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Asian Studies

College of Liberal Arts

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Overview

The Department of Asian Studies offers instruction in nine Asian languages: Bengali, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Malayalam, Sanskrit, Tamil, and Urdu. Scholarships and study abroad opportunities are available.

Asian Studies teach all languages at all three levels (elementary, intermediate, advanced), and offer courses after the third year according to demand. Students major in Asian Studies or in Asian Languages and Cultures. The latter comes with more intensive requirements.
They offer minors/certificates in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

To view a one-page summary of the department's offerings, visit this link.

Department Scholarships

  • Aggarwal Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Indian Studies
  • China Studies Scholarship for Study Abroad
  • Faurot Memorial Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Chinese Studies
  • First Abroad Planning Scholarship
  • Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS)
  • International Education Fee Scholarship
  • Kennedy Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Chinese Studies
  • Kennedy and Kung Endowed Excellence Fund in Chinese Studies
  • Liberal Arts Council (LAC) Study Abroad Scholarships
  • Liberal Arts Excellence Award
  • Liberal Arts Study Abroad Scholarships for Exchange Programs
  • Mitsubishi Study Abroad Scholarship
  • Peter Vlach Memorial Scholarship in Liberal Arts
  • POSCO Korean Studies Scholarship
  • Rapoport Service Scholarships for Freshmen
  • Taiwan Ministry of Education Huayu Enrichment Scholarship
  • UT Austin Continuing and Transfer Scholarships

Study Abroad

Course Offerings for Summer 2023

Japanese

JPN f601D JAPANESE I-WB (First session)
Not open to native speakers of Japanese. Designed for students with no previous coursework in Japanese. Emphasis on basic skills in listening and speaking Japanese and in reading and writing hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Introduction to Japanese culture. Includes computer-assisted instruction.  Japanese 601D and 506 may not both be counted.

JPN f611D INTERMEDIATE JAPANESE-WB (First session)
Not open to native speakers of Japanese. Intermediate level of competency in Japanese to enable students to function in a variety of real-life contexts. Japanese 611D and 412K may not both be counted. Japanese 611D and 412L may not both be counted. Prerequisite: Japanese 507 or 610D with a grade of at least C.

JPN s610D JAPANESE II-WB (Second session)
Not open to native speakers of Japanese. Expands on skills acquired in Japanese 601D or its equivalent. Includes computer-assisted instruction. Japanese 507 and 610D may not both be counted. Prerequisite: Japanese 601D or 506 with a grade of at least C.

JPN s317C JPNESE GRAM/COMP/CONVERSATN-WB (Second session)
Designed to prepare students for specialized advanced Japanese language courses. Not open to native speakers of Japanese. Japanese 412L and 317C may not both be counted.

JPN f320K READNGS IN MDERN JAPANESE I-WB (First session)
Exploration of different types of texts written in a variety of grammar structures with rich vocabulary. Examination of similarities and differences between various aspects of Japanese culture and the student's own culture.

Korean

KOR f320K THIRD-YEAR KOREAN I-WB (First session)
Prerequisite: Korean 612 or 412L with a grade of at least C. Taught online during scheduled times.

Urdu

URD f381 CONF CRS IN URDU LANG/CUL-WB (First session)
Prerequisite: Graduate standing and written consent of instructor on form obtained from the graduate coordinator. Hour(s) to be arranged. May be repeated for credit. Taught as a Web-based course.

Online Learning

Want to learn a new language during lockdown? Why not try Japanese? UT's own Junko Hatanaka , Ms. Yuko Kato from ACC, and Prof. Nobuko Koyama form UC-Davis have worked to create this Japanese Language and Culture video series for people with no prior knowledge of Japanese language. The sketches star a famous Japanese comedy duo as well as two UT students in video Lesson 6. Check it out here.

For more Japanese resources, Junko Hatanaka and Ikue Shingu (Harvard University) have published a self-study site on the Kansai dialect. The Japanese taught as a foreign language is what we call “Standard Japanese.” Descriptively speaking, the Standard Japanese is the variety used in the Tokyo area. However, the people in Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, and their surrounding districts daily speak “Kansai dialect”. If you live in or visit the Kansai area and want to belong to the Kansai people, you should try to greet them in their own language - start learning here

If you are interested in learning more, try out the BBC's "quick fix" in Chinese, Japanese, or Urdu.