JPNS2171: Science and Technology in Modern Japan: A Cultural History

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• To develop students understanding of the role of science and technology in the shaping of modern Japanese culture.
• To equip students with critical concepts and methodologies for analysing science and technology as sociocultural systems.
• To encourage students to think more broadly about the geopolitics of science and technology in non-Western contexts.
• To cultivate advanced research and writing skills.

• This module examines discourses of science and technology in Japan and its greater empire in the modern period, emphasizing the way in which science and technology shaped the Japanese imagination of modernity and its ambitions as an emerging world power. Topics covered include acupunture, evolution, scientific concepts of race, atomic power, microelectronics, and environmental thought.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• By the end of this module, students will have developed an understanding of how science and technology have shaped and been shaped by cultural modernity in Japan.

Subject-specific Skills:

• By the end of this module, students will have gained the ability to think critically about 1) the cultural-embeddedness of science and technology; 2) the function of science and technology in broader global geopolitics.

Key Skills:

• By the end of this module students should have enhanced research, communication and argumentation skills.

• The module is taught and assessed in English. English translations of required reading in Japanese will be available.
• The module will be taught intensively as a short-fat module in term 1 or term 2. In order to stress discussion, teamwork and presentations, there will be one one-hour lecture per week, with one two-hour session combining a lecture and seminar to encourage discussion.
• Assessment consists of coursework, in order to foster independent research-led learning. The weighting of the first assignment as 40% and the second as 60% provides an element of progression, reinforcing the benefit gained from feedback on the first assignment.

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