Japan

This course aims to help students learn spoken and written Japanese for academic purposes through a variety of familiar topics about society and culture. The target level is CEFR B1.1. Prerequisite: “J3:Japanese” or equivalent. Ten class hours/week. 

By the end of the course, students will be able to:
express their idea and understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters, 
exchange information, and understand and convey one’s feelings and intentions.

This course explores the important roles media play in our everyday life, and considers a wide range of issues, including (but are not limited to): 
How do we incorporate various forms of media into our daily lives? 
How does media influence our perceptions of ourselves, others, and society?
What is so “new” about “new media”? 
What is so “social” about social media?
Why does media matter? 

This course provides an opportunity to reflect critically on one's media use, and helps them investigate the relationships between media, individuals, and society. 

Modern Japanese literature is filled with ghosts and goblins--if only you know where to look. This course is designed as an introduction to the strangest, scariest, and wildest fiction in modern Japan, meaning that no prior knowledge of Japanese literature or Japanese history is required. The course begins at the "beginning" of modern Japanese literature in the late nineteenth century up to contemporary works and explores a range of ghost stories, fairy tales, as well as the literary equivalent of the splatter film. The course explores the following questions: How did the broad genre of today's gensō bungaku (roughly corresponding to supernatural, horror, and fantasy genres) emerge and develop as a set of assumptions about the nature of modern life in Japan? How do these assumptions challenge our way of interacting with the world, with other people, and ultimately with our own sense of self? What kind of new understandings of various boundaries--between the real and the unreal, the present and the past, the foreign and the native, the living and the dead--might these stories suggest? And how are these texts part of a larger global network of weird fiction--what, in other words, does it mean to call a Japanese text "Gothic"?

This course is for students who have completed intermediate level studies but are advised to review the contents while at the same time studying at the advanced level. Students practice reading long and complex passages from literature including stories, essays and poetry. They study vocabulary, expressions and their usage in the texts, as well as learn about the authors of the literary works. The course helps students develop a deeper understanding of Japanese culture and way of thinking. 

Globally, regional governance at both the transnational and national levels demonstrates that new forms of governance are being explored to meet the needs of states in various regional groupings. NAFTA and the EU represent regional governance that transects politics, economics and security. In contrast, initiatives such as the Kita-Kyushu Initiative are demonstrative on non-state regional governance to meet local needs. This course discusses regional governance from a comparative and multi-tiered perspective by investigating regional governance at the transnational state level and non-state level. Empirical cases studies related to economic, political, traditional, and non-traditional security will be employed to develop students' understanding of regional governance, especially within an East Asian context.

East Asia is the most economically dynamic, strategically significant, and politically significant region on the planet. In addition, the budding regionalism, along with the rise of China, ensures that the region will be a more crucial influence on international relations. The main aim of this course is to explore whether East Asia is heading towards greater peaceful and cooperative region, or of a war- and conflict-oriented region. This is to be carried out: 1) by delving into the theorization of regionalism in world politics; 2) by examining the weights of history of East Asia; 3) by exploring the distinctive character and evolution of the regionalism of East Asia, and 4) by investigating the prospects for the development of a more unified East Asia region in the context of the unique historical circumstances under that China is experiencing its remarkable rise over the last few decades.

This course is designed for students who have already learned the first half of elementary- level grammar. It aims to enhance one’s reading and writing skills, as well as the ability to use elementary-level vocabulary and grammar. 

The course design is based on sentence structures and grammatical patterns learned in the textbook, Elementary Japanese for Academic Purposes Vol.2 (Lesson 19 to 24).