Discussion Questions | Gender & Sexuality in Contemporary Japan

The most regular assignment in this course should take no more than a few minutes a week: By midnight the day before class, every student will submit FOUR open-ended discussion questions that directly concern the homework due. These questions should not be inquiries for more factual information. One quick way to decide if you have generated a discussion question is to ask yourself if you could find the answer to your question by searching the internet. If you could – if you are asking for facts – then it is not a discussion question. All questions will be graded on a credit / no credit basis, which means as long as you turn in open-ended questions on time, you will receive full credit. When you are assigned multiple materials in the same session, you need to turn in four questions total, not four questions for each chapter assigned.

Please submit your discussion questions via Canvas. You are welcome to work ahead and submit questions early.

I ask you to share your questions because I am interested in what has made you think, what you think deserves more attention, or what is puzzling. More generally, I want to reinforce the idea that we should all be generating questions as we read, rather than looking for the "right" answers. Further, as I will discuss in class, it is actually quite difficult to come up with good questions and learning to do so is a skill. Please take this opportunity to be creative. Don't be afraid to ask big questions, but please keep that day's readings in mind. Always feel free to think across the readings and discussions.

I will use your questions to shape discussions and might refer to you by name. You are never responsible for answering your question but I might ask you to explain the thinking that brought you to this question.

Here are some good and bad example discussion questions for the first of the assigned readings, due for our second meeting:

A discussion question: If you were asked to consult about the custody case described at the beginning of this chapter, how would you respond?

Not a discussion question: What's the definition of "Confucian"?
This is asking for a fact or definition and is not an open-ended question. But "Confucian" is an important word and good to look up if it's not already familiar to you.

Also not a discussion question: This is nonsense, do you agree?
While it might prompt discussion, and you’re welcome to share such a thought in the discussion itself, merely asking a yes / no question isn’t creating a discussion question.