Asian Studies
Master of Arts
Department of Asian Studies
UBC’s Asian Studies Department is the flagship Asian Studies department in Canada and is widely acknowledged as one of the finest in North America. It has over 20 regular faculty members, specializing in the languages, literature, religion, thought, and history of East and South Asia. It offers instruction in multiple Asian languages (Cantonese, Modern Chinese, Classical Chinese, Modern Japanese, Classical Japanese, Korean, Hindi-Urdu, Persian, Punjabi, and Sanskrit) and a wide range of courses on the cultures of East, South, and Southeast Asia.
Graduate Degree Programs
Research Supervisors
| Name | Research Interests |
|---|---|
| Abedinifard, Mostafa | Literature and literary studies; modern Iran; Iranian/Persianate studies through fiction, drama, poetry, cinema, andnonfiction |
| Ahmed, Rumee | Islamic studies; Human rights, justice, and ethical issues; Islam; Muslims; Religion; Law; Theology; ethics; Philosophy |
| An, Ji-yoon | Korean cinema, K-drama, Rise of Hallyu, Diasporic cinema, Diasporic identity, Identity and cultural flows, Monsters of different cultures |
| Bailey, C. D. Alison | pre-modern literature; fiction and literary criticism |
| Baker, Donald Leslie | Asian history; History and philosophy of specific fields, n.e.c.; Korean History; Confucian Philosophy; Religion in Korea; science in pre-modern Korea; Kwangju Uprising of 1980 |
| Chen, Jinhua | East Asian state-church relationships, monastic (hagio/)biographical literature, Buddhist sacred sites, relic veneration, Buddhism and technological innovation in medieval China, and Buddhist translations |
| Chiu-Duke, Josephine | Asian history; History of Major Eras, Great Civilisations or Geographical Corpuses; Chinese and Taiwanese history; liberal democracy; political thought and institutions |
| Duffy, Kay | Asian history; Literary or Artistic Works Analysis; Literary or Artistic Work Dissemination or Reception Contexts; Social Determinants of Arts and Letters; Arts and Cultural Traditions; Early Medieval China; Premodern Chinese Literature; Sinographic Sphere |
| Fulton, Bruce | Literary translation, Modern Korean fiction, women |
| Hoffmann, Alexandra | Literature and literary studies; Classical Persian Literature |
| Hur, Nam-Lin | Japanese, cultural foundations, religion, international relations |
| Kadir, Aynur | Documentation, conservation and revitalization of Indigenous cultures and languages, Uyghur literature, musical traditions and cultural practices, global indigeneity from the Uyghur in China to Coast Salish and Six Nations in Canada, transnational Indigenous diplomacy, safeguarding and revitalization of languages and cultural heritage |
| King, Ross | Historical linguistics, diachronics, and dialectology; Korean philology; history of Korean literary culture; Korean historical linguistics; Korean dialectology; history of the Sinographic Cosmopolis |
| Laffin, Christina | Humanities and the arts; premodern Japanese literature; medieval Japanese history; women's writing; Japanese women's history; travel writing; autobiography; Japanese poetry; Literacy; socialization; wet nursing; narratology |
| Laird, Colleen | Japanese media and gender studies; Gendered image production, gendered reception, and women in industry; Video games, new media, streaming media, animation (anime), and comics (manga); Paratexts: distribution, exhibition, and production materials; Film theory, genre theory, transnational cinemas and star texts, and feminist and queer theory |
| Lynn, Hyung Gu | Asian history; popular culture, migration, colonialism, globalization, development |
| Main, Jessica | Buddhism, Ethics, and Human Rights; Modern Buddhist Institutions, Law, and Governance; Buddhists and Buddhist Institutions Active in Modern Society: Social Welfare; Healthcare and Healing; Protest Movements; Rehabilitation, Incarceration and Corrections; Youth Culture, Physical Culture, and Scouting; Modern Japanese Religions and Society; Japanese True Pure Land Buddhism |
| Mostow, Joshua Scott | Inter-relations between text and image, especially in Japanese culture, Japanese women |
| Nakamura, Fuyubi | Social and cultural anthropology; Museum studies (Museology); Visual theory, visual culture and visual literacy; Globalization and culture; Environment, space and place; Anthropology of art; museum studies (working as curator at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC); material and visual culture; Contemporary Japanese calligraphy; Indigenous cultures, especially Ainu; disaster and memory, especially in the context of the Great East Japan Earthquake (3.11).; contemporary Asian art and culture |
| Naqvi, Naveena | Persianate world; Non-courtly Persographic writers in regional contexts during early colonial rule; History of early modern and modern South Asia; History of political Islam; gender and sexuality; Hindustani music |
| Oberoi, Harjot Singh | South asia, how classical empires shaped the British Raj in India, critical theory, the formation of private libraries, law and society, transnational cultures, and complex systems |
| Orbaugh, Sharalyn | modern Japanese culture (literature, film, manga, animation, kamishibai); East Asian women’s issues; anti-racist pegagogy, Japanese narrative and visual culture |
| Prange, Sebastian | History, maritime trade, Indian Ocean, India, piracy, Islam |
| Rea, Christopher | Chinese literatures; Asian history; Chinese literature; Cinema; Print culture; translation; Humor |
| Rusk, Bruce | Asian history; Literary or Artistic Work Analysis; Social Determinants of Arts and Letters; Arts and Cultural Traditions; Exegesis and Sacred Text Critics; Lexicography and Dictionaries; Authentication Studies; Confucianism; Early Modern China; material culture |
| Sathaye, Adheesh | early medieval Sanskrit drama, aesthetics, and narrative literature; Sanskrit epics, Marathi devotional performance traditions, and theories of textual production, performance, and folkloristics; South Asian folklore, narrative theory, and cultural studies |
| Shakya, Tsering | confluence of politics, ethno-national identity and religious practice in cultural production and social transformation across both historical and contemporary Tibet and the Himalayas; contemporary minority policy and social media in the PRC. |
| Sherpa, Pasang | Climate change and Indigeneity among Himalayan communities, Nepal and the Himalayas, Environment |
| Shin, Leo | Later imperial China |
| Siddiqui, Hasan Zahid | Early Modern South Asia |
| Thobani, Sunera | Critical race, postcolonial and feminist theory |
| Wu, Helena | Critical identity, ethnic and race studies; Media, visual and digital culture; Critical film studies; Theories of cultural studies; Globalization and culture; Other cultural studies, n.e.c.; Hong Kong cinema, literature and culture; Asian screen cultures; Media narratives; Creative industry and spectatorship; Identity and cultural flows; critical theory; postcolonialism; Thing theory |
| Yang, Renren | Comparitive Literature; Modern Chinese Popular Culture; 20th-and 21st-century Chinese culture; Modern Chinese literature; Modern Chinese cinema; Literary and media analysis; Literary celebrity and social media; Time-travel imagination in East Asia; Surveillance narrative and cinema; Communication in the age of digital culture |
| Yi, Christina | Asian history; Cultural Studies; genre; Japanese colonial repatriates; Language politics; Linguistic nationalism; Modern/Contemporary Japanese literature; National identity; Postcoloniality; Resident Koreans; “Repatriation literature” (hikiage bungaku); “returned” Nikkei |
