MA Interdisciplinary Japanese Studies

Key details

MA INTERDISCIPLINARY JAPANESE STUDIES - PART-TIME

Start Year

2023

Attendance

Part Time

Award

Degree of Master of Arts

Duration (years)

Are you curious about Japan? Would you like to know more about its place in the world and its cultural identity? Whether or not you are already familiar with some aspects of Japanese culture, the MA in Interdisciplinary Japanese Studies will give you a solid grounding in the study of the country’s art, literature, history, and politics. Looking at a variety of topics through the lens of Japan will also open new ways for you to engage with our globalised world.

You’ll learn about a variety of research methods from several humanities disciplines and benefit from UEA’s expertise on Japan, equipping you with the tools to actively participate in shaping the vibrant field of Japanese Studies in the future.

Please note: knowledge of the Japanese language is not a requirement for this course.

About

The MA in Interdisciplinary Japanese Studies responds to our contemporary world in which globalisation and future-oriented concerns put Japan at the centre of debates on urgent issues such as technology and digital innovation, population change, arts and politics, and health and ageing.

Based in Norwich, one of the most rapidly growing research hubs for Japanese Studies in the UK, this course will give you access to resources across several local institutions. The Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures will introduce you to its world-class research and outreach programme on Japanese visual cultures; experts on Japan from across the UEA faculty will share their experience and disciplinary insights; and the unique collection of Japanese art and archaeology at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts will offer an opportunity for direct contact with Japan’s art and material culture. Drawing on the synergies between these institutions and their resources, this MA offers you an outstanding combination of expert knowledge, active research networks, and important primary sources, preparing you for a successful and exciting global career.

This course embodies UEA’s vision for borderless interdisciplinary inquiry and positions Japanese Studies at the nexus of the major humanities disciplines including Literature, History, Politics, and Art. How do contemporary experiences of migration and alienation reverberate in Japan’s literature? How do popular Japanese art forms such as manga find their way into museums? Which historical issues dominate Japan’s regional politics and relations with its neighbours? When did Japan become modern and how?

World-leading experts in Japanese Studies will be working with you to both answer these questions and encourage you to come up with your own.

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Important Information

Whilst the University will make every effort to offer the courses listed, changes may sometimes be made arising from the regular review of course programmes. Where this activity leads to significant (but not minor) changes to programmes, there will normally be prior consultation of students and others. Changes may for example consist of variations to the content and method of delivery of programmes, courses and other services, to discontinue programmes, courses and other services and to merge or combine programmes or courses. The University will endeavour to keep such changes to a minimum, and will inform students.

Assessment for Year 1

Your achievement on the MA in Interdisciplinary Japanese Studies will be assessed by coursework rather than exams. In your first year, this will include a range of assessments, such as essays, visual and case-study analyses, and research proposals.

In all your modules you’ll receive frequent formative feedback from your tutors – helping you to develop your knowledge and skills before producing summative work.

Structure

If you choose to take the MA in Interdisciplinary Japanese Studies part-time, your studies will span two years.

We’ll begin with our year-long core module, Researching Japan. This is an important introduction to the fundamental writings and debates in Japanese Studies across the history of the field, equipping you with the tools to actively participate in its future direction. If you choose to study part-time, this module will make up the first year’s workload, together with one specialised semester-long module.

You’ll be able to choose whether you want to take the additional module in autumn or spring semester, selecting from the semester-long modules offered that year.

Teaching and Learning

Throughout your MA, you’ll be taught by a leading team of research-active academic staff who bring diverse disciplinary perspectives to the study of Japan. They have particular strengths in Japanese arts, cultures, and heritage, Japanese politics and international relations, Japanese media, anime, and manga, gender in Japan, and Japanese history from the early modern era to the present day.

You will be mainly taught through lectures and seminars. On the part-time version of the course, you’ll usually spend around four hours a week in seminars, which will incorporate small and whole cohort group working.

At the centre of your first year of part-time study will sit your core module: Researching Japan. As part of this module, you’ll attend presentations from staff and visiting researchers at the Sainsbury Institute public lecture series, academic workshop events, and the Centre for Japanese Studies seminar series, allowing you to explore and discuss research in its early development. You’ll also have the opportunity to attend additional lectures at UEA from visiting speakers addressing themes in any area of study relevant to your interests.

Independent study

Working independently is an important aspect of study at Master’s level. You’ll undertake preparatory reading for each seminar as well as working towards your coursework.

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Assessment for Year 2

In your two semester-long modules in year 2, you’ll continue to be assessed by coursework. Assessments may vary depending on the modules and topics you choose to focus on. Throughout, there will be the opportunity to receive feedback and attend tutorials on your written work as you build on the ideas and skills developed during the first year of the programme.

The culmination of your MA is the dissertation in which you will have the opportunity to focus, in depth, on a topic of your choice.

You’ll be supervised by lecturers whose research interests intersect with the ideas you want to investigate.

Structure

During year 2, you’ll study two further semester-long modules while researching and writing your dissertation.

Whilst your dissertation will be organised and developed across the two years of part-time study, you’ll focus the majority of your time on it during your second year. The dissertation is your chance to pursue an area of specialist study of your choice, investigating a specific academic methodology or topic.

You’ll receive advice from two members of staff as supervisors to support you in researching and writing up your dissertation. The dissertation will build on the core module from your first year, helping you to develop a range of transferrable skills for the workplace, future research, or doctoral-level study.

Teaching and Learning

In the second year of your part-time MA, you will take two semester-long modules, focusing your studies on more specific aspects of Japanese art, history and culture. You’ll have the opportunity to learn directly from our researchers, who themselves have explored many different themes using a variety of approaches and methods, such as experimental art movements and to archaeology, and from wartime culture through to post-war social change. Academics from across the arts, humanities, and social sciences at UEA and the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures have published influential work on Japanese Studies.

