2025 (Current Year) Faculty Courses School of Environment and Society Department of Social and Human Sciences Graduate major in Social and Human Sciences
Special Lecture on Advanced Topics in Social and Human Sciences FA
- Academic unit or major
- Graduate major in Social and Human Sciences
- Instructor(s)
- Yakup Bektas
- Class Format
- Lecture
- Media-enhanced courses
- -
- Day of week/Period
(Classrooms) - Class
- -
- Course Code
- SHS.L419
- Number of credits
- 100
- Course offered
- 2025
- Offered quarter
- 3Q
- Syllabus updated
- Mar 19, 2025
- Language
- English
Syllabus
Course overview and goals
RAILROADS, TRAVEL, and PLACE
Description: This course will explore reactions that the railroad elicited in literature, both in Japan and elsewhere, when it was still a new mode of transportation. Drawing on a selection of authors from Henry D. Thoreau to Miyazawa Kenji, we will discuss how the railroad influenced their writing and imagination and how they represented it. We will consider how the ideas of native place, (furusato in Japan), home, the city and the country took on new meanings when considered from a speeding train. We will discuss how the railroad popularized sightseeing and tourism, while itself benefiting from their popular appeal. The course will address the significance of the new public spaces that railroads created such as stations, cars (compartments), and tourism destinations.
Aims: To show through literature how technology and culture interact; how literature provides a medium through which authors discuss their concerns and questions about technology. To show in turn how the railroad has stimulated the literary imagination, and affected the ideas of place and home, concepts of space and time.
Course description and aims
To understand better how technology and culture interact through literature. Be able to analyze how the railroad affected the ideas of place, home, and identity. Be able to critique how railroad travel inspired literary styles; and to raise interest in the vanishing ways of life and romanticized the native place, furusato.
Keywords
technology and literature, railroads, travel, place, sightseeing places, tourism, furusato, native place, home, city, country, tunnels, railway stations, architecture, railcar, the Orient Express
Competencies
- Specialist skills
- Intercultural skills
- Communication skills
- Critical thinking skills
- Practical and/or problem-solving skills
Class flow
Conducted in lecture format and, when possible, in seminar format. Class participation is mandatory. Students are expected to 1) read the assigned readings prior to the class, 2) participate in classroom discussions, raise or respond to questions, and 3) write short papers.
Course schedule/Objectives
| Course schedule | Objectives | |
|---|---|---|
| Class 1 | Technology and literature & science and literature (railroads in literature and art) | None |
| Class 2 | Leo Marx’ Machine in the Garden(1962) | Reading chapters from Leo Marx's Machine in the Garden |
| Class 3 | Impressions of and ideas on the railroad in Thoreau’s Walden | Reading chapters from Walden and more |
| Class 4 | Railways in art and literature in Victorian Britain (and India) | Reading pieces from Sherlock Holmes, Lewis Carroll; Gandi ; Viewing and evaluating Turner's "Rain, Steam and Speed" |
| Class 5 | The Orient Express (Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express) | Reading Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. |
| Class 6 | Railroad and travel in Japan (Natsume Sōseki, Sanshiro; Shimazaki Tōson, Ie, Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country) | Reading Natsume Sōseki, Sanshiro; Shimazaki Tōson, Ie, Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country) |
| Class 7 | Railroad and travel in Japan (Miyazawa Kenji, more) | Reading Miyazawa Kenji's Night on the Milky Way Train, and more |
Study advice (preparation and review)
Read the assigned readings and view suggested audio-visuals prior to the class (several hours)
Textbook(s)
Will be specified by the instructor as necessary.
Reference books, course materials, etc.
Thomas Carlyle, Signs of the Times, 1829;
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods, 1854
Graham Greene, Stamboul Train, 1932
Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express, 1934
Tetsudo shosetsu: kisha no tomo(汽車之友: 鉄道小説), 1898
Natsume Sōseki, Sanshiro, 1908
Shimazaki Tōson, Ie,1910-1911(The Family, trans. Cecilia Segawa Seigle (Tokyo, 1976).
Miyazawa Kenji, Hyouganezumi no kegawa, 1923;Night on the Milky Way Train, 1932
Kawabata Yasunari, Snow Country, 1935-1937
Leo Marx, Machine in the Garden, 1962
Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: the Industrialization of Time and Space, 1986
Susan Danly and Leo Marx, The Railroad in American Art: Representation of Technological Change, 1988.
James A Fuji, “Networks of Modernity: Rail Transport and Modern Japanese Literature,” Japan Railway & Transport Review(Sept 1997): 12-16
Stephen Dodd, Writing Home: Representations of the Native Place in Modern Japanese Literature, 2004
Benjamin Fraser and Steven Spalding, eds., Trains, Culture, and Mobility: Riding the Rails, 2012.
Ben Marsden, Hazel Hutchison and Ralph O’Connor, eds., Uncommon Contexts: Encounters between Science and Literature, 1800-1914, 2013
Evaluation methods and criteria
Grading will be based on class participation and writing assignments (short essays). Class participation will account for 80% of the grade, and writing assignments will account for 20%. Students are encouraged to actively engage in discussions and activities, asking or responding to questions directly in class, or indirectly through questions and comments on reaction slips. Submission of reaction slips is required each time as proof of class participation.
Related courses
- SHS.L416 ： Trans-disciplinary Exercise in Social and Human Sciences F
Prerequisites
None
Contact information (e-mail and phone) Notice : Please replace from ”[at]” to ”@”(half-width character).
bektas.y.aa[at]m.titech.ac.jp
Office hours
The hour following every class. Other times by appointment by email.