Fall 2026
All of these courses will provide an excellent introduction to incoming students to the field of Asian Studies:
Asian Languages & Cultures (ASIAN)
ASIAN 100 (001): Democracy and Tyranny in Asia, with Professor Nhu Truong
Course description: this course offers an introduction to the politics of democracy and tyranny across Asia. Through systematic comparisons of the diverse experiences of Asian societies, the course traces moments of social and political change that often center on contestation about how democracy and tyranny differ. Why do some persist while others perish? How, why, and when do authoritarianism and anti-authoritarianism arise? How do power and tyranny work through formal institutions as well as everyday spheres from below? What are the possibilities for people to resist under these different political configurations? What forms of reclamation and abolition are urgently needed for community placemaking and collective movements to disrupt patterns of violence and injustice wrought, past and present, throughout the region? By examining these questions, the course powerfully speaks to some of the rising tensions and pressing contemporary issues facing Asian countries and beyond the region. Students will gain a textured and nuanced understanding of these important dynamics and timely subjects through seminal political writings, historical texts, and cultural materials, as well as films, music, comics, poetry, and fiction from East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
ASIAN 100 (002): Asian Languages & Identities, with Professor Miki Chase
Course description: this course offers a comparative and interdisciplinary introduction to multiple cultures of Asia. Under the theme of Asian languages and identities, this semester’s course explores what it means for us to use, learn, or consume Asian languages and how our practices of using, learning, and consuming Asian languages contribute to our sense of who we are as individuals and/or members of different communities. For this exploration, we will consider sociohistorical and geopolitical developments of the past surrounding Asian languages, as well as global mobility of people, goods, and cultural products observed in contemporary society. The course welcomes speakers and current and prospective learners of Asian languages, who are willing to share their experiences and perspectives regarding languages. It provides ample opportunities to discuss assigned readings, as well as to consider examples from our everyday encounters.
ASIAN 205: Animal Ethics in Asia, with Professor Miki Chase
Course description: Examines the relationships between humans and animals across Asia, exploring cosmological and cultural frameworks as well as modern debates. Examines perspectives from myth, literature, and religion, where ideas about animal symbolism emerge along with concepts of morality, violence, and spiritual kinship with animals. Discusses moral philosophy and critical animal studies, using these perspectives to ethically evaluate issues like animal sacrifice, wildlife trade, animal biotechnologies, zoonotic disease, companion animals, and the ethics of keeping pets and other forms of interspecies intimacy. Considers the impacts of urban expansion, conservation challenges, and the formation of emerging animal rights and justice movements across Asia. How do cultural practices, metaphors, and traditions shape attitudes towards animals? How do people balance economic and ethical responsibilities when it comes to labor, farming, breeding, public health, and environmental challenges?
ASIAN 206: The Qur’an: Religious Scripture & Literature, with Professor Anna Gade
Course description: An introduction to the Qur’an, the sacred scripture of the Islamic religious tradition, focused on Muslim approaches to reading the text, its themes and history, and its use as a source of law, theology, aesthetics, politics, and practices of piety.
ASIAN 218: History of Medicine in South Asia, with Professor Anthony Cerulli
Course description: How have people in South Asian societies understood and expressed ideas about health and illness, medicine and healing throughout history, in literature, and religion? How have ideas about wellbeing and illness driven therapeutics for ailing bodies and regimens to maintain fit bodies? Who gets to make determinations about what is fitness and unfitness and, crucially, how to shape or treat them? These are some of the big questions that will frame our studies this semester of healing traditions, or medicines, in South Asia. We’ll read about and reflect on ways the human body is presumed to relate to disease and how people experience, carry, and convey the experience of illness. Together we will think about how sometimes illnesses function as metaphors for social categories that people value as well as occasionally fear, and we will explore how those metaphorical expressions reveal concerns about larger cultural norms and institutions that shape the contours of our lives, such as, sex and gender, class and caste, and ethics and religion, and more.
ASIAN 236: Asia Enchanted: Gods, Ghosts, and Monsters, with Professor Rania Huntington
Course description: Explores how different cultures in Asia conceive of and relate to the monstrous, ghostly, and divine, both in the past and in the contemporary world. These themes are approached from a range of different disciplinary perspectives, including religious studies, literature, anthropology, and history.
ASIAN 255: Intro East Asian Civilizations, with Professor Steve Ridgely
Course description: Multidisciplinary and historical perspectives on the East Asian civilizations of China, Japan, Korea, Tibet and Mongolia from prehistory to the present, including developments in philosophy, economy, governance, social structure, kinship, geography, etc.
ASIAN 274: Religion in South Asia, with Professor Jamal Jones
Course description: Introductory survey of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Sikhism, etc., and an examination of the cultural, historical, ritual, and philosophical foundations of South Asian religion.
Literature in Translation (LITTRANS) 231: Manga, with Professor Adam Kern
Course description: Surveys the manga (Japanese comicbook) from precursors in premodern woodblock-printed booklets to contemporary manifestations in subgenres like gekiga, mecha, shonen, and shojo. Draws on critical writings on literature, popular culture, and visual culture.
Literature in Translation (LITTRANS) 261: Survey of Chinese Literature in Translation, with Professor Xiuyuan. Mi
Course description: A critical survey of premodern Chinese literature spanning from the earliest times to the 18th century. Covers representative works of prose, fiction, drama and poetry.
Asian Languages & Cultures: Languages (ASIALANG)
Our department only offers first semester language class in the fall term. If you have prior experience in the language, you will need to complete a placement test for permission to join another level of language courses.