ASIAN LANGUAGES & LITERATURE FACT SHEET

107

Undergraduate majors

EDUCATION

The Department of Asian Languages and Literature plays a central role in all areas of Asian studies at the University, with a total enrollment of more than 5,000 students in its courses each year.

The department provides instruction in 11 Asian languages: Bengali, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Sanskrit, Telugu, Urdu, and Vietnamese. We award BA degrees in Asian Languages & Cultures, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and South Asian Languages & Cultures, and we offer MA and PhD degrees with specialization in Asian Languages and Cultures, Buddhist Studies, Chinese, Japanese, South Asian, and South Asian Languages and Literature.

While attaining language proficiency, our undergraduate majors explore the cultural, literary, and linguistic aspects of Asia, past and present. At the graduate level, students acquire and create knowledge through advanced seminars and original research.

The department strongly encourages its students to study abroad through programs coordinated with the UW Study Abroad Office. Students from across the University participate in language-intensive study programs in China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Nepal, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. For undergraduate and graduate students alike, the overseas experience is a crucial element in their intellectual, personal, and professional development.

Graduates of our programs go on to successful careers in academia, business, technology, government, journalism, law, entertainment, and other professions, using their cultural and linguistic expertise to foster understanding between Asia and the rest of the world.

Students

Autumn 2025

107 Undergraduate majors
77 Undergraduate minors
48 Graduate students
6,008 Total student enrollment (2024-2025)

Degrees Awarded

July 2024 - June 2025

61 BA degrees
7 MA degrees
3 PhD degrees

Student Awards

2023 - 2025

Blakemore Freeman Fellowship
Chester Fritz International Research and Study Fellowship 2025
Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Dissertation Fellowship
China Times Cultural Foundation Young Scholar Award
Critical Language Scholarship for Chinese
Digital India Learning Fellowship by the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS)
Eugene and Marilyn D. Webb Scholarship
Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships
Frank F. Conlon Fellowship by the South Asia Center at the University of Washington
Fred and Ann Notehelfer Scholarship
Fulbright Doctoral Degree Scholarship
Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Fellowship
Joan J. Welk Fellowship
JSIS Ayako Betty Murakami Scholarship
JSIS China Studies Research Grant
JSIS Eugene & Marilyn D. Webb Scholarship
JSIS Kasai-Buerge Scholarship
JSIS Nam Chu (Yang) Koh Endowed Ph.D Fellowship in Korean Studies
Khyentse-Husky Buddhist Studies Fellowship
Maurice D. and Lois Schwartz Dissertation Fellowship
Maurice D. and Lois Schwartz Graduate Fellowship
Nippon Foundation Fellowship
Premchand Award in Hindi Studies by the Institute for South Asian Studies at UC Berkeley
S. Rao and Usha Varanasi Endowed Scholarship for Studies of India by the South Asian Center at the University of Washington
Toshizo Watanabe Fellows Tuition Scholarship
UW China Studies Dissertation Fellowship
UW College of Arts and Sciences Graduate Medal in the Humanities
Washin Kai Graduate Fellowship

FACULTY

Segments of an ancient birch bark manuscript, part of a collection of manuscripts dating back to the first century CE that are the focus of the Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project.

2025- 2026

7 Professors
7 Teaching Professors
5 Associate Professors
2 Associate Teaching Professors
5 Assistant Professors
4 Assistant Teaching Professors
6 Lecturers
1 Acting Assistant Professor
4 Adjunct Faculty
10 Emeritus Faculty

Recent Faculty Awards:

28th Yamagata Bantō Prize (Ōsaka International Culture Award)
UW Center for Japan Studies Faculty Research Grant
UW e-Science Institute AWS Research Credits
UW Office of Research Royalty Research Fund Award
UW Simpson Center Digital Humanities Summer Fellowship
UW Simpson Center First Book Fellowship (3 faculty members)
UW Simpson Center Religious Cultures Award
UW Simpson Center Society of Scholars Faculty Fellowship

RESEARCH

Faculty in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature pursue their study of Asian languages and cultures primarily through the medium of text, but they represent a wide range of disciplinary interests, including linguistics, philosophy, history, literature, visual arts, and cultural studies. They participate in collaborative research projects that extend throughout the UW community and beyond. Examples of recent collaborations include:

Deep Learning and Quantitative Analysis of Classical Japanese Orthography