International Christian University

This course surveys intergroup conflict and peacebuilding through the perspective of culture, psychology, and law. The course studies several case studies to understand why people fight; how they form political coalitions to make peace, and the legal frameworks that facilitate a sustained end to conflict. The course is organized around key sociological definitions of groups: political engagement, gender, ethnicity, disability, and nationality. To this end the course looks at historical and present-day examples such as:

- The American Abolitionist Movement
- Eugenics in the Early Twentieth Century
- Nationalism and Gender in World War II
- Human Rights
- Disability Culture in Japan and the United States
- Homophobia in Uganda
- Nativism in Northern Ireland
- Ethnicity and Religion in the Israeli-Palestinian movement
- Peacemaking in Liberia

This course introduces both qualitative and quantitative research methods in sociological research. It covers the basics, such as the purpose and significance of social research; the history of social research; research ethics, and how to review sociological literature. Students will also learn about research design, research planning, constructing hypotheses, making questionnaires, sampling, and conducting fieldwork. In the second half of the course, students will write a research proposal, conduct social research, and summarize their findings in a report. By learning the basics of qualitative and quantitative social research methods in this course, students will be able to choose research topics that align with their academic interests and conduct empirical research.

ThiThis is an introductory course to corporate finance and valuation, focusing on the internal cash flow of the firm (profit and loss statement), corporate financing, and corporate governance.

The course addresses the following topics:

• Introduction to Corporate Finance
• Accounting statements and cash flow
• Financial markets and net present value
• How to value bonds and stocks
• Some alternative investment rules
• Net present value and capital budgeting
• Strategy and analysis using net present value 
   

This course introduces the history of American literature after 1865.

In 1900, American sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois wrote that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” Du Bois could hardly have anticipated how enduring that color line would be or how complex it would grow, both in the United States and across the world under American empire. As one example, Martin Luther King, Jr., pointed out in 1967 that while under segregation in the U.S. Black and white men could hardly sit on the same bus, the state was happy to sit them side-by-side in warplanes meant to kill Vietnamese people. Evidently, the color line is entwined with lines of class and nation -- who works, who rules -- in ways we must study closely if the twenty-first century is to look different from the twentieth.

This course examines how these lines have been drawn and redrawn in the post-Civil War era and across the “American century,” from Jim Crow to Banana Republics, from Black Power to what the Zapatistas call “the fourth world war.” Along the way, it studies study fiction, film, and poetry from some of the greatest minds in American culture and politics.

The course features works of authors such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Flannery O’Connor, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, Amiri Baraka, June Jordan, George Romero, Martin Luther King, Jr., Che Guevara, Pablo Neruda, Subcomandante Marcos, and Karen Tei Yamashita.

Students should expect to read 10-25 pages of material per week or more. 

Modern information science has given rise to techniques for acquiring and analyzing a variety of observable data in order to reveal multimodal characteristics of humans. The objective of this course is to study sequential data analysis, machine learning, relation to cognitive science, and its applications through information processing represented by natural language processing, EEG, and speech.

This course explores the relationship between language and the human mind, studying how the mind, as a cognitive system, processes language. Utilizing the perspective of cognitive psychology, the course covers topics such as lexical knowledge and semantic processing of words, sentence processing, and text comprehension. It presents an opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of language processing and learn methodologies of the psychology of language through experimental projects.

This course is the second of a series in learning analytics. It is strongly encouraged that learners take EDU223 Learning Analytics to prepare for this course. This course helps learners solve real-world problems via a foundation in critical thinking and data analysis. Learners bring together their knowledge of learning systems and combine these with data analytics to better understand how learning and communication take place online, especially in online learning environments. 

This is a research course. It is designed for learners to acquire the skills necessary to apply analytic methods that focus on discourse in learning contexts. We pay special attention to mediated-learning environments and foster independent skills in both Japanese and English via algorithmic methods of counting and comparing data samples. 
 

The topics of this course surround the data collection process and a simple inferential mini-study. Topics include:
- An introduction to advanced CMDA (computer-mediated discourse analysis), including examples of effective studies using CMDA

- How to develop a study- data selection.
- Constructing a human interaction study and its methodological pitfalls.
- Learner presentations of individually analyzed data.
- Introduction to Behavior Analysis.
- Introduction to Critical Discourse Analysis.
- Selecting Behavior Analysis or Critical Discourse Analysis for in-depth exploration

This course provides an overview of the basic themes essential to properly interpret Japanese classical literature. Understanding Japanese classical literature requires multiple perspectives, including various aspects of society, politics, religion, environment, education, architecture, lifestyle, fine arts, and performing arts. The course instructs on literary works (both poetry and prose) dating from the Nara period to the Kamakura period, but the focus is on the Heian period. This course expects to enable students to rediscover the pleasure of reading classical literary works.
 

How are words used to change people’s minds? What makes us pay attention to someone’s words, sung, spoken, or written? Does the spoken (or sung) word have more impact than the written one? What makes someone click on the headline of an online publication? Is an image more powerful with or without a linguistic frame? Can language be more persuasive than an image? Is persuasion, like humor, culture-specific? These are questions that will be explored in this course about how rhetoric, the art of verbal persuasion, operates in contemporary society. 
 

The course aims to: 

(1) To develop an awareness of how language is used to persuade and manipulate by looking at rhetoric, the art of verbal persuasion, and recognizing how a range of rhetorical devices, including repetition and metaphor, are employed in popular songs, and memorable advertisements, headlines and tweets, political speeches, and film titles; and 

(2) To practice the use of rhetorical devices in making language more persuasive.

This course aims to give a broad outline of several Japanese musical genres, along with an understanding of the way in which the musical styles exist within Japanese culture. Emphasis will also be placed on the cultural and geographical position of Japan within the larger context of East Asia. The course takes a practical approach, with frequent demonstrations, providing an opportunity to try out several Japanese instruments. No musical or linguistic skills are needed to take the course.

Learning goals:  

1) To obtain an overview of musical traditions in Japan; 
2) To develop ways of describing these musical traditions and understanding them in their cultural context, and
3) To relate these traditions to Western European and other Asian musical traditions.