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Mon, 01 Dec 2025 12:13:36 -0500
asian-studies

Winter courses are still available for sign up! Enroll today.

ASIA 300 - Political Leadership of Asia

Instructor: Zareen Taj

This dynamic, story-driven course explores the bold, flawed, and complex leaders who have shaped the political landscape of some key countries in East and South Asia. Students will examine how different styles of leadership from charismatic revolutionaries to authoritarian rulers, including transformative, transactional, charismatic, and failed approaches, have influenced state-building, democracy, development, and civil unrest.

This course goes far beyond the textbook. Through biographies, speeches, memoirs, films, and scholarly texts, we will critically assess leadership processes and their lasting legacies. Special focus will be placed on the post-Cold War era and Asia's rising role in global geopolitics. This course is a combined online section of synchronous & asynchronous.

HIST 381 - Japanese History through Film & Literature

Instructor: Constantine Vaporis

In this course you will study Japanese history from 1600-present through the media of film and literature. The course explores the relationship between history and drama, in particular, how they can illuminate or conceal basic truths and values of the past. Views of feudal life & modern times, obsessions with honor & suicide, the changing role of women in society, the encounter between Japanese & foreign cultures, and themes of war & pacifism will be investigated. This course is fully online & asynchronous.