This course can be broadly split into two components. The first is to establish a core research community in fields such as visual, spatial, and cyber media (which have not been adequately covered by the arts or the humanities in the past) and newly emerging fields gaining in social importance, as well as teaching current arts and media issues from a specialist, practical perspective. The main objective is to develop students’ theoretical understanding of areas such as media literacy, which lie outside the framework of existing art theories yet have real relevance to social realities, while also providing practical training to develop their media-processing skills on the computer.

The second component comprises the multifaceted study of cultural policy and arts planning. Here, instead of considering the artistic forms of painting, theater, cinema, and literary texts as autonomous entities, the course encourages an exploration of the cultural and social functions of art and media more generally through a focus on its production and the specific process by which it is received. Rather than analysis and interpretation of an artistic work, the central issues here are the policies and systems behind the publication, exhibition, and tagging of a work and the dynamic relations that exist between the work and its audience.

Thus, while the course’s first component deals with the “content” of various art and media, the second explores the “external” elements of an artistic work (rather than the work itself) and the “environment” in which it should be considered. Rather than specializing in one of the two components, students are expected to draw on both as supports to ultimately reach an intellectual level (or at least endeavor to) where they can explore and conceptualize, in their own way, the connections between people and society using a method modeled on artistic practice.

Based on such principles, the course is designed to provide students with a deep understanding and broad range of knowledge (including existing academic disciplines) concerning arts and media as well as to produce graduates who contribute to society through the use of their expertise and practical skills.

Professors

NAGATA, Yasushi (MA)

Drama

KODERA, Tsukasa (Ph. D.)

Western Art History; Media Studies

KUWAKINO, Koji (Ph.D.)

History of Italian Art and Architecture, History of Science, History of Western Garden

Associate Professors

KOGO, Naoko (MA)

Dance Studies; History of German stage dance, Theory of Dance and Performance

AZUMA, Shiho