CAS

Goals

Asia is vast, its lands and peoples reflecting the world’s earliest civilizations.  Asian nations are also moving into the future, their populations mobilizing a range of resources as they participate in our increasingly transnational and cosmopolitan world.

The UC Irvine Center for Asian Studies captures the diversity and promise of Asia well, its almost forty faculty members in five different schools researching and publishing on important issues, but more can be done.  The Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures in the School of Humanities offers Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, but there is student demand for more, especially Tagalog, Hindi, and Sanskrit.

Some forty graduate students study aspects of Asian history, culture, and politics in departments across the campus, most notably History, Political Science, Anthropology, and Film Studies, but more students could come:  applicants from Asia, in particular, need financial backing to come to UCI.  The Center would like to expand and heighten its impact on academic knowledge internationally and strengthen community-building in its immediate area.

Our Goals Are Important

China and India are the world’s most populous nations, and Japan, Korea, Taiwan, India and Indonesia are vibrant democracies increasingly influential in the world today.  The major world religions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Shintoism all began in Asia.  Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population, and substantial Muslim populations are found in South Asia as well.

Our students learn about Asia and contribute their knowledge to society in many ways, working as academics in institutions of higher education and as experts in international business, law, and social service organizations.  Some help build cultural understanding through the arts, and all enhance understandings of Asia in numerous ways in their daily lives.

We want more students at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and we want more faculty members, so that the Center’s capacities can be expanded to produce more knowledge and serve more people.

You Can Help Us Achieve Our Goals

The Center has excellent resources, both on campus and off, but it needs help to maximize them.  Situated as the Center is in the midst of Orange County’s varied and vibrant Asian immigrant communities, many of our students come from those communities, while others from around the world can take advantage of their proximity to these different communities to experience Asian immigrant cultures.

The Center would like to bring more graduate students and more scholars, writers, and artists from Asia, but rising tuition and living costs have made that harder to do.  We have initiated exchange programs with a Chinese and a Japanese university but much more can be done.  Generous donors will make the difference between having goals and achieving them.  Please see the opportunities for giving on the following page.  Your gifts will be warmly welcomed.