social Media Ethics, and AI and Robot Ethics. 

This course covers the properties and applications of maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), including its consistency, asymptotic normality, and efficiency, and applies these concepts to real-world statistical problems. Students analyze hypothesis testing frameworks, covering the Neyman-Pearson lemma, likelihood ratio tests, and their implementation for single-parameter and multi-parameter models and study the principles of sufficiency and completeness in statistical inference and use the factorization theorem to identify sufficient statistics for various distributions. Students also explore confidence interval construction methods, focusing on pivotal quantities, and evaluate their properties such as coverage probability and efficiency and we apply advanced inferential techniques to solve problems involving exponential families, sequential analysis, and decision-theoretic approaches, linking theory to practice. 

Prerequisites: Mathematical Statistics I, Linear Algebra, Calculus 

This seminar investigates how different recent adaptations engage with the classical nostos epic. During the semester, students discuss the following reworkings of Homer’s Odyssey: Ethan Coen and Joel Coen’s film O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), Bernardine Evaristo’s The Emperor’s Babe (2001), Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (2005), and Amor Towles’s The Lincoln Highway (2021).

This course examines how the world's oldest liberal democracy has become such a vital and fraught force in the contemporary world. It focuses particularly on the peculiar 20th-century US histories of class, race, religion and global engagement. 

In this course, students learn the process for how to design, build, test, deploy, maintain, and monitor scalable and robust data products using the Data Product Life Cycle (DPLC). Students gain hands-on experience working with datasets and use cases, collaborating in teams, and applying agile methodologies to deliver data products that meet the needs of real world stakeholders. The course covers the entire DPLC process, including experimentation and productization, with a focus on reliability, fault tolerance, scalability, deployment, and meeting regulatory requirements. The course prepares students for careers in data & digital technology, equipping them with the knowledge and skills required to work in cross-functional teams and navigate complex regulatory requirements.

This course explores a major topic in current music research, locates it in intellectual and disciplinary history, and gives students the opportunity to conduct independent research on or around the topic, which usually arises from a current project in the department. 

This course centralizes the use of feminist legal theory as a serious mode of inquiry into analyzing law, legal reasoning, and legal reform. It studies four dominant strands of contemporary feminist legal theory, including liberal feminism, Marxist feminism, critical race feminism, and postmodern feminism in queer theory. While this course focuses on common law-based perspectives of feminism, it uses these diverse terrains of feminist legal thought in order to analyze challenges and various areas in social and public discourse internationally. Thus, while the first part of the course is dedicated to acquiring the useful knowledge and background of strands of feminism, the second part of the course creatively applies these tools in practical areas of sex equality issues in employment, consent, abortion, transgender rights, prostitution, and pornography.

This course examines how people make predictable and repeatable mistakes in financial decision-making. It looks at the nature of these mistakes and their origin, using insights from psychology, neurosciences and experimental economics on how the human mind works. It considers how understanding the functioning of the human mind allows us to design a better world—in particular, better stock markets, retirement and healthcare systems.