Peace Education Lecture Series at the graduate school of Hiroshima University

December 17, 2020 by LinguaHiroshima

by Urszula Styczek-Boyede

In December, 2020,
Urszula Styczek–Boyede,
a Polish researcher and LinguaHiroshima’s co-editor, started her lectures on Peace Education as common graduate courses at Hiroshima University, one for a master’s and the other for a doctoral course.  She gives online lectures in English and is ready to show our database system and contents of “Hiroshima and Nagasaki:  A Multilingual Bibliography” to her students from various countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, besides some Japanese students. 

Her lecture series will be a good example of how to introduce the multilingual database in a virtual classroom setting where students speak various languages with diverse social backgrounds.  Her students will have hands-on experiences with the database searching for books available in their native languages. 

Please see below for the details:

[The master’s course title] “World Peace and HIROSHIMA”. 

Topics:

1. An overview of damage caused by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima
2. Peace activities promoted by hibakusha, atomic-bomb survivors, and their successors who join storytelling activities about survivors’ experiences
3. The role artworks such as atomic bomb literature, Japanese manga comics, music, pictorial arts, and films have played for common people’s antiwar sentiments
4. Case study on international activities taken by Amnesty International and Greenpeace to build and maintain peace in the world. These include first-hand experiences in which Styczek has taken part.

[The doctoral course title] “Seeking Universal Peace”

Styczek takes up urgent issues in the international community such as poverty, famine, refugees, environmental problems, and conflicts taking place around the world.  Students are expected to search for the clues to solving the problems from their fields of study.

Topics:

1. Introduction to atomic bomb literature about Hiroshima
2. Nazi Concentration Camp in Auschwitz and its Literature
3. The historical background of various conflicts in Europe
4. Present conflicts in all parts of the world (Ukraine, Belarus, Myanmar, Somalia, Nigeria, Pakistan)

For more than three decades, Styczek has done comparative research into Concentration Camp Literature in Auschwitz and Atomic Bomb Literature in Hiroshima.  Students from Asian, African, and Middle Eastern countries may think of juxtaposing urgent issues caused by socio-political situations in their own countries and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

【A brief personal record— Urszula Styczek- Boyede】

• Born in Warsaw, Poland.
• Earned her M.A. at Oriental Institute/ Japanese Studies Department, Warsaw University, Poland, 1987.  Her master’s thesis: Studies on Atomic Bomb Literature.
• Came to Hiroshima University, Faculty of Integrated Arts and Sciences as a research student for the Japanese Ministry of Education, 1991.
• Obtained her Japanese M.A. at Hiroshima University, 1995. 
  Her master’s thesis: The Anxiety Literature of Hara Tamiki.
• Received her Ph.D. at Faculty of Social Studies at Hiroshima　University, 2005.  Her doctoral thesis: The Anxiety of Human Existence－Concentration Camp Literature and Atomic Bomb Literature.
• Currently a lecturer at Hiroshima University, Hiroshima Prefectural University, and Hiroshima Shudo University.　
• Has a fluent command of eight languages including Japanese, English, and Russian.