波士顿大学

Asian Studies is a major offered in the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies to students enrolled in the College of Arts & Sciences. The major focuses on East Asia and South Asia, with attention to Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Rim. It provides a broad interdisciplinary and comparative perspective, to deepen understanding of how Asian people, nations, states, regions and diasporas have developed, functioned, and interacted, and how they view the world and themselves. The major is designed to be flexible, easily tailored to each student’s interests and learning goals, whether those focus on a certain country in the region or on particular transnational issues such as cultural flows, security, or economic development.

Asian Studies majors are well prepared for graduate study and for careers in government, local and international non-governmental organizations, and the private sector. Majors study an Asian language (Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, or Urdu) for at least five semesters, acquiring linguistic and cultural proficiency sufficient for professional life in or related to the region; they also develop competence in both humanities and social sciences, and the mini seminar CAS AI 101 helps them integrate these disciplinary approaches and understand the utility and limits of each. Every student builds an Asian Studies Portfolio tracking his or her coursework, language learning milestones, study abroad experiences, participation in Asia-related events, conversations with visiting experts, and reflections. Seniors may present their research projects at an annual symposium. Majors thus have a continuous opportunity to explore, deepen, evaluate, and perhaps revise their own pre-existing beliefs and ideas about the global significance of this large and complex region.

Learning Outcomes

Demonstrate substantive interdisciplinary knowledge of legal, political, economic, social, cultural, and historical factors influencing international affairs.
Display an in-depth understanding of an important functional subfield of the discipline and a major geographical region of the world.
Conduct theoretically informed and empirically based analysis of real-world conditions and events and present the results of that analysis persuasively in written and oral forms.