English

This class focuses on travel writing from English and German speaking countries after 1945.  From the 1970s onwards, travel writing has displayed a strong tendency towards hybridity. The course covers works such as Bruce Chatwin's "In Patagonia;" The Middle Passage" by V. S. Naipaul, and W. G. Sebald's "The Rings of Saturn." 

The course also deals with some eminent representatives of German-speaking travel writing like Roger Willemsen and Christoph Ransmayr, whose works will be read against the background of the aforementioned classics. Last but not the least, this course will give a short overview of the history of travel writing, discussing the role of ethnology and topics like orientalism, primitivism and postcolonialism.

This course examines the transformation of identity in Hong Kong through the analysis of the tropes of crises, home, and “border-crossing” in contemporary Hong Kong literary, filmic and other cultural texts. It explores how various crucial moments of transition in Hong Kong history have produced identity crises in the people of Hong Kong. Some of these intriguing moments include the communist takeover in 1949, the 1997 handover, as well as more recently the SARS outbreak, the urban redevelopment debates, and other current issues. It will also explore the possibility of understanding one’s sense of self/selves through the various practices of writing Hong Kong. It discusses critically the relation between nation and home, self and other, the individual and the collective, memory and forgetting to critique the cultural problems bound up in a space of flows called “Hong Kong.”

This course explores the role of the citizen in contemporary democratic politics. As R. J. Dalton confesses, “If democracy was in crisis, it was one of institutions, not of the democratic spirit among citizens.” According to Dalton, understanding the values and choices of the citizens can tell us the quality of democracy. 

This course, based on two textbooks, R.J. Dalton’s Citizen Politics and R. Inglehart’s Cultural Evolution, explores values, behaviors, and political participation of the citizen in current democracy.  The first part of the course (Citizen Politics) aims to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of citizen politics through a systematic approach and the process it transfers into diverse political participation.  The second part (Cultural Evolution) discusses the changing values of the citizen such as feminization, happiness, new forms of political activism, and the effect of artificial intelligence on society. Changing values creates a new sphere of politics. 

In addition to these two textbooks, students need to read D. Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow for a team project answering the question, “How can we explain political participation of the citizen in a democracy?” 

This course introduces Japan’s global political and security role, starting with the pre-1945 and Cold War era legacies, and then focuses on the Post-Cold-War era. It examines Japan’s shift from security isolationism during the Cold War to security engagement, its championing of regional multilateralism in East Asia, its emergence as a global power in development aid, its contributions to UN peacekeeping and non-traditional security in areas such as humanitarian and disaster relief (HaDR), counter-piracy, maritime security, and counter-pandemic measures. It focuses on Japan’s relationships with the US, China, Korea, ASEAN, and Europe, and considers how Japan’s foreign policy institutions, including those making security and development aid policy, have changed during the Abe administration. The course concludes with a summary looking at Japan’s trajectory as a middle power.

The course will provide students with an understanding of the basic human anatomy and physiology. Students learn the coupling of structure with function through a series of lectures, tutorials, and practicals.

This course facilitates an understanding of the dynamics of the political environment through which public policy is formulated, adopted and implemented.  The course introduces key concepts, theories and analytical approaches in public policy studies.  At the end of this course, students will examine contemporary challenges to public policy and the role of government.

This course provides an understanding of the key determinants of economic development, inequality, and trade. It combines economic theories with empirical studies. It is divided into two halves. In the first half, students study how the economic development of different regions is interconnected through trade. Students begin by examining the patterns of international trade. They then define and use the principle of comparative advantage. They formalize the reasons why countries trade using classical theories and general equilibrium models of trade. These models highlight that trade can generate both gains and inequalities. In the second half, students begin by defining economic development and measuring the gap between poor and rich countries. They define and make use of concepts like poverty, inequality, and economic growth. They then review the classic theories of economic growth, which attempt to explain why some countries are rich and others are poor and contrast those with the contemporary models of development. Students also consider the role of political institutions and human capital in generating economic development.

This course introduces students to world history through material culture. The main objects and configurations of material culture, from the body as commodity to cowries as money, are analyzed in this course. Food, drinks, drugs, fabrics, dress, houses, furniture, interior decoration, urban planning, and gardens structure a diversified program. The circulation of objects around the world, in some cases under different materials and forms, opens the way to consider cultural exchange between different civilizations, meaning forms of transfer, contamination, adaptation, and refusal.

This course  examines the theories and evidence underpinning social inequalities in health (defined as the unfair and avoidable differences in health status). It considers structural/material and psychosocial theories, and hypotheses about social drift, self-selection, and genetics. Attention is given to the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health. Sources of data and measurement of scale of inequalities between and within groups are addressed. The course considers the distribution of wealth, income , resources, and power at global, national, and local levels. Redistributive mechanisms work through either government or market control, and the economic implications for inequalities are compared and analyzed. Policy interventions and their different approaches are explored including universal and targeted or selective approaches to reducing inequalities by reducing the inequitable distribution of power, money, and resources.