The study of East Asia is at the same time a continuous engagement with the ways Asia is, has been, and will be studied, conceptualized, and understood.
Our core courses focusing on history, literature, and philosophy offer groundbreaking new ways to study culture, while other core courses introduce new subjects and knowledge altogether by combining legal studies and science and technology studies with the study of modern and contemporary everyday transcultural Asia.
Students explore notions of justice and law through literature, bioethics through popular culture, and the ways scientific ideas shape our world through social, political, and economic systems. In our broad curriculum, students engage an incredibly diverse range of cultural phenomena and artifacts that define and shape life from artificial intelligence to environmental and nuclear weapons crises.
More than half of the global population lives in Asia. By 2030, Asia will be home to sixty-five percent of the global middle-class. While there are great opportunities, Asia is also home to many pressing problems: widening income disparities, persistent gender inequality, threats to democracy, dangerous military buildups, and tremendous ecological damage. Thus, in both the public and private sector, there is a pressing need for problem solvers who have deep contextual knowledge about Asia.
Our aim is to cultivate intelligent and articulate students who will not just survive but thrive as professionals in their respective fields. Therefore, we nurture expertise in areas vital to a proper understanding of and engagement with emergent global social and cultural phenomena and artifacts, especially those that originate in Asia. Interactive, AI-driven media and technology, from video games to AI companion chatbots, are changing the existing notions of sociability, intimacy, and kinship. Popular cultures interrelated with computer science and digital technology are redefining what it means to be “human.” Increasingly relevant is also an understanding of bioethical issues—including human cloning, gene modification, and elderly care—that relies on knowledge of legal and ethical frameworks.
Only contextual, transnational, and transdisciplinary approaches can help nurture expertise in such contemporary phenomena. Therefore, while we offer our students in-depth knowledge of history and culture, we emphasize the flexible transdisciplinary framework through which students gain intellectual competency that is broadly applicable in every career pathway.