Independent Study

As in your first year, your teaching will mainly be in the format of seminars. The independent study aspect of this part-time Masters allows you the space to examine ideas ahead of classes so you’ll bring your own areas of interest to every module and have the opportunity to define your focus. In the dissertation, you’ll choose a subject area that you’re passionate about and potentially see a career path within. To support this research, you’ll also have access to the resources in the world leading Lisa Sainsbury Library at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures.

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Assessment for Year 1

In all your modules you’ll receive frequent formative feedback from your tutors – helping you to develop your knowledge and skills before producing summative work.

Compulsory Modules

RESEARCHING JAPAN

Code HUM-7012Y

Credits 40

This module provides an introduction to research skills and resources necessary for undertaking postgraduate research about Japan. The module will be convened by Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures (SISJAC) and organised with the support of the Centre for Japanese Studies (CJS), located in the Interdisciplinary Institute for the Humanities (IIH). This compulsory core module will include units offered by all Japan-related UEA and SISJAC academic staff. There will be a significant amount of teaching time devoted to dissertation preparation. Each week is organized around a key text, theory, or discussion in Japanese studies. Significant works in the field will provide case studies around which we develop our understanding of the opportunities offered by interdisciplinary engagement with Japan.

Optional A Modules

(20 credits)

JAPANESE ART HISTORY AND CULTURAL HERITAGE: INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES

Code HUM-7013B

Credits 20

Japanese art history is a dynamic and innovative research field, exemplary within other regional art histories. Its intellectual excellence can be attributed to synergies between two main fields of art history and areas studies, and combining visual and regional expertise. In particular, through its strong relation to area studies, art history of Japan is drawn to interdisciplinary cooperation and dialogue. This course invites students to explore Japanese art from an interdisciplinary standpoint, and to identify research subjects that appeal to the broader academic audiences. Focusing on art history’s connections with other research fields, from literature studies to environmental studies, this module is based on a series of case studies from premodern and modern Japanese art, with each session dedicated to art history’s relation to a specific discipline. This integrated approach will encourage interdisciplinary discussion and collaborations, while addressing visual material in a new and innovative way. This course brings together academic expertise of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, the Interdisciplinary Institute for the Humanities, and visual resources in the collection of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts.

CONSTRUCTING JAPANESE HERITAGE

Code HUM-7015A

Credits 20

Test

JAPANESE LITERATURE

Code LDCE7022A

Credits 20

Modern Japanese literature, like all modern global literatures, is a lived discourse which connects to, generates, and is enmeshed within a vast cultural matrix of visual and performing arts, a matrix which circumscribes every aspect of our consumer culture. This matrix is expansive, transcending the boundaries both of the nation state and of given historical time periods, through its multiplicity of overlapping (post)modern concerns and obsessions: the creation of a nation state; nationalism; colonialism and postcolonialism; proletarian uprisings; war; writing the self; feminism; sadomasochism; body modification; nuclear catastrophe; and homelessness (to name but a few). Yet, as something which is encountered through the body, it is also localised, time-specific, and personal. This module aims to reconcile these two interpretive positions by reading literary and theoretical texts alongside visual and performance arts and thus exploring how a written text may invoke, and partake of, different cultures, schools of thought, and modes of expression; and how it might depart from them. The module will give you a comprehensive understanding of the major discourses which have informed Japanese literary trends through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; an awareness of the local and international artistic and socio-political discourses in which a given text is implicated; and an ability to analyse, discuss and write about the various key themes, tropes and aesthetic forms that characterise modern Japanese literature. You do not need knowledge of the Japanese language as all texts studied in class will be in English; and there is no requirement for you to have studied Japanese literature or society. Final assessment will take the form of a 5,000-word critical essay on a relevant literary text, or texts, of your choice. The course may include reading and discussion of the following: The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu 'The Tattooer' by Tanizaki Jun’ichirō 'A Floral Pageant' by Okamoto Kanokoi The Woman with the Flying Head and Other Stories by Kurahashi Yumiko 'Rabbits' and other short stories by Kanai Mieko Norwegian Wood by Murakami Haruki Snakes and Earrings by Kanehara Hitomi Miss Ice Sandwich by Kawakami Mieko Real World by Natsuo Kirino Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri

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Important Information

Whilst the University will make every effort to offer the modules listed, changes may sometimes be made arising from the annual monitoring and review of modules. Where this activity leads to significant change to a programme and modules, the University will endeavour to consult with affected students. The University may not be able to offer a module for reasons outside of its control, such as the illness of a member of staff. Availability of optional modules may be restricted owing to timetabling, lack of demand, or limited places. Where this is the case, you will be asked to make alternative module choices and you will be supported during this process.

Assessment for Year 2

The culmination of your MA is the dissertation in which you will have the opportunity to focus, in depth, on a topic of your choice.

You’ll be supervised by lecturers whose research interests intersect with the ideas you want to investigate.

Compulsory Modules

DISSERTATION

Code HUM-7011X

Credits 80

The dissertation is an opportunity to pursue an area of specialist study on a specific academic methodology or topic. Students will be assigned two members of staff as supervisors to advise on research and writing. The dissertation module is supported by the core module Researching Japan, allowing students to develop a range of transferable skills for the workplace, future research, or doctoral-level study. Students will pursue and individual research project, drawing on knowledge gained on other modules in the MA in Interdisciplinary Japanese Studies and acquiring an in-depth knowledge of a more specialist area of research.