Asian History
Convenor: W. Miles Fletcher
Program Description
Asian history at UNC-Chapel Hill has flourished and grown considerably in recent years. Its diverse faculty offers a wide range of courses that, despite their varying temporal and spatial focuses, are all designed to equip students with a critical spirit of enquiry and understanding with regard to a region of the world where over half of humanity now resides. The research and teaching interests of the Asian history faculty include the region’s pre-modern histories; its transformation in more recent times; business and economic developments; social and cultural formations; gender relations; experience with colonialism and nationalism; and relations with the United States and other parts of the world. Students can choose courses that range from introductions to specific sub-units within the region (South Asia, Southeast Asia, China, Japan) to more advanced courses with thematic focuses (colonialism and gender, history of punishment, historical memory, the Pacific War). The more advanced courses often expose students to a comparative and transnational approach which is one of the distinctive features and strengths of the Asian history program.
Faculty and students in Asian history work closely with many other departments and centers of the university. They include the Department of Asian Studies, which offers language training in Asian languages as well as courses in Asian literature and cultures. The program also contributes to and cooperates with the work of the recently established Carolina Asia Center, which promotes and coordinates interdisciplinary teaching and research on Asia.
The Graduate Program
Students may pursue graduate study in Asian history in two different ways. Because the History faculty voted in the spring 2007 to approve a doctoral field in Asian history, Students may now select Asian history as a primary field at the master’s degree level and the Ph .D. level. Students in the master’s degree and doctoral degree programs may also focus on Asian history from a transnational perspective through the Global History Program. Students who are interested in the Global History Program should consult the description of that program.
Students in the doctoral program in Asian history must select four fields for comprehensive examinations: a primary field focusing on Asia, a second field that ordinarily will focus on Asia but will be distinct from the primary field, a thematic field that will include substantial readings pertaining to Asia, and a field outside of Asia. For more information about the fields for comprehensive exams, please see here.
Foreign Language
The Asian field will ordinarily require knowledge of a minimum of two foreign languages contingent upon the specific primary field chosen. One of the languages must be an Asian language directly relevant to the student’s primary area of research. Ideally, the student’s command of this language should be comprehensive in terms of both oral and written competency. Beyond taking the typical language test in a student’s primary Asian language, each student will be expected to complete as part of her/his coursework a translation of an important primary source or an article or book chapter from an important secondary source written in that language. Because of the difficulty of Asian languages, a student normally will be required to have studied an Asian language for four years at the college level (or to have a knowledge of an Asian language equivalent to that level of study) before entering the program.
Asian History Faculty
| Daniel Botsman | Associate Professor | Princeton | Japanese social history, Comparative history of pre-modern societies, law and empire in early modern and modern periods, women and gender; Japanese society in the Tokugawa and Meiji periods |
| Peter A. Coclanis | Albert Ray Newsome D.P., Assoc. Provost Intl. Affairs | Columbia | International economic and business history, economic and business history of the U.S. and of Southeast Asia, U.S.colonial history, Globalization, imperialism |
| W. Miles Fletcher | Professor, Associate Chair, & Undergraduate Director | Yale | Japanese history, Industrialization, international trade, business history and the political economy of modern Japan |
| Michelle King | Assistant Professor | Chinese history, gender history, cross-cultural interactions, Comparative gender, colonialism/imperialism, late imperial China. eighteenth- and nineteenth-century China | |
| Yasmin Saikia | Associate Professor | Wisconsin | Memory; Local narratives; Post-Colonial South Asia; Colonialism, nationalism, gender issues, gender history |
| Michael Tsin | Associate Professor | Princeton | Modern Chinese history; Nationalism, coloniality and modernities, cultural studies |
Graduate Students