English

This introductory course aims to give students basic familiarity with the systems and language of law in England, the United States, and Australia. The course also aims to provide students some degree of confidence in tackling the difficult task of reading primary legal materials (cases and statutes) from these countries, which is essential in their future work as legal professionals or white-collar workers.

Using an “ecocritical” approach, this course examines how literary texts have represented the relation of humans to “nature” and to environmental change from early mythological writings to present-day fiction. Among the texts to be studied are the Epic of Gilgamesh, Greek and Roman pastoral poems, Romantic landscape poetry, American environmental writing, Irish nature poetry, and contemporary ecological dystopic fiction.

This course examines paradigms in Brazilian foreign policy, as well as the role of economic development on Brazilian foreign policy. Topics include the Republican regime and foreign policy; Americanism and Pan-Americanism; the Cold War and foreign policy; impact of the economy on foreign policy; independent foreign policy and globalism; foreign policy of the military regime and Americanism; geopolitics and national security doctrine; revival of globalism and consolidation; democracy and foreign policy; post-Cold War and Brazilian international insertion; actors in Brazilian foreign policy.

This course allows students to explore current and enduring educational questions through a sociological lens and to identify the relationships between education and social inequalities. Special attention is paid to issues of social justice, inclusion/exclusion, and possibilities for social transformation. The course considers various axes of power, identity and institutional organization, including sessions focused on social class, race/ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, and learner and teacher identities.  

The main topics covered in this course are financial risk analysis and financial risk. The course provides students with a thorough understanding of market risk from both a practical and technical point of view. A representative list of topics covered includes empirical properties of market prices (fat tails, volatility clusters) and forecasting of conditional volatility; concepts of financial risk (volatility, Value-at-Risk); univariate and multivariate volatility models (ARCH, GARCH); implementation and evaluation of risk forecasts; and endogenous risk. Students apply the models to real financial data using Matlab/Python/R, a programming environment widely used in industry and academia. No prior knowledge of programming is assumed.

The course explores the world of fashion and luxury by providing an overview and general framework of the sectors, the companies, and brands, then delving into two key areas: the sustainability and circularity management focus and the merchandising process (from the point of view of brand building of the seasonal offerings). Both topics are strategic today: sustainability has become a key factor for the fashion system; collection development has to be adapted to the industry evolution and the omnichannel approach. The course discusses topics including an overview of the fashion system and a detailed industry analysis; analyzing the main business logic and business models in fashion; an overview of opportunities and challenges related to sustainability and circularity management in fashion; key tools to manage sustainability and circularity in fashion, to create a competitive advantage based on differentiation; the concept of the fashion cycle and innovation, the pipeline and its timing; the seasonal strategies at the level of the product, with relation to distribution and communication; and the role of merchandiser, the collection plan, the sales campaign, and the role of buyer.

This is a contemporary history (from late 20th century to current period) course on East Asia surveyed through the lens of multidisciplinary area studies. It highlights select important themes in political-economic developments that may potentially lead to better understanding of contemporary East Asian regionalism and affairs. These political-economic themes can be found in the case studies on East Asian regionalism, energy use, soft power, technological developments (including military-industrial complex). The course materials are also divided into three major regions of focus: Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and US-Pacific presence. This course does not pretend to be comprehensive but provides class participants with the essential knowledge to analyze and understand contemporary East Asian political-economic affairs and development.

In recent years, there has been growing interest in sign language along with increasing social awareness that sign language is a real language worthy of systematic study. This course is a general education survey course introduces students to the many different social and communicative aspects of signing found around the world in deaf and non-deaf communities. Even hearing communities such as aboriginal and monastic ones have found the need to communicate visually when, for whatever reason, speech cannot be used.

By the end of this course, students are expected to: Learning Goals:
1) Have acquired insight into a different visual world of communication.

2) Have increased awareness of changes in attitudes regarding disability, identity, and culture.

3) Have a better understanding of educational and social welfare practices affecting the deaf in Japan and around the world.

Globalization and Japan is usually connected with the oft researched policy of “Cool Japan, ” which emphasizes popular culture, particularly anime and manga. Courses on anime and manga tend to focus on an analysis of the object, whether it is a particular anime or manga title. This course aims to fill the gap, by shifting the focus to the industries as popular culture cannot exist without the complex structures of business, form and application of anime and manga.

The course aims: 

1. To introduce the student to the “behind-the-scenes” aspects of anime and manga.
2. To introduce the student to research on anime and manga from a case study.
3. To engage students in critical approaches towards familiar topics.
4. To encourage students in think critically through their own projects of a chosen case study.

This course teaches the community ecology of marine kelps through readings of chapters related to ecological topics in the book The Biology and Ecology of Giant Kelp Forests by Schiel & Foster (2015).

The course aims to understand the structure and function of marine kelp communities through the study of the ecology of giant kelp forests.