English

This course provides students with knowledge of the fundamental concepts, principles, processes, and rules of public international law as well as a more in-depth knowledge of selected areas of the law. This course covers different aspects of general international law, including the sources of international law, statehood and international legal personality, the law of international responsibility, and dispute settlement. It also examines more specialized areas of public international law, with a focus on jurisdiction, immunities, the use of force, and human rights, land and sea, and the environment. The course addresses theoretical debates and uses practical examples of international law in action, many of them relating to contemporary events in international relations.

This course examines the comparative analysis of women's roles in politics and the challenges they encounter in attaining positions of power within the political arena. The seminar is split into two parts. The first part explores various aspects of women's involvement in politics, such as the historical struggle for women's suffrage, the gender gap in voting behavior, ideology, and political involvement, and their variation across countries and time. The second part focuses on various aspects of women's representation in political institutions, including the challenges they face when seeking public office, their portrayal in the media, their impact on political decision-making, and the relationship between their presence and corruption. Additional topics include the entry of women into politics and the degree of this transformation varying across different countries and regions. Questions covered include: what factors underlie these variations? Why have some political systems successfully integrated women into politics while others lag behind? Do men and women approach politics differently in terms of understanding and engagement? Is there a disparity in political involvement and aspirations between genders? Additionally, how has media coverage affected female candidates? Furthermore, once in power, do women govern differently from men? 

This course introduces students to various aspects of the socioeconomic, cultural, and political transformations that Japan has undergone since the end of the AsiaPacific War. It explores the historical trajectories of postwar Japan within the broader context of its transition from an imperial power to a post-imperial nation, as well as its involvement in the regional and global Cold War. Major topics to be discussed include: the Allied Occupation of Japan, political developments and social activism, “high-speed growth” and its shadows, national and transnational memory politics related to the Asia-Pacific War, and the impact and repercussions of “March 11.” While the primary focus of this course is on post-1945 Japan, we will examine how the remnants and aftermath of the Japanese Empire have influenced the complexities of the postwar period. In doing so, this course also considers the interactions between postwar Japan and other Asian countries, providing insights into Japan’s evolving role in East Asia. 

This course introduces the dramatic performance traditions of the ancient Greek world. Focusing on Athens, students study ancient plays as literary texts and performance scripts and explore elements of poetics, the production of drama such as performance venues (theatres, festivals, games) and the conventions and practicalities of staging, as well as drama’s civic and religious contexts, historical development, and value as source of cultural information. Students critically discuss the content, themes, and structure of the studied plays. Students analyze extracts from and aspects of the studied plays. Students situate the studied plays in their performance contexts and comment on the relevance of these contexts for their understanding. The course also explores the significance of ancient drama for the audiences of selected later restaging, translations, and adaptations, from antiquity to the present day.

This course introduces both computer game design and development. It includes important computer design concepts and fundamentals to create electronic games using C# and Unity. Students manage paper and digital prototyping, design iteration, and user testing. They also use game scripting and programming, including computer graphics and animation. The audience for this course includes current and aspiring game designers and those interested in all principles of the game creation process. Students from different locations share observations for a multinational/multicultural perspective.

This course investigates the process of the formation of the socialist system and the characteristics of the socialist system from historical, ideological, and political-social perspectives, and examines the possibility of its existence as an alternative ideology despite the collapse of real socialism.  

The course places communism as an ideology into dialog with reality as the system manifested in the Soviet Union and North Korea. Students will analyze communism as “theory” or “ideology” while using works of Karl Marx, investigate how the Bolsheviks tried to build the “first socialist country on earth” in the Soviet Union, and investigate the North Korean case, comparing it to the Soviet experience as well as the early ideals of Marxism. 

This course enables students to acquire some basics of Hong Kong Sign Language and the general principles for communicating with deaf people in a visual-gestural modality. With different videoed scenarios, students are systematically guided to acquire elementary signing skills for fulfilling basic communication needs in everyday situations. Emphasis will be placed on a range of simple, general-purpose expressions, which allow students to converse with local deaf people, as well as prepare themselves for learning the language further.

This course covers basic modeling such as statistical processes, distribution theory, probability theory, and application methods. Topics include basic stochastic modeling, the theory of queues and its application to real cases. Students will have hands-on experience with popular simulation tools and be trained with both analytic models and popular simulation tools (SMPL, OMNet++, NS3). 

This course is an introduction to the pre-modern history of East Asia up until the early 1800s, specifically focusing on China and its relations with Korea. In the first half of the semester, the course covers the political and cultural development that initially emerged in China proper and later spread to its neighbors, shaping the common bonds that bring East Asia together as a whole. In the second half of the semester, the course examines important transnational events and connections, most notably wars and commerce, with an emphasis on the 17th and 18th centuries when the social conditions of modern East Asia were shaped. 

A four-skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking) language course with a generally communicative approach, using classroom-based and additional digital components, to Level A1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.