There are four courses in the Social Studies Research Division as described below.

Area Studies　Transcultural Studies　Studies of Modern Society　Field Research Studies

This Area Studies course is an inter-disciplinary course which studies characteristics of the countries and areas in three large regions (Asia including Japan, Europe, and the Americas), examining its diverse aspects, such as history, society, politics, ideas, culture and literature.
This course helps students to gain deep understanding of history and culture of each region and insight to foresee the future, which are required to cope with various problems in the modern world.
In addition, in cooperation with other courses, this course helps students to learn methodology to analyse local areas and the world from multiple perspectives, looking at local areas from the global viewpoint, and the global world from the local viewpoint.

■major courses for specialized fields

• European History
• German Culture
• Seminar in German Current Events and Culture
• French Civilization
• British Literature and Social Thought
• Society in the English speaking world
• History of Japanese Culture
• Modern Japanese Culture and Literature
• Japanese Area Studies
• East Asian History
• Social and Cultural History of East Asia
• Korean Culture
• Traditional Chinese Culture
• Seminar on Culture of Taiwan
• Area Studies A・Ｂ

As civilizations interacted, people, goods, money, and information moved throughout and across nations. Various cultural phenomena and social phenomena were exchanged without the realization that borders existed. We intend to think critically about what a border is, and how center and periphery emerge, what we could see by crossing border and relationship among various phenomena through a pleotropic approach including history, sociology, and literature. Thereby, we aim to develop human resources who accept an international view and who are flexible to changes in society and are independent.

■major courses for specialized fields

• Biblical Studies
• Seminar on Document Management
• Text Culture
• Comparative Literature
• British and American Literature
• Introduction to Cultural Studies
• Seminar in Comparative Culture
• Urban Culture
• Urban Social History
• Study of Euro-American Cultural Contact
• SeminarIn South and North American Society and Culture
• Seminar on Development Policy and Science
• Sociology of educationInIts relation to power
• Sociology of migration andIntegration

The contemporary world, including Japan and the social lives of people, always changes and faces a variety of the contradictions and problems. In spite of a solid appearance, world systems and social systems are indeed forced to modify themselves continuously as a result of ever-changing conditions.
The goal of this course is complex as it investigates studies of modern society consisting of a search for contemporary issues, closely connected with political, economic, social and legal issues, inside and outside our country. Social backgrounds and other influential factors are concerned in order to forward solutions to overcome problems on the basis of a variety of social science methodologies is emphasized.
This course's objectives aims at the development of methods and diversified views to newly understand the significance of people's ordinary lives and peace beyond  boundaries by means of a flexible amalgamation of various approaches and  social science methods.

■major courses for specialized fields

• Studies in Sociological Method
• Welfare Sociology
• Social Dynamics
• Comparative History of Technology
• ContemporaryIndustrial theory
• Seminar in Modern Technology
• Religious and Political Society
• Peace Studies
• Special TopicsInInternational Law
• Seminar in Regional Sociology
• Seminar in the Science Studies
• Practical Seminar on Social Research Method

Fieldwork is an important part of research on local societies. Combining fieldwork based on dialog with local people and observation of social environments with the study of literature and documents is the best method to understand the reality of local societies.  
Field Research Studies consist of classes which utilize fieldwork as a research method for cultural anthropology, geography, sociology and tourism studies. We aim to achieve an attitude of "thinking from the field" to tackle problems in local societies like preservation of cultural landscape, tourism development, environmental preservation, regional development and support of traditional culture.

■major courses for specialized fields

• Ecological Geography of Japan
• Ecological Geography of Europe
• Reading Ethnography
• Ecological and Social Anthropology
• Anthropology Interpretative
• Anthropology of Religion and Society
• Medical Anthropology
• Environment for Peace
• Seminar on Field Research for Area Studies
• Socio-Informatics and Media Studies
• Special Topics in Social Field Studies
• Studies on Community and Environment