Studying at Waseda

Hello!

Waseda Campus with the statue of Ōkuma Shigenobu, founder of Waseda university 

So I thought I would start with a basic introduction to the courses I have taken in the fall semester at Waseda University. Upon arrival, we were given a lot of information about the courses we could and were required to take. As an SP3 student (a student only staying for a year) at the School of International Liberal Studies (SILS), Waseda University, I needed to fulfil the requirement of taking a minimum of 8 credits from SILS and also 6 credits of Japanese Language classes. I struggled to decide as there seemed to be so many interesting courses on offer, but finally I settled on taking Global Environmental Politics and Policies, Pacific Rim and the 21^st Century World, and War and Peace: Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect. Each of these courses was 4 credits, so I was exceeding the minimum requirement, but thought it would be worth it as they all seemed like interesting courses. The way that classes are conducted here is very different from the way that I found UCL modules to be taught, so I want to explain a bit about each course briefly.

Global Environmental Politics and Policies

This class was taught by Professor Hiroshi Ohta, and consisted of two segments. One of these was the focus on international environmental politics, and global issues in relation to the environment. I thought this would be an excellent way to continue expanding my knowledge from the second year course at UCL Environment and Society. The other part of this course was a programme run by the United Nations University and the Asia Pacific Initiative of Hawaii University. Its theme was ‘Global Climate Change, Food and Energy Security’, and was conducted via distant learning. This meant that every week, there was a different lecturer from a different university in a TV- conference style – the universities that took part were Waseda (Tokyo),  UNU (Tokyo), AIT (Bangkok), Ryukyu University (Okinawa, Japan), University of Samoa (Samoa) and the University of Hawaii (Hawaii). This was a totally different experience for me as I have never taken a course which involved distance learning, and it was fascinating to be able to virtually attend lectures at each of these universities all related to my interests.

The multimedia display with all the different universities attending (03/10/14)

Pacific Rim and the 21^st Century World

Professor Gregory Dvorak taught this class in one of the most passionate and interactive ways I have ever experienced a university course. It involved exploring the many issues that face the world but especially the Pacific Islands, and redefining and questioning the power relationships that cause the area to be called the ‘rim’. A transdisciplinary approach was taken and we discussed militarisation, decolonisation, gender and sexuality, migration, globalisation and power in the Pacific and the surrounding regions. I started off knowing very little about the geography and history of the region, but was intrigued to relate many topics I had studied to this area of the world and understand how we shouldn’t focus on the hole in the doughnut (as the islands are often referred to, the doughnut being the countries surrounding the Pacific) but look at the whole instead.  

War and Peace: Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect

Professor Paul Bacon was in charge of this case-study based course on humanitarian interventions. Using Nicholas Wheeler’s text Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society and the ICISS report The Responsibility to Protect (R2P), we assessed a selection of humanitarian interventions led by the international society since the end of the cold war using the criteria provided by Wheeler and R2P, and ultimately discussing the idea of an emerging norm of humanitarian interventions.

I was able to draw on the knowledge that I have gained from my first two years at UCL and apply them to each of the courses in some form. For example, Foucault and his concepts of discipline and power came up in the Pacific Rim class, and the introductory lecture to the Environmental class was focussed on Dryzek’s Politics of the Earth. Having these familiar names and concepts come up in similar but simultaneously very different perspectives has been interesting.