We study the languages, societies and cultures of major civilizations that stretch from the Arab World to Japan. Students expand their knowledge and challenge assumptions about this large and vital part of the world.
We offer two types of courses: language courses in Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese, and culture courses representing a broad range of academic disciplines such as anthropology, art history, film studies, history, literature, political science, and religion.
Our CurriculumWhether through literature, film, art, architecture, political science, anthropology, religion, or history, Asian Languages and Civilizations allows you to engage this vital and significant part of our world.
The MajorThe department encourages study abroad in the language of concentration to further language development and experience local societies and cultures.
Study AbroadDoshisha University was founded by Joseph Hardy Neesima of the Class of 1870, the first Japanese to graduate from a Western institution of higher learning. Amherst College’s ongoing partnership with Doshisha includes student exchanges, faculty exchanges, and a post-graduate fellowship.
Doshisha UniversityThrough the lens of literature and film, this course looks into the rich histories and cultural diversities of Chinese communities beyond the borders of the People’s Republic of China and in different parts of the world.
Bombay cinema, popularly known as “Bollywood Cinema,” is one of the largest film industries in the world. This course focuses on Bollywood cinema and its local and global offshoots to think about questions of gender, sexuality and agency.
This course aims to address these relationships by examining cinema—the art form of the twentieth century—in Japan and Spain during different but overlapping eras of tumult: the 1930s to the 1980s.
We award the Doshisha Asian Studies Prize for the best undergraduate honors thesis pertaining to Asia, and The Smith Prize for Japanese Studies.