Asian Languages & Cultures

The Department of Asian Languages and Cultures (ALC) is student-centered and driven by research that is integrated into the classroom. We encourage students to study Asia from regional and comparative perspectives, while also cultivating scholarly engagement with specific cultures of Asia. India, China, Thailand, Korea, Japan — all of these cultures and more are part of what we study through our majors in Chinese or Japanese and the Asian languages and cultures major, in which students can focus on East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asian, or Asian studies broadly. This year, our department has been given approval to work toward establishing a new major in Korean languages and cultures, which we hope is available to students by fall 2025. Languages are a major focus for our teaching and research, with an opportunity to study more than a dozen languages in ALC. ALC has grown, and will continue to grow, with recent successful faculty searches in Southeast Asian and human rights studies and Chinese literature and cultures, as well as a forthcoming Korean studies search. To meet the needs of new programs and growing numbers of staff, and especially to support our students, the department is increasingly relying on external gifts.