Asian Studies
About the Program
The Asian Studies Program provides courses on Asian cultures, civilizations, and societies in a broad range that includes East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia as electives for all students and offers a curricular concentration on Asia as a designation on the transcript upon graduation for students who choose this concentration. The designation Interdisciplinary Emphasis in Asian Studies reflects the program’s multidisciplinary content and interdisciplinary effect. The program also offers the University’s unique Pacific Rim/Asia Study-Travel Program. The designation in Asian Studies is not a major or a minor but functions as an enhancement of, or a complement to, any major of a student’s choice. Fundamental to the program is its invitation to a student who chooses the designation to cultivate her or his intellectual autonomy by exercising flexible choice of courses and participating in co-curricular events. Students who demonstrate academic excellence and complete a one-semester senior thesis will achieve the added designation Robert Trimble Distinguished Asia Scholar.
The underlying assumption of the Asian Studies Program is that the vast region labeled “Asia” is complex and diverse and that varied Asian peoples and institutions have greatly influenced, and continue to influence, human experience throughout the world. Courses in the program allow students to develop the ability to read difficult texts, to understand and to formulate abstract ideas, and to make informed judgments about a world of many cultures and about their own society as viewed by others. Faculty members with Asian language and area expertise are in many different departments, and the Asian Studies Program brings together courses from multiple departments and programs for interdisciplinary engagement. Some courses, such as ASIA 344, as well as Asian studies courses in the Humanities Program, are interdisciplinary in themselves.
Subsidiary programs
In addition to the Pacific Rim/Asia Study-Travel Program, the Asian Studies Program also is home to other special opportunities for all students, including the Charles Garnet Trimble Scholarships for selected entering students and Trimble scholarship grants for study abroad in Asia. Furthermore, the program provides a context for the Miki Fellowship for a postgraduate year in Japan and offers a postgraduate English-instructorship at Hwa Nan Women’s College in Fuzhou, China. For students seeking the designation in Asian Studies, Trimble Scholarships for continuing upper division students are available. For students seeking the distinguished designation, Trimble summer research grants prior to the one-semester senior thesis are also available.
