Hampshire College

Hampshire students engage with Asian Studies through a variety of lenses: social history, political and cultural theory, and modern public culture, as well as literature, economics, anthropology, law, dance, music, and fine art.

Asian Studies at Hampshire encompasses a large geographical area, considering South Asia, Tibet, China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia, and Asian American experiences.

Using interdisciplinary courses and resources across the college, students have examined topics including the development of socio-political identities, processes of assimilation, the construction and performance of Asian musical instruments, and histories of Asian communities.

Sample First-Year Course
Asian Religious Texts and Traditions
The aim of this course is to introduce students to several of the oldest religious traditions of South and East Asia through a study of selected canonical texts. Part of our concern will naturally be to determine what these ancient records reveal to us about how people of these cultures understand, or once understood, such perennial human issues as the meaning of death, the nature of suffering, the value of human life, belief in God or the gods, and the possibility of liberation or life after death. But we will also consider such crucial historical and literary questions as: When were these texts produced and under what religious or cultural circumstances? Were these “texts” written and read, or chanted, performed, and heard? How were they produced or revealed, and by whom? Who had access to these traditions and in what form? What roles have these texts played in religious ritual, liturgy, story-telling, or popular culture?

Facilities and Resources
The Five College Center for East Asian Studies is one of many programs administered by the Five Colleges. In addition to the Center’s concern with undergraduate East Asian studies at the five institutions, they aim to support, encourage, and improve the teaching of East Asian cultures in elementary, middle, and secondary schools, and two- and four-year colleges in New England. They work to improve the quality, quantity, and distribution of resources for teaching about East Asia at the college and precollege levels and to offer opportunities for precollege educators to experience East Asian cultures firsthand. The Center maintains a resource library, publishes a newsletter three times a year, and conducts seminars, institutes, conferences, and workshops for college and precollege educators.

Two relevant Five College Certificate programs are in Asian/Pacific/American Studies and Buddhist Studies, each overseen by a committee of faculty from all five institutions. The committees work to coordinate and expand course offerings at the five institutions, advise students seeking to fulfill program requirements in Asian/Pacific/American Studies or Buddhist Studies, and coordinates special events among the five institutions in collaboration with students from the five colleges.

The Five College East Asian Languages Program (EALP) in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean brings together faculty members in East Asian languages to meet regularly throughout the academic year. Recently, they have organized and participated in workshops on the teaching and assessment of oral proficiency, the use of “authentic texts” in the classroom, and uses of web-based and other forms of computer-assisted instruction. The program also supports joint trips by faculty to professional conferences and outreach projects for pre-college instruction in East Asian languages.

Hampshire co-sponsors, with Smith College, the Tibetan Studies in India Program. Through this unique exchange program, students have the opportunity to study Buddhist philosophy, and Tibetan cultures and history during January Term at the Central University for Tibetan Studies in Sarnath, India. In addition, through Hampshire’s own partnership with two universities in Heifei, China, a small number of Chinese scholars reside on the Hampshire campus every year. In addition to pursuing their own international education, the visiting scholars teach or coteach courses in the Chinese language for Hampshire students. Through the same connection, many Hampshire students are able to study in China for a summer or a semester, and go on to do Division III work that reflects this life-changing experience.