Global Arc

The course aims to show the various regulatory methods used by constitutional democracies worldwide, present the relevant case law, and help students understand why emergency measures could be dangerous in constitutional democracies. It is one of the main tasks of this course to draw attention to the link between autocratic transitions and exceptional measures to help better understand the importance of preserving the values of the rule of law and to discuss the relevant examples from the origins of the ancient Roman dictatorship to the recent developments related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Foreign exchange markets and balance-of-payments accounts. Effects of incomes, prices, interest rates, and exchange rates on trade and capital flows. Effects of exchange rate arrangements and capital mobility on macroeconomic policies. Current policy issues: exchange rate management, macroeconomic policy coordination, managing currency crises, the roles of international institutions.

Hunger and under-nutrition are widespread in poor countries while an obesity crisis is growing in rich countries. Rural-urban income inequality occurs throughout the world and farming and food industry practices everywhere have significant adverse effects on public health and the environment/climate. What are the economic causes of these problems? Are agricultural, food, nutrition and environmental policy measures currently proposed to deal with these problems effective? This course uses theoretical and empirical economic analysis to study the agricultural and food sector and related government policies in rich and poor countries.

The course explores the increasing weight of Asia in global financial markets. It frames the discussion in the context of the globalization of financial markets, with emphasis on concepts of economic development, institutional reform of markets, and public and private market investments. Discussions combine analysis of historical trends and recent events with insights from practical experience in Asian markets. Particular focus is devoted to China and Japan. The course explicitly considers China's gradual shift toward a capital market-based financial system and prospects for the development of the renminbi into an international currency.

The course will focus on postcolonial writing from the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, which have come increasingly to be viewed as sites where issues of global import are conspicuously articulated. Against the historical background of slavery and colonialism, questions to be discussed will feature some that loom especially large: the genesis of a distinct multiethnic and multilingual community; the phenomena of migration and diaspora; ongoing tensions between former colonies now incorporated, as peripheral departments, by the "center," that is, France and the European Union; and not least, the matter of geography and the environment.

Designed to introduce departmental majors, in the fall of their junior year, to the tools, methodologies, and topics related to the study of East Asian history and culture. The focus of the course will vary each year, and will be cross-national and multidisciplinary, covering both premodern and modern periods. One three-hour seminar.

The seminar will encourage students to think critically about the documentary as artistic medium and as socio-political practice. Some important questions will focus on the form itself: who has produced and watched these films and through what sorts of technologies? What are the codes through which documentaries make sense of their subjects and how do these change? Other questions will have wider scope: how can filmmaking impact politics and culture? How does it deal with the gap between reality and representation? What are the ethical issues of such work? What, if anything, is distinct about the life of documentary films in East Asia?

Study of contemporary Japan through major works of film, photography, and visual culture. The course will explore defining transformations in urban and media ecologies, experiences of development and disaster, and the contentious environmental histories that inform contemporary Japan. The course will foster critical skills in interdisciplinary methods and transnational approaches to the study of film and visual media from Japan in regional and global contexts.

This course will examine modern Japanese fiction and film that engaged with Japan's shift from "empire" to "nation" (roughly from 1930s to 1960s) with a specific focus on identity formation via race, ethnicity, and nationalism.

The seminar will examine key concepts of the mind, the body, and the nature-culture distinction. We will study these issues in the context of Japanese beliefs about the good society, making connections between "lay culture," Japanese notions of social democracy, and "science culture." Topics include: styles of care for the mentally ill, the politics of disability, notions of human life and death, responses to bio-technology, the management of human materials (such as organs), cultural definitions of addiction and "co-dependency," and the ethics of human enhancement.