Course Objectives: This will be a training course in English writing skills as well as technical writing skills for future scientists since a competent command of English writing is necessary for your careers. We will work on a variety of skill training exercises and other formats to help improve your over writing ability. The class will be held “Live” in the classroom and English will be used as the language of instruction. Course Prerequisites: Students enrolled in graduate programs at the University of Tokyo are welcome. Any level of English writing ability will be accepted. Punctual attendance, class participation and homework are absolutely vital to pass this course. The lecturer has been teaching as a tenured university faculty member for over twenty-five years and also written for a number of English magazines and newspapers over much of his career.

What does it mean to write creatively? Do we write to express ourselves, to tell our stories, or to make stories for others to escape into? Yes. But there exists a huge diversity of other reasons to write, and ways to explore that diversity. This exploratory kind of writing has been called by many names: experimental, avant-garde, conceptual, meta, marginal, minor. “Writing Games” is a *creative writing course* where we will *learn by making.* Rather than explore the history and practice of experimental and avant-garde writing mainly by listening to lectures, analyzing readings, and organizing discussions – although these things will occur – we will “make” our way into knowledge, understanding what past and present writers have done by recreating aspects of their work. We will encounter familiar (but often misunderstood) phenomena like Dada and Surrealism, but also follow seldom traveled branches of the verbal arts, from magical incantations to performance art, and from metafiction to interactive fiction. In the process we will ask: why be experimental? Where is the line between “groundbreaking” and “pretentious”? What is experimental art’s relationship to everyday life and everyday problems? How can it reflect and/or enact cultural and social change? How can writing experimentally help us see what we can’t yet see? If the limits of what we can say in words are the historical, social, and personal limits of our imagination, then we will explore the many ways that “experimental literature” attempts to defy these limits.

What does it mean to write creatively? Do we write to express ourselves, to tell our stories, or to make stories for others to escape into? Yes. But there exists a huge diversity of other reasons to write, and ways to explore that diversity. This exploratory kind of writing has been called by many names: experimental, avant-garde, conceptual, meta, marginal, minor. “Writing Games” is a *creative writing course* where we will *learn by making.* Rather than explore the history and practice of experimental and avant-garde writing mainly by listening to lectures, analyzing readings, and organizing discussions – although these things will occur – we will “make” our way into knowledge, understanding what past and present writers have done by recreating aspects of their work. We will encounter familiar (but often misunderstood) phenomena like Dada and Surrealism, but also follow seldom traveled branches of the verbal arts, from magical incantations to performance art, and from metafiction to interactive fiction. In the process we will ask: why be experimental? Where is the line between “groundbreaking” and “pretentious”? What is experimental art’s relationship to everyday life and everyday problems? How can it reflect and/or enact cultural and social change? How can writing experimentally help us see what we can’t yet see? If the limits of what we can say in words are the historical, social, and personal limits of our imagination, then we will explore the many ways that “experimental literature” attempts to defy these limits.

This course will offer an introduction to philosophy. It is designed to be open to students of any background and with any orientation. It will be given in the form of a reading seminar, where students will learn to acquire knowledge about philosophy more actively through engagement with texts. The scope of the seminar will be wide in terms of historical scope—covering the time span from Ancient Greece to our time. It will also make students familiar with various major problems that have been the subject of philosophical controversy. Unlike common sense, or science, philosophy is not good in offering answers or recipes that are useful tools for navigating through everyday human life. What philosophy is good in is to see questions that are left unanswered by the ‘answers’ we are used to live by—or even to question these ‘answers’ themselves as answers. In this sense, one can appreciate doing philosophy as a meaningful part of everyday human life. The aim of this course is to make students aware of this.

This course will offer an introduction to philosophy. It is designed to be open to students of any background and with any orientation. It will be given in the form of a reading seminar, where students will learn to acquire knowledge about philosophy more actively through engagement with texts. The scope of the seminar will be wide in terms of historical scope—covering the time span from Ancient Greece to our time. It will also make students familiar with various major problems that have been the subject of philosophical controversy. Unlike common sense, or science, philosophy is not good in offering answers or recipes that are useful tools for navigating through everyday human life. What philosophy is good in is to see questions that are left unanswered by the ‘answers’ we are used to live by—or even to question these ‘answers’ themselves as answers. In this sense, one can appreciate doing philosophy as a meaningful part of everyday human life. The aim of this course is to make students aware of this.

This course will offer an introduction to philosophy. It is designed to be open to students of any background and with any orientation. It will be given in the form of a reading seminar, where students will learn to acquire knowledge about philosophy more actively through engagement with texts. The scope of the seminar will be wide in terms of historical scope—covering the time span from the 1600s to our time. It will also make students familiar with various major problems that have been the subject of philosophical controversy. Unlike common sense, or science, philosophy is not good in offering answers or recipes that are useful tools for navigating through everyday human life. What philosophy is good in is to see questions that are left unanswered by the ‘answers’ we are used to live by—or even to question these ‘answers’ themselves as answers. In this sense, one can appreciate doing philosophy as a meaningful part of everyday human life. The aim of this course is to make students aware of this.

This course will offer an introduction to philosophy. It is designed to be open to students of any background and with any orientation. It will be given in the form of a reading seminar, where students will learn to acquire knowledge about philosophy more actively through engagement with texts. The scope of the seminar will be wide in terms of historical scope—covering the time span from the 1600s to our time. It will also make students familiar with various major problems that have been the subject of philosophical controversy. Unlike common sense, or science, philosophy is not good in offering answers or recipes that are useful tools for navigating through everyday human life. What philosophy is good in is to see questions that are left unanswered by the ‘answers’ we are used to live by—or even to question these ‘answers’ themselves as answers. In this sense, one can appreciate doing philosophy as a meaningful part of everyday human life. The aim of this course is to make students aware of this.

“Writing About Gaming: Game Studies as Social Practice” begins with the assumption that video and computer games, like works of art, literature, and film, are worth writing about. Rather than debate whether video games are “art” – in other words, whether they can be more than entertaining distractions from more worthwhile activities – we will consider what we as players and writers can say about them, do with them, and learn from them. Art can and does change the way people think and act. Writing about art can enhance the good changes and mitigate the bad ones. Therefore, the perspectives that we will take together will be critical, exploratory, socially and politically aware, inclusive, and creative. Games will be played in class. Collective and independent research, note-taking, reading, interneting, study, text-based dialogue, focused recreation, unexpected detours, concept-mapping, and guided discussion will all take place.

“Writing About Gaming: Game Studies as Social Practice” begins with the assumption that video and computer games, like works of art, literature, and film, are worth writing about. Rather than debate whether video games are “art” – in other words, whether they can be more than entertaining distractions from more worthwhile activities – we will consider what we as players and writers can say about them, do with them, and learn from them. Art can and does change the way people think and act. Writing about art can enhance the good changes and mitigate the bad ones. Therefore, the perspectives that we will take together will be critical, exploratory, socially and politically aware, inclusive, and creative. Games will be played in class. Collective and independent research, note-taking, reading, interneting, study, text-based dialogue, focused recreation, unexpected detours, concept-mapping, and guided discussion will all take place.

(授業計画に例示した)パターン認識と機械学習の手法の紹介を行います。最終的にこれらの手法の基本的な概念を会得し「各自が直面するであろう研究的な課題」に適用し、計算機を用いて実験データから発見ができる(もしくはその手がかりを見つける)ことを目標とします。そのために各手法について実習を交え講義します。