Asian Studies

This course provides a general introduction to Chinese archaeology and Chinese history. It explores the origin and development of Chinese civilization through the investigation of material culture and historical texts. Students will learn about the methods and theories of archaeology as applied to the studies of Chinese history and culture.

This course examines various historical networks that flow across the Malay world from the 11th to the 21st centuries. It introduces students to the evolution, characteristics, and impact of commercial, diasporic, political, religious, educational, and media networks on the lives of Malays and other communities in the region. The three themes that recur throughout the course are: how networks are formed and sustained; how they interact with one another; how insights from different disciplines can aid in a more holistic study of these networks.

This course covers contemporary issues of international relations, politics, and political economy in Northeast Asia, with an emphasis on the role of the United States in the international relations, politics, and economy of Northeast Asian countries as an ‘informal empire’. 

This course will use Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback as a textbook to analyze various interpretations of the U.S's roles affecting Korean, Japanese, and Chinese politics, economy, and society. 

Through the study of this course, international students can go from scattered knowledge to targeted "liking" of Chinese films, and even through appreciating representative Chinese film masterpieces, they can have a deeper understanding of the direction and characteristics of Chinese history and culture, and the artistic achievements of Chinese films, thereby gaining a deeper understanding of China, the Chinese people and Chinese culture.

This course is an interdisciplinary introduction to Korean culture from the "opening" of Korea in the 19th century up to today. It travels chronologically through Korean history with a changing disciplinary focus. The course builds a robust knowledge fundament of Korean culture, including insights into multiple disciplines, including history, literature, film, historiography, geography, anthropology, and sociology.

This course studies important economic problems that emerged in Japan in the last few decades as well as their causes. The goal of the class is to deepen an understanding of contemporary Japanese economy and its relations to the world economy.

This course examines traditional Chinese history. It will give a brief account of the rise and fall of Chinese dynasties and the political crises that are cataclysmic to the empires. It covers the period from ancient to late Imperial China. The main theme will focus on the characteristic portrayals of Chinese emperors as well as the political influences of eunuchs, empresses, and their family members, etc.

Chinese political economy covers both major theoretical and practical perspectives of exploring Chinese political economy. This course will focus on the political and economic reforms in China since the beginning of the reform and opening-up. It will utilize theoretical perspectives from political science, economics and sociology to systematically analyze the key theoretical and practical issues of China's reform. These issues include the party-state relationship, state capacity, cadre selection and promotion, fiscal and taxation reforms, central-local relations, digital political economy, and government responsiveness. The course aims to clarify the core logic and operational mechanisms of China's reform，and clarify the key advantages of Chinese political economy institutions. The design, content and format of this course are aimed optimally to benefit students in both knowledge accumulation and practical orientation.

This is a knowledge-based course introducing the Chinese language and culture. Contents include theories and applications concerning the Chinese language and culture; theories, practices, and situations of teaching and learning Chinese as a second language (including Putonghua and Cantonese learning); the importance of culture in Chinese as a second language; and the language policies and its use in Hong Kong and in Mainland China.

This course looks at the evolution of modern China's political and economic system; the Chinese state in comparative perspective; issues and problems of China's political and economic development. This course explains the Chinese political system and state administration, the characteristics of China's socialist market economy, and analyses the role of the Communist Party of China. Students assess different theoretical approaches used in current research on modern China, and develop and present individual research interests on China's political system.