This article features Prof. Yakup Bektas of Institute for the Liberal Arts.
- – What do you think about GSEP and who would be appropriate for GSEP?
- My part in this program has been to develop and introduce courses in the humanities that will appeal to engineering and science students, with GSEP students as a major target. Before this program, our university did not offer undergraduate courses in English. Thanks to GSEP, we are now offering courses in English in many fields. Undergraduate students from Japan are also benefiting from these courses. From my observation of the last two years, GSEP is attracting a good number of highly talented and motivated students from many countries. I am impressed by their dedication to their work and by their capacity for learning. This program is a great opportunity for studying science and engineering at the undergraduate level at this well recognized university and in an environment highly conducive to doing research. In fact, it makes it possible for the first time for students who speak English but not Japanese to pursue undergraduate degrees at this university. Our undergraduate programs were previously confined to Japanese speaking students. It also means that our university is becoming more international. There is no doubt that education is the most effective way to promote international exchange and peaceful co-existence in the world. This program serves such noble ends. It especially provides great opportunity to those foreign students who cannot not pursue a high quality education in science and engineering at their home countries. Such programs and their funders, therefore, deserve high applause.
– Could you tell us about your role in GSEP program (about your teaching/subject)?
- My undergraduate courses are in the humanities, which are not primary subjects for GSEP students, who are all specialized in science and engineering. These undergraduate courses are developed with a view to serve them as well as to our domestic students. Presently I teach three courses, which GSEP students may take. These are designed to be as international as possible in their scope, intellectual content, and in the way they are conducted. My first course, “Science, literature, and humanism,” tells how literature is fundamental to giving science and engineering a humanitarian and moral mission. It is intended to inspire young scientists and engineers and help them find a sense of meaning in their work. The course focuses primarily on the work of Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933), a short-lived but popular Japanese writer and poet.
- The second course, “Thinking and learning through museums,” is designed to make learning hands-on and fun. It encourages students to visit, individually and in groups, museums and galleries of their choice and discuss in the class their impressions of the exhibitions and artifacts they have seen. The third course, “Technology and art,” is more philosophical. It seeks ways to contemplate and question what technology and art (and technological artifact and artwork) are and how we may define them. It explores relations between art and technology, mainly through the work of Martin Heidegger. We look, for example, at how Van Gogh’s “Shoes” may be viewed technically and artistically in very different ways. The course attempts to show that art and literature may serve to inspire beauty, intellectual depth and creativity, and thus make the mechanical world view (of science and engineering) and associated mental state better integrated components of a fully realized humanistic spirit.
– Please tell us about your research.
- My principal research interests are in the history and cultural studies of technology, and more broadly speaking, in the humanities, philosophy, and studies of literature and science and technology. The bulk of my research has been in the history of telecommunications, electric telegraphy, railroads, and their interactions with notions of culture and place.