JAPN 205 - Introduction to Japanese Studies

Credits: (3)
College Curriculum: COLL 200
Domain (Anchored): CSI
Domain (Reaching Out): ALV

This course introduces students to approaches, methodologies, theories, and concepts central to the study of modern Japan. Our understanding of Japan in the present-day US has been shaped within a specific historical context, namely, the development of the field of Japanese Studies (as part of area studies) in the Cold War era, and as such, this understanding is based upon certain assumptions about Japanese history, culture, and society. Our aim in this class is to gain academic skills that enable us to examine these stereotypical ideas critically, to study Japan in more historically rooted and intellectually informed manners, to avoid essentializing and overgeneralizing it, and to find alternative ways of thinking. Taught in English.