Waseda University

Today, as conditions of contemporary globalization have stimulated demand for “international education,” higher education internationalization has become the focus of governments and higher education institutions around the world. However, the meaning of higher education internationalization itself is contested, and there are various rationales for pursuing these activities, including those that are economic, political, socio-cultural, and academic. Moreover, different stakeholders (e.g. students, faculty, institutions, governments, etc.) each have their own distinct rationales for engaging in these activities. This course focuses on: 1) general contexts and trends relating to higher education internationalization around the world, and 2) the specific national contexts and trends of higher education internationalization that can be observed in the cases of various countries. We will focus on several key questions: What is the function of higher education in society, and how has this evolved over time? How have the conditions of contemporary globalization shaped higher education internationalization in universal and specific ways? What are the main universal trends that characterize higher education internationalization today, and how do these apply differently in particular countries? What are the future trends and possibilities for higher education internationalization?

This advanced Japanese course choses a different theme concerning Japanese culture and society to discuss each week. Students are split into groups to engage in activities, discussion, and group work concerning the selected topic. The goal of the class is for students to widen their perspectives and deepen their knowledge regarding various issues related to Japan and Japanese society. The program offers various theme courses and students may take multiple sections. 

The third course of the introductory physics series (Introduction to Physical Science, Classical Physics), this course is designed to study modern physics developed in the 20th century. The course covers special relativity and quantum physics.

This course examines chapters from 19th and 20th century art history with a goal of gaining an understanding of the period, while learning about artists and movements. It introduces key ideas such as Expressionism and Abstraction with the emphasis on the networks of artists and art supporters (curators, sponsors, publishers) that developed them. Careful consideration is given to the political, cultural contexts and general circumstances that formed the cultural production by the artists discussed.

The course teaches major western leadership theories, but also explores, through the real practices of Asian business leaders, the characteristics and behaviors that are not always covered by Western leadership theories. The theories can be divided into three types: the leader as an individual (e.g., personality traits, values, perceptions, attitudes, EQ., etc.);  the leader’s behavior (e.g., participative, delegating, empowering, transformational/transactional, authentic, servant and value-based), and the situation that affects leadership (e.g. Contingency theory; cross-cultural leadership theory). In Asia, paternalistic leadership has been relatively well known, however, Asian countries have been the most rapidly developing in the world. This course introduces new leadership practices as well as traditional classic practices, including Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism, which are believed to influence many of the Eastern Asian countries, including Japan, Korea, and China.  

This class explores several important themes in the political development of East and Southeast Asia. The first part of the course focuses on political culture, concerning the so-called 'Asian values' debate; the second part explores aspects of political information selection, and the third part covers topics of political participation.

This course instructs on python programming from a digital humanities perspective. It begins with the basics using interactive notebooks that require no installation. First, the course covers the basics of programming such as data types, loops, and variables. Later it explores and solves language-based and digital humanities problems using new programming skills and natural language processing (NLP) tools. Python 3 will be used in this course.

This course provides an intermediate level of game theory. Game theory considers rational decision-making in interactive situations. This course defines what these interactive situations are, and the rationality under these situations. In particular, the class uses a new approach to analyze experimental data of people’s decisions in economic/interactive environments. This new approach quantitates the degree of people’s rationality while the standard game theory and economic theory assume ‘super-rational decision-makers.’

Many novices in the historical study of the Cold War tend to draw a simplistic picture about it. For example, the Cold War was an international political process of US-Soviet strategic and ideological confrontations which never reached a third world war. But this widely shared image is not at all appropriate to properly depict the highly complex historical reality of the Cold War. In order to comprehend the complexity, this course analyzes the multiple actors and issues which determined the process of Cold War world politics. This includes not only the global superpowers, but the roles played by their allies, Third World countries, and even transnational actors such as NGOs. The course also sheds more analytical light upon interplay of manifold issue areas such as strategy, economic interdependence, societal changes and so forth.  In short, this course explores Cold War history from a global perspective.

This course introduces students to South Korean sexuality issues through the lens of sexuality, addressing topics such as colonialism and migration; industrialization, family, and sexual harassment; popular culture, media, and masculinity; militarization and conscription; and South Korea’s blooming LGBTQ+ movement. The methodology to approach these issues in the class is not to judge the phenomena only with one standard, but to articulate the multi-layers intersecting each issue. The course examines how historical change from liberated Korea in 1945 to the present-day was both motivated by and determinative of various gender dynamics, using secondary critical readings by scholars to better understand the relationship between society and sexuality in a chronological fashion. Students will learn about how Koreans have recognized diverse sexual orientations and gender roles over time.