JAPN 314: Japanese Visual Culture and Media
A focused analysis of historical and modern Japanese society through works of art and media including photography, film, maps, and other visual documents. Students learn to extract information from images as part of a visual analysis. They will also deal with social geographical methods for understanding population density, urban flows, economic disparities, transportation, and built environments. Students will analyze and compare what they understand about Japanese culture with other, more familiar environments. Taught in English.
Towards MLO 2
Towards MLO 2
Reflective Narrative
I actually mainly took this course to fulfill the General Education C2 Arts requirement, but it's focus on Japanese culture did expand my knowledge in that area. I think the main thing this course did was give me a new way to analyze Japanese culture. Previously, though other classes had given me a lot of cultural knowledge and other methods of analysis, including research and discussion, I had not been very familiar with analyzing art. After completing this course, I know have a basic understanding, not only of the implications and cultural undertones of different forms of Japanese art and media, including Ukiyo-e, paintings, photographs, and commercials, I have an understanding of how to analyze any new works of art and media in the future and connect that with my preexisting culture knowledge. Because of the skills I learned regarding art and media analysis, I am now able to use those mediums to compare and contrast Japanese culture with other cultures as well.
Our final project was an individual analysis of photos we chose in 5 different categories, answering 10 different questions. This portfolio shows the final development of the art and media analysis I worked on in this class.
In the future, I would like to learn more about different Japanese art and media forms, since I part of why I enjoy learning Japanese language culture is because I enjoy their art and media. I think it will be cool to understand even more deeply the underlying cultural aspects present in different art and media. Mostly I think I will need to do personal research in order to fulfill this goal, though living in Japan will help by immersing me in what I am trying to learn about.
Our final project was an individual analysis of photos we chose in 5 different categories, answering 10 different questions. This portfolio shows the final development of the art and media analysis I worked on in this class.
In the future, I would like to learn more about different Japanese art and media forms, since I part of why I enjoy learning Japanese language culture is because I enjoy their art and media. I think it will be cool to understand even more deeply the underlying cultural aspects present in different art and media. Mostly I think I will need to do personal research in order to fulfill this goal, though living in Japan will help by immersing me in what I am trying to learn about.