K-State's East Asian Studies Minor
The East Asian Studies minor program is designed to provide students at Kansas State University with a knowledge of and appreciation for East Asia’s history, culture, economy, and natural environment. The East Asian Studies minor is offered in the College of Arts & Sciences, though faculty from other colleges may participate and offer related courses that contribute to the mission of the program.
Students must have a GPA of 2.0 or better to qualify for the East Asian Studies minor. To complete the minor, they will need twenty hours of designated course work, of which at least eight hours must be for the required language courses and the remaining hours for electives in various subject areas.
Students should earn a grade of C or above for the courses to be considered toward the minor. Transfer credits for similar courses from other institutions may be accepted as part of the student's program of study, subject to the program director’s approval. Courses taken for the minor may be used to satisfy the general requirements of a major curriculum, including free electives.
A. Required Language Courses (8 Credit Hours)
The minor requires that each student achieve mastery of Chinese or Japanese at the intermediate level, which is defined for the purpose of this minor as the level of Japanese III and IV or Chinese III and IV. Students are expected to have taken Japanese I and II (JAPAN 191 and JAPAN 192, or their equivalents) or Chinese I and II (CHINE 101 and CHINE 102 or their equivalents) before they take the third and fourth levels of language classes. Native speakers of Japanese or Chinese, and students who can demonstrate language proficiency at the fourth semester level may be exempt from taking the language courses. In such cases, students, after consulting the program director, may take additional elective courses to fulfill the total credit hour requirement of the minor.
Language courses that fulfill the minor requirements:
- JAPAN 291: Japanese III & JAPAN 292: Japanese IV
- OR
- CHINE 201: Chinese III & CHINE 202: Chinese IV
Elective Courses (12 Credit Hours)
- ECON 507: The Japanese Economy (UGE)
- GEOG 331: Introduction to Japan
- GEOG 332: Introduction to China
- GEOG 660: The Geography of East Asia/China
- HIST 330: History of East Asian Civilizations (UGE)
- HIST 331: Introduction to Japan
- HIST 332: Introduction to China
- HIST 504: Intellectual History of Early China
- HIST 507: China Since 1644
- HIST 508: Introduction to Modern East Asia
- HIST 509: Japan Since 1550
- JAPAN 391: Culture of Japanese Communication
- POLSC 511: Contemporary Chinese Politics
The following topics courses may also be used as electives, depending on the specific topic and subject to the approval of the academic director of the East Asian Studies minor:
- ARCH 715: Theory of Design
- ART 695: Topics in Art History/Art of Japan
- EDCEP 786: Topics in Education
- ENGL 580: Selected World Literature
- HIST 598: Topics in Non-Western History
- POLSC 791: Topics in Political Science
Other courses may be used as electives, as authorized at the discretion of the director.
Transfer policy: Courses taken at other institutions in the U.S. or abroad may be used to satisfy the language requirement and up to one-half of the elective requirement, subject to the approval of the EAS coordinator (and the Department of Modern Languages, in the case of language courses). Two elective courses totaling at least 6 credit hours must be taken at K-State.
East Asian Studies Coordinator:
David Graff
Dept. of History, EH 314
(785) 532-0366
dgraff@ksu.edu