DEPARTMENTS AND CENTERS
Founded in 2002, the Carolina Asia Center is Carolina’s flagship organization for Asia-related activities and plays an important role in promoting the university’s internationalization strategy. The center has three core activities: cutting-edge research, innovative teaching, and the development of strategic partnerships. The center works with partner organizations to coordinate Carolina’s broad Asian studies agenda, facilitating multidisciplinary approaches to Asian Studies, embedding Asian languages and area studies in the curriculum, and enhancing the Carolina student’s experience of Asia.
The Department of Religious Studies offers students a major in religions of Asia. Students in this field of specialization focus on Asian traditions in their social, cultural, and historical environments and contexts of exchange. Participants use a variety of methodologies to explore specific questions and themes (including gender, diaspora, personhood and identity, place and pilgrimage, religion and the state, transnationalism/globalization, and the cultural and political dynamics of religious modernity) as these intersect, influence, and are influenced by past and present religious formations in Asia.
In addition to offering a minor in Hindu/Urdu, the Department of Asian Studies offers an undergraduate major in Asian studies, with a concentration in South Asia studies.
The Curriculum in Global Studies offers an undergraduate major in global studies, with a concentration in Asia. The interdisciplinary curriculum includes courses in modern foreign languages, courses in a thematic concentration, and courses with a regional focus.
The Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations promotes understanding of the Middle East through teaching, research, and community outreach. The center is distinguished by its cross-regional approach to Middle East studies, one that breaks down area studies barriers in order to track global flows of ideas, commodities, and people.
The Center is part of the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies, a collaboration between Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.