English

This course examines the nature of the claims that indigenous peoples are making and the political strategies that they use to pursue their self-determining agendas in both domestic and international arenas. Concepts of indigenous and human rights, redistributive justice and others are discussed and explored in relation to contemporary demands of self-determination. The course seeks to develop a contextual awareness of political, social, cultural and economic relationships between Maori and other indigenous peoples and the settler states.

The Contemporary Global Issues course covers different topics each term. This course analyzes contemporary global issues with particular attention on human capital and labor market of Japan and the US. Each class has a set of readings drawn from academic journals. The course studies how to interpret the economic analysis in the paper and present their understanding in a logical way. Topics: how to analyze issues from an economic perspective; incentives and correlations; competition, country and gender differences; employment practices and how they have changed in Japan; beauty premiums and earnings; regular and irregular employment; inequality and competition; important of non-cognitive abilities as well as cognitive abilities; human capital and earnings; and culture and economy. Assessment: participation in class discussions, midterm exam, final report. Units: The regular version of this course is worth 3.0 UC quarter units. The AQ version of this course is worth up to 4.5 UC quarter units. Students must submit a special study project form which outlines the requirements for the additional units. This is typically an additional paper graded by the instructor of the course.

Globalization and technological innovations are changing the types of jobs available and the skills needed to succeed. With an uncertain future, the process of choosing a career can be frustrating and time consuming. Therefore, this course takes a practical approach to the career application process. Students explore professional options after graduation, conduct self-assessments, research employment opportunities in various industries, create an effective résumé and work portfolio, practice job interview techniques, and/or apply to graduate schools. The focus of this course is to provide students with the professional writing and interviewing skills that are required for employment and/or graduate school. By the end of this course students learn how to do the following: write essays for graduate school applications or companies, employ techniques for job-search activities, such as researching companies, developing resumes, writing cover letters, and interviewing, develop and present a professional portfolio for use in job interviews, and research and explore various positions in diverse industries. Assessment: Career Documents (45%), Presentations & Mock Interviews (30%), Reflections (15%), Professionalism (10%).

This course will function as a study of social entrepreneurs in different contexts, and introduction to valuable tools for creative thinking and solutions in addressing social problems. Through engagement with guest lectures and practitioners in social enterprise, students learn how social entrepreneurship can be represented as a force for social change, combining both theory and practice relating to social impact and social innovation. The course will be a combination of lectures, workshops, presentations, consultations, and class participation—all of which will culminate in the proposal, presentation, and execution of the student's own social enterprise.

The course explores the political, economic, social, and culture history of South Asia in this turbulent decade through a mix of contemporary and recent texts, and visual media such as film. The course explores how the political systems which ruled South Asia since the second world war and independence from the British empire weakened and in many places collapsed. The course traces the emergence of a more impatient, populist political and cultural style in the 1970s, which powerfully influenced the politics and culture of South Asia today. While the course focuses on events occurring in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, it also connects and compares with processes occurring on a global scale, assuming South Asian history can only be understood in relation to other regions.

This seminar explores the impact of nuclear weapons on the world we live in. It allows students to better understand policy issues such as the crisis with North Korea, current investments in nuclear weapons modernization worldwide, the nuclear arms race, the politics of nuclear deterrence, non-proliferation, disarmament, and crisis management in the Trump era. It addresses security issues but goes beyond them to address ethical and historical issues. It investigates nuclear weapons as techno-political objects which create new dilemmas for people living under their shadow. By doing so, it allows students interested in international relations, history, and sociology of science and technology to include the nuclear weapons factor in their thinking without limiting it to security issues and to get a better grasp of the historicity of those dilemmas. This seminar is divided in three parts. The first part questions the notion of dilemmas of a nuclear-armed world itself (it introduces students to nuclear weapons technologies and questions the existence of such dilemmas in contrast to the normalization of nuclear weapons in the world), the second one focuses on a series of fundamental dilemmas (the fear dilemma, the value dilemma and democracies nuclear dilemma) and the third one focuses on a set of situated dilemmas. In other words, it investigates the dilemmas created by the presence of nuclear weapons in the world from the point of view of different roles and positions in a given society: the civilian citizen, the member of the military, the nuclear scientist and engineer, the public intellectual. It builds on the extensive and ongoing research of the instructor as well as his experience of the politics of nuclear weapons with policymaking elites and civil society.

Computer games have emerged as distinctive cultural forms, with their own aesthetics, design cultures, user communities and academic study. This course uses historical and critical theories on games and play to explore how computer games work and to examine their complex interrelationships with culture. Drawing on readings from games studies, new media and design, a range of different games and use hands-on exercises are analyzed to develop game design concepts.