Open Rapporteur Positions

The Modern Japan Seminar is concerned with the history, politics, society, and culture of Japan from the late nineteenth century to the present. It emphasizes interdisciplinary dialogue among historians, anthropologists, sociologists, literary critics and other scholars from the New York area institutions. The seminar meets regularly to discuss a paper from a work in progress by a member or invited speaker. Pre-circulation of papers and discussant comments encourage in-depth discussion and debate.

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Laws come and go, constantly shifting their meaning and significance to reflect the beliefs and traditions of the societies in which they are embedded. Yet, despite its mutable and inconstant nature, the law is indispensable for the harmonious functioning of human relationships. “The purpose of the law,” according to the English philosopher, John Locke, “is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. . . . Where there is no law, there is no freedom.” A century later, the French revolutionary, Maximilien Robespierre, proclaimed that “any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all.” The Law and Politics seminar, established at Columbia in 1963, focuses on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, on topics that remain relevant for our understanding of the law in the twentieth-first century.

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The University Seminar on South Asia seeks to broaden and deepen understanding about the region of South Asia by providing a forum to discuss ongoing research as well as special topics related to the complex and multiple societies of South Asia both past and present. Drawing together scholars from many different disciplines, the seminar fosters cross-disciplinary discussion and perspectives on a broad range of questions and concerns. In recent years, the seminar has deliberated on such issues as: religion and politics, the political function of violence in South Asia, national integration, language and community, South Asian identities in pre-colonial times, religious iconography, and many other topics. The University Seminar on South Asia is a merger of the University Seminar on Tradition and Change in South and Southeast Asia (founded in 1964) and the University Seminar on Indology (founded in 1993).

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This seminar addresses various human rights issues at monthly meetings, sometimes by designating a theme to be followed during the entire academic year. The topics cover international and domestic areas of concern and reflect problems of both conceptualization and application. Emphasis is also placed on dialogue between advocates of western and non-western ideas and practices. This year, the Columbia University Human Rights Seminar is focusing on Implementation of Human Rights Norms: Challenges and Prospects.

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This seminar examines the formation, development, and role of Neo-Confucian thought in China, Japan, and Korea. The relationship between Neo-Confucianism and other aspects of the history of East Asia is considered, and on occasion, intellectual responses to Neo-Confucianism are also examined. The seminar circulates copies of papers to its members prior to meetings.

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The seminar focuses on the analytical and policy issues related to full employment, social welfare, and equity. These include crossnational perspectives, primarily in other industrialized economies. The purpose is to identify and clarify the more difficult and central intellectual questions which relate to and affect the national commitment and capability to assure full employment, social welfare, and equity over long periods.

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This University Seminar focuses on the transnational material, intellectual and symbolic exchanges that have characterized the regions that once composed successive French empires since the seventeenth century. The seminar will not be an exercise in colonial or imperial history, organized around the opposition between « center » and « periphery », but rather an exploration of connections and lines of fragmentation within that space. The goal of the seminar will be to explore not only France’s global expansion and retraction in the modern period, but, no less significantly, the after-lives of the French empire in various post-colonies, networks, and institutions. Our goal is to map a distinct—but not isolated—world within the “globe,” one conditioned but not defined by France, its empires, its language, and its ecumene. Inherently interdisciplinary, the seminar will bring together scholars in the humanities and the social sciences from Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa in order to understand these complex exchanges that reach « Beyond France ».

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