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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

Explore these select courses:

Introduction to the study of Islam as an everyday lived religion. The course uses interdisciplinary approaches to understanding Muslim beliefs, practices, and institutional practices. Particular focus on questions of revelation, devotion, law, spirituality, and aesthetics. Students develop facility with analyzing Islamic texts and material culture.

Introduction to the theory and methods of mobile ethnography. Students develop individual projects using smartphones to document a local community of their choosing. The ethnographic outcome uses digital methods such as short creative writing, photographic postcards, and video snippets. Successful projects will demonstrate a commitment to collaboration, creativity, and mobility. No previous expertise in Asian studies, award-winning aesthetics, or advanced geeky tech required. Pre-requisites: ideas, energy, and an open mind.

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

Abhishek Amar

Director, Associate Professor of Asian Studies

aamar@hamilton.edu

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

Alexsia Chan

Associate Professor of Government

axchan@hamilton.edu

Comparative politics; authoritarian politics; political economy of development; Chinese politics

Sabrina Datoo

Visiting Assistant Professor of History

sdatoo@hamilton.edu

intellectual and cultural history of modern South Asia; history of medicine; Islam in South Asia

Christopher Elford

Visiting Assistant Professor of Asian Studies

celford@hamilton.edu

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

Usman Hamid

Assistant Professor of Asian Studies

uhamid@hamilton.edu

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)

jjia@hamilton.edu

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, Director of Linguistics

mkamiya@hamilton.edu

syntax, semantics, language acquisition, pragmatic and Japanese linguistics

Arathi Menon

Assistant Professor of Art History

amenon@hamilton.edu

South Asian art; visual culture of Indian Ocean trade; churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples in Kerala; syncretism; religious iconography; artistic agency; digital art history

Kyoko Omori

Associate Professor of Japanese

komori@hamilton.edu

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

Julie Starr

Assistant Professor of Anthropology

jstarr@hamilton.edu

China, East Asia, cultural anthropology; bodies, gender, race; food, urban ethnography, consumer culture, comparative ethnography, and history of anthropology

Nick Tackes

Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies

jtackes@hamilton.edu

South Asian religions; anthropology of religion, medicine, and the environment; North Indian guru movements

Lisa Trivedi

Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Professor of History

ltrivedi@hamilton.edu

cultural and social history of modern South Asia, specializing in the history of nationalism, colonialism, and women

Zhuoyi Wang

Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures

zwang@hamilton.edu

Chinese cinema and literature

Thomas Wilson

Bates and Benjamin Professor of Classical and Religious Studies

twilson@hamilton.edu

Chinese history, culture and religion; Confucian ritual and the imperial cults devoted to Heaven and to Confucius

Steven Yao

Edmund A. LeFevre Professor of English

syao@hamilton.edu

20th-century American and British literature; literary translation; Ezra Pound; comparative literature; Asian American literature, especially poetry; global literary modernisms; Asian diasoporas; transpacific literature

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 Hamilton Stories

 Thomas Wilson

Wilson Joins JAS Editorial Board

Thomas Wilson, the Bates and Benjamin Professor of Classical and Religious Studies, recently joined the editorial board of The Journal of Asian Studies as an associate editor.

Usman Hamid

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."

Kadaicia-Loi Dunkley ’15

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.

Contact

Department Name

Asian Studies Program

Contact Name

Thomas Wilson, Program Director

Office Location
198 College Hill Road
Clinton, NY 13323

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