Summer 2025 NCTA Courses
Course Starts: June 29, 2025
Course Ends: July 19, 2025
Registration Deadline: June 21, 2025
This asynchronous NCTA short course will cover Studio Ghibli and how to incorporate a selection of their films into the classroom to facilitate a better understanding of different facets of Japanese culture and history. Topics will include Japanese folklore, religion, history, as well as the broader themes that pervade Ghibli films, such as environmentalism, questions of war, and childhood coming of age stories.
This course offers teachers 6 professional development hours. For any questions reach out to easc@iu.edu
Past NCTA Courses
Last Offered: Spring 2024
This asynchronous NCTA short course guides participants on an exploration of traditional Japanese art and architecture through the lens of the aesthetic principles known as wabi and sabi. Four modules will explicate the historical origins of wabi and sabi in medieval poetics and the tenets of Zen Buddhism, consider specific examples of these principles as applied to the design of material objects and architectural spaces, and analyze how their definition and influence has evolved over time both within Japan and globally.
Last Offered: Fall 2024
This asynchronous NCTA short course guides participants on an exploration of themes prevalent in the post-Korean War era in South Korea; themes such as economic hardship, family troubles, refugee status, and the clash of old and new values. Using the lens of the lower and refugee classes, participants will focus on two films exploring what the immediate post-war era was like for those of the periphery during the beginning of industrialization in the capital city Seoul. These two films offer opposite endings, hopeful and bleak, to contrast and highlight the fears, insecurities, dreams, and hopes that many families faced during this turbulent time.