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Department of Humanities and Social Sciences: Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies Section

Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies SectionArea Studies SectionSocial and International Relations

The Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies Section is composed of 7 courses: Cultural Anthropology, Culture and Representation, Comparative Literature and Arts, Contemporary Thought and Philosophy, Japanese Intercultural Studies, Language and Information Sciences, and Studies on Text, Culture and Theory.

As evident from its name, the greatest feature of this section can be found in its dynamic and cross-cutting interdisciplinarity and comprehensiveness, transcending the various boundaries between disciplines, regions and cultural genres. Ranging from matters peculiar to individual cultures such as traditional rites and folk entertainment to inter-cultural exchanges, and arts, cultures and multi-media communication issues at the global level characteristic of a highly information-oriented society, as well as the language activities and thoughts underlying these themes, the research areas covered by the section are extremely broad. By furthering research on specialised fields whilst always seeking to examine 'culture' with an open outlook, the aim is to break new grounds in 'cultural' research with an 'interdisciplinary expertise'.

In addition, another key feature of the section is the emphasis placed on practical research in order to address concretely the subjects of investigation. By incorporating into the process of theorisation, knowledge and experiences gained from fieldwork, on-site surveys and learning, detailed analyses of texts and images, and experiments, the section aims to carry out active teaching and research that goes beyond theorising simply for theory's sake.

To this intent, many faculty members from the section's parent body - the Department of Language and Information Sciences and the Department of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences - co-operate on each of the courses to provide a curriculum that makes the most of the broad and diverse fields of research and the wide-ranging practical experiences.

Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies SectionArea Studies SectionSocial and International Relations

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