[Special Feature: Looking Toward CGS's 10th Anniversary]
Junko HIBIYA
President, ICU
(Interviewers/Compilers: Kazuko Tanaka and Yuji Kato)
[The article below is the same as the article that appears in the sixteenth issue of the CGS Newsletter.]
The (program in) Gender and Sexuality Studies (pGSS) was originally established as an interdivisional major in April 2005 and is now one of 31 majors at ICU. ICU's current president, Junko Hibiya, was instrumental in designing the program. This report was compiled based on an interview in which she discussed the position of pGSS within ICU's liberal arts curriculum and the vital role CGS plays in supporting the program.
My first encounter with CGS was in 2003, when I was invited to lunch one day out of the blue by Professor Kazuko Tanaka. She said her interest was sparked by my reference to gender in the syllabus of a course I was teaching that year called "Variation in Japanese" ("Language Variation" since 2008). Thus, I came to be a member of the CGS Steering Committee quite by chance. Back then, I didn't have any strong opinions about it but was just happy to get involved, as I had only joined ICU in 2002.
Through CGS, I also became involved in setting up the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies (PGSS), with advice from Professor M. William Steele, who was then Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Director of the Japan Studies Program. I remember our long discussions in his office over the design of an interdisciplinary educational program. Becoming familiar with ICU jargon and learning about the place of such a program in the school curriculum was also invaluable for my later role as Director of Academic Reform.
Indeed, I have learned a great deal through my work with CGS. For example, in 2004, I designed the specialized course "Language and Gender," which was quite challenging because we decided to make it an English-language course so it would be accessible for students from diverse linguistic backgrounds, including exchange students. I was happy to see that the course attracted highly enthusiastic participation from its students.
After the academic reforms of 2008, the interdivisional major PGSS was renamed "(program in) Gender and Sexuality Studies (pGSS)" and became an interdisciplinary major. pGSS is unique among the eight interdisciplinary majors at ICU in that it has a core set of subjects that aim to develop key theoretical concepts in gender and sexuality studies. Moreover, it has a well-defined core faculty comprising CGS staff and steering committee members, which makes it easy for students to locate the professors and ask them questions about pGSS.
CGS plays a significant role in supporting pGSS, in contrast to the Institute of Asian Cultural Studies (IACS) and the Peace Research Institute (PRI), which are highly productive research centers but not closely linked to undergraduate majors. The fact that CGS encourages active participation from both graduate and undergraduate students makes pGSS more visible. This can be seen in the consistent number of students enrolling in pGSS̶about 30 students each year since 2010. I hope that CGS will soon reach out to high school students as well by organizing special classes at ICU High School.
It is my sincere hope that pGSS students will take advantage of the liberal arts curriculum at ICU and adopt a proactive, interdisciplinary approach to break down the boundaries between disciplines. In recent years, pGSS and CGS have been cited as the major motives for students transferring to ICU from other universities. This is perhaps because once they are at university, many students start to see options that they did not consider when they were in high school. I am delighted to see more and more students taking advantage of ICU's credit transfer system. We will continue our endeavors to make pGSS and the rest of ICU's curriculum as accessible as possible.