Undergraduate Majors

In China’s vibrant, dynamic, and complex culture, new social structures and artistic forms constantly emerge out of the old. As a Chinese major, you can gain insight into these patterns of evolution and prepare to engage this emerging China through business, scholarship, the law, or public service.

By becoming a Chinese major, you will achieve:

• Knowledge of Chinese culture through diverse course offerings on topics ranging from film, popular culture, traditional and modern literature
• Proficient understanding of Chinese language in professional and social environments
• Critical reasoning and clear writing through Junior‐Senior colloquium papers

For those seeking to inquire more about the Chinese major, talk to any of the faculty in Chinese studies in Department of East Asian Studies.

Regionalism is transforming East Asian studies. Technological borderlessness has combined with more permeable political frontiers to create a space of mutual awareness and interaction in East Asia, which holds the promise of new avenues of study and employment for fields as diverse as developmental economics, international finance and relations, film production and distribution, biological and environmental engineering, literature, publishing, and education.

By becoming an East Asian Cultures major you will:

• Gain knowledge of East Asian Cultures through offerings on topics as diverse as human-animal relations, environmental ideologies, translation, and postcolonialism, in addition to courses on film, popular culture, as well as modern, contemporary, and traditional literature
• Acquire intermediate proficiency in at least one East Asian language

Studying Japan brings particular challenges and pleasures: a land with a long and distinguished history and culture, over the years it has actively welcomed the cultural heritage of neighboring Chinese, Korean, and more recently European and American institutions. These have in turn shaped Japan’s distinctive achievements in the arts, sciences, and culture. The Japanese major makes use of this rich legacy, still in the making, spanning ancient Japanese literary and visual culture to contemporary popular culture (manga, anime, postmodern art, literature, and aesthetics) to provide a strong foundation and critical approach to situating and understanding a nation that continues to be widely misrecognized in the West. A small nation with the third largest economy in the world, its distinctions in galvanizing and shaping global youth culture beg to be understood in the context of both its contradictions (a decreasing population with a corresponding increase in the proportion of elderly; an unprecedented environmental predicament) and its important aesthetic, philosophic, and cultural traditions.

By becoming a Japanese major, you will achieve:

• Knowledge of Japanese culture through diverse course offerings on topics ranging from film, popular culture,
  traditional and modern literature
• Proficient understanding of Japanese language in professional and social environments
• Critical reasoning and clear writing through Junior‐Senior colloquium papers

For those seeking to inquire more about the Japanese major, talk to any of the faculty in Japanese studies in Department of East Asian Studies.

Korea has a rich cultural tradition having developed in interaction with, but at the same time, distinctly from those of the two neighboring countries, China and Japan. South Korea became a democracy in the 1990s thanks to popular struggles against the military regime. Its economy is currently 14th largest in the world. The growing popularity of South Korean popular culture especially in Asia and Asian American diaspora is just one indication of Korea's increasing significance in the region. South Korea is also an important trade partner of the U.S. and especially the state of California. The escalation of tension with North Korea has made competency of Korean one of the skills most sought by the US State Department, active since 2007. Our majors have successfully gone on to pursue careers in academia, business, law, and public service. Declaration of double major is also welcome.

Korean majors will achieve these objectives:

• Acquaintance of Korean history, literature, and culture through diverse offerings of courses on topics ranging from popular culture, politics, sociology, religion, etc.
• Proficient understanding of Korean in professional and social environments through completion of Korean 3A.
• Critical reasoning and clear writing through Junior Senior colloquium papers

For those seeking to inquire more about the Korean major, talk to any of the faculty in Korean Studies in the Department of East Asian Studies.

Visit: https://www.humanities.uci.edu/eastasian
Contact: easian@uci.edu