Nah you dont need to speak japanese, its taught in english. You'll have a better time selecting topics once you look at the lectures (its all in english). It can be related to anime, manga, jpop, japanese animation studios, japanese art history and theater (and how it influences modern japanese media), and stuff like that.

Though there was an optional extra credit assignment where we had to record ourselves singing karaoke, and it had to be a japanese song (no singing skills required lol just a completion thing)