Internationally Taught Project

Volledige vakbeschrijving

The proposed course has as its overarching goal to offer students an educational experience that resembles as much as possible a foreign immersion without actually traveling abroad. It will enable UCM to offer courses about countries or regions not covered by the expertise of UCM/UM staff members. Courses can be offered on themes, topics and concerns that are of special interest to various regions and in which partnering universities have expert knowledge. This Project will enable students to combine knowledge gained in previous courses about internationally relevant historical developments, socio-cultural patterns, economic trends, political systems, etc., with analytical and communicative competencies gained in previous skills modules, around a theme proposed and introduced by the foreign-based co-coordinator of the course. The Project is designed as a shell (comparable to Think Tank), thus allowing for easy adaption to different international contexts. Regarding the project on offer in January 2023: It will be on the topic of contemporary Japanese politics, the co- coordinator is Dr. Anoma van der Veere, Osaka University. Participating students will be invited to examine whether it is possible to obtain a rich and reliable understanding the contemporary state of Japanese politics through the lens of popular culture. The traditional approach to exploring and communicating information about a nation’s political system is through historical, legal and policy documents. But popular culture -- including animation (anime), comic books (manga), movies, television dramas, and music -- is itself inherently political. This can range from representing the extended family as the ‘ideal Japanese home’, to conspicuously straightforward anti-foreign sentiments (most frequently, foreign security threats). Student will be expected to examine a variety of different media and deconstruct imbedded narratives in an attempt to ‘read’ the political messages imbued in popular culture products and next compare and contrast these with traditional modes of examining Japanese politics.