International Christian University

This course explores the meanings of encountering “the Other” by reviewing existing theories and research in intercultural communication. It also examines how encountering someone/something "foreign" builds, shapes, and transforms relationships and communication in our everyday life. Each student should ponder what kind of relationship he/she would like to make in this globalized society that we experience every day. In order to stimulate classroom discussion and promote student-centered active learning, we adopt some innovative instructional methodologies and strategies (e.g., collaborative learning and writing, group presentation, flip teaching, etc.).

This course is essentially a course in what is known as cultural (or cross-cultural) psychology. Cultural psychology is a subfield of psychology that emerged in the late 20th century as a response to the historic dominance of the Western--primarily, American--perspective in psychology. Of note, Japanese researchers played and continue to play a critical role in this field, as strong Japan-America ("Nichi-Bei") academic cooperation allows for easy comparisons and collaborations. But cultural psychology is much bigger than any two particular countries or cultures. Each and every society, and the societies within those societies, all contain powerful cultures that affect the very fabric of our thoughts, emotions, behaviors. In other words, we will look at the cultural roots of our beautiful and indispensable human diversity--the whole world over.

In addition to the topics mentioned in the basic description of the curriculum (perceptual and cognitive processes, human development, language, gender, social behavior, intercultural relations, and applied cultural psychology), we will examine the nature of culture itself. Throughout the course, we try to keep in mind big questions such as "What really is culture?" and "Why do human beings even have culture in the first place?" For more information on the kind of topics we will cover, please see the course textbook, "Cultural Psychology" by Steven Heine. Note, however, that topics will be organically updated to reflect current cultural issues and student interests.

Socio-cultural anthropology is the study of how people across the globe create, understand, adapt to, and transform their worlds. Located at the juncture between the humanities and social sciences, cultural anthropology merges the study of societies (social structures, institutions and political and economic systems) with the study of culture (belief and value systems, language, ritual and art).

Drawing from their own fieldwork experiences, historical archives, as well as from studies in the sciences and humanities, socio-cultural anthropologists describe, analyze and theorize a wide array of human experiences and relationships. The approach in this course is ethnographic and comparative: it studies peoples and places in depth, comparing places and peoples with one another, in order to gain a better understanding of what is general and what is particular about being human. Beginning with basic concepts in anthropology, ethnography as the core anthropological methodology, and some disciplinary history, the course then turns to a series of topics that anthropologists find important in understanding human beings: kinship and family; domination and subordination in everyday practice; identity and politics; and modernization, capitalism, and globalization.
 

The course explores some of the seminal texts in the discipline to understand how the fundamental questions asked by anthropologists have developed over the last century, and examines how these questions are refashioned in the contemporary world around urgent matters like technological change, global warming, migrants and refugee flows.

This course explores field methods in linguistics by working with speakers of less-studied languages. It introduces various methods of investigating linguistic questions using theoretical inquiries. Students are encouraged, but not required, to have completed at least one 200-level course.

The course instructs on how to collect data from speakers of other languages, using main linguistic concepts, including but not limited to phonetics, phonology, syntax and semantics. Students will then apply acquired skills to design field documentation sessions that can be used to test linguistic hypotheses. Furthermore, these skills will be used to investigate less-studied languages in an objective, scientific manner.

This course is about international financial economics (also known as international monetary economics): the movement of currencies and other financial assets across national boundaries. In this course, students will develop a set of analytic tools that can be used to analyze world economic policy debates. In particular, this course will examine the determination of exchange rates and how they are influenced by various economic phenomena such as interest rates, money supply, output, and unemployment. We will investigate different models of exchange rate determination and discuss how actual data supports or refutes these models.

Class meetings are interactive, usually beginning with a brief, student-led review of current events related to international finance. We then work through together, as a class, one of the models under study or look at some economic data and how it informs our understanding of the models under study. 

This Japanese language course is a continuation of Japanese IV and is equivalent to two quarters of fourth year Japanese at UC. The course continues the development of skills in listening, reading, writing, and speaking, and prepares students to utilize Japanese in academic as well as social contexts. Students read authentic academic materials and learn to express their own opinion. 

This is an intermediate Japanese language course. It continues Japanese II at ICU and is equivalent to quarter six to seven (third year) at UC. Upon completion of this course students will have mastered basic contemporary Japanese grammar, vocabulary, and a total of 94 kanji including new readings. With this foundation students should be able to express themselves in both spoken and written forms at a level necessary for simple daily university student life.

This course covers the CEFR A1 level of spoken and written Japanese. It focuses on interactive communication activities relevant to the learners themselves and their immediate surroundings. Students will develop overall language proficiency through listening, speaking, reading, and writing activities on various topics.

The course utilizes Hiragana and Katakana in class materials (slides, homework, class announcements, etc.) from the first week. Also, there will be Hiragana and Katakana quizzes within the first two weeks. Please check Hiragana and Katakana (read & write) before class starts.

By the end of this course, students will be able to get an idea of the content provided by very basic words and phrases on the most common everyday situations, speak and write simple phrases and sentences in areas of immediate need or on very familiar topics, and interact in a simple way if delivered directly to him/her.

This course requires reading several short texts by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, which introduce us to ideas about philosophy and what constitutes philosophical inquiry. As different as these two philosophers are, Rousseau had a tremendous impact on Kant. It is helpful to read Kant in the light of Rousseau. Each thinker will introduce us to some basic philosophical problem and we will think for ourselves about these problems.

This course aims to introduce the subject of philosophy but also the activity of philosophizing. This means that there will be much discussion in class and a fair amount of writing outside of class. The ideal would be to form a "community of inquirers." The depth of realizing this ideal will be up to each student.
 

This introductory module provides an overview of law or legal studies. Participants are expected to carefully read, research, and discuss the underlying ideas and principles of law, and the frameworks and methods (often presupposed) in legal studies.

By the end of this course, students are expected to
(1) Understand and explain basic terms and concepts of legal studies;
(2) Acquire basic knowledge of major legal systems;
(3) Gain fundamental skills to analyze and explain legal aspects of social issues.