Asian Studies
The goal of the Asian Studies Program is to introduce students to the diversity of Asian cultures and enable them to develop critical perspectives on Asia, while honing their skills in speaking, writing and research. Through multidisciplinary practices, students cultivate intellectual curiosity and flexibility about Asia’s aesthetic traditions, religions, politics and society, and histories.
About the Major
To develop a real understanding of the continent’s immense human tapestry, students in Hamilton’s Asian Studies Program draw on the diversity of courses offered in such areas as anthropology, art history, East Asian languages and literatures, environmental studies, government, history, and religious studies. Learning a Asian language is part of the curriculum, and many students choose to study in China, Japan, or India.
Students Will Learn To:
- Engage life world of an Asian culture (assessed during senior project oral presentation)
- Conduct multidisciplinary research on Asia (assessed during senior project oral presentation)
- Communicate research findings through oral expression (assessed during senior project oral presentation)
A Sampling of Courses
Asian Temples in a Digital World
Examination of Asian religions in ritual, bodily, and spatial contexts. Discussions of textual and visual sources on human ritual interactions with gods; the use and layout of temples and altars, including food offerings, music, dance, representations of deities; and meditation and internal alchemy. Readings in scholarly sources, instruction in digital historical methods of collecting and analyzing materials on the web. Writing assignments include short essays and a final research project of the student’s design to be presented with text and images in digital form.
Explore these select courses:
What was social about media before Twitter? What kind of practices and ways of imagining the world change with the rise of print publishing in South Asia? We consider the relationship between media as material objects, such as manuscripts and print books, and the social worlds of different cultural and linguistic communities across South Asia from the early modern to the modern period. This includes the cultures of oral performers - poets, storytellers and also scribal communities, publishers and authors. Understand how state power, commercial publishing and civil society interact to affect reading tastes and political community.
Meet Our Faculty
Thomas Wilson
Bates and Benjamin Professor of Classical and Religious Studies, Director of Asian Studies
Chinese history, culture and religion; Confucian ritual and the imperial cults devoted to Heaven and to Confucius
archaeological history of South Asian religions, especially Buddhist and Hindu traditions; research in themes of inter-religious dynamics, syncretism and religious transformation; colonialism and reconfigurations of sacred centers; and religion and water management in the Buddhist and Hindu traditions
comparative politics; authoritarian politics; political economy of development; Chinese politics
intellectual and cultural history of modern South Asia; history of medicine; Islam in South Asia
literature of early and medieval China; manuscript and print culture of premodern China and Central Asia; the materiality of reading and writing, particularly in pre-print literary cultures
History of Islam in South Asia, specializing in Sultanate and Mughal India; Muslim devotional traditions, material culture, and gender and sexuality; history of pre-modern Iran and Persian culture
Junqing (Jessie) Jia
Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures (Chinese)
Chinese language pedagogy, with emphasis on development of language learning motivation; research-based curriculum design and material development; gamification in foreign language learning
Masaaki Kamiya
Associate Professor of Japanese and Chair of East Asian Languages and Literatures, Director of Linguistics
syntax, semantics, language acquisition, pragmatic and Japanese linguistics
South Asian religion and literature; Islamic studies; and religion, culture, and modern thought
South Asian art; visual culture of Indian Ocean trade; churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples in Kerala; syncretism; religious iconography; artistic agency; digital art history
modern Japanese literature, especially modernism and youth magazine culture; early 20th-century media, especially cinema and radio; and censorship and the Occupation Era, 1945-52
China, East Asia, cultural anthropology; bodies, gender, race; food, urban ethnography, consumer culture, comparative ethnography, and history of anthropology
South Asian religions; anthropology of religion, medicine, and the environment; North Indian guru movements
cultural and social history of modern South Asia, specializing in the history of nationalism, colonialism, and women
Chinese cinema and literature
20th-century American and British literature; literary translation; Ezra Pound; comparative literature; Asian American literature, especially poetry; global literary modernisms; Asian diasoporas; transpacific literature
Explore Hamilton Stories
Wilson Presents at American Academy of Religion
Bates and Benjamin Professor of Classical and Religious Studies Thomas Wilson presented a paper titled, "Confucian Ritual Hermeneutics of the Gods,” at the "Confucianism Enchanted" panel of the national meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Denver, in November.
Hamid Publishes on Muslim Relics in Journal of Hindu Studies
Assistant Professor of Asian Studies Usman Hamid published an article in the peer reviewed Journal of Hindu Studies titled "The Footprint of the Prophet at the Gate to Mecca: Mediating Empire, Pilgrimage, and Prophetic Piety in Mughal Gujarat."
Doing Deals with Communities in Mind
As an undergraduate Kadaicia-Loi Dunkley ’15 majored in Asian studies to explore her family’s Chinese and Jamaican culture, and she was inspired by her family again to pursue a career in finance and real estate. Dunkley is earning a master’s degree in business administration at Columbia Business School.
Careers After Hamilton
Hamilton graduates who concentrated in Asian studies are pursuing careers in a variety of fields, including:
- Data Assurance Specialist, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi
- Analyst/Linguist, U.S. Department of Defense
- Vice President, Interaction Designer, Bank of America
- Assistant Language Teacher, Japan Exchange and Teaching Program
- Trader, Pacific Asia, Ajc International
- Curator for SE Asia, The British Museum
- Assistant Editor, MTV Networks
- Director East Asia & Pacific, Council for the International Exchange of Scholars
- Senior Protection Officer, UN High Commissioner for Refugees
Explore Our Spaces
The Kirner-Johnson Building, also known as KJ, houses the offices for faculty members in Asian studies. The building features an atrium, team rooms for working on group projects, and five case-method classrooms with the latest technology to support teaching and learning.
Contact
Department Name
Asian Studies Program
Contact Name
Thomas Wilson, Program Director
Clinton, NY 13323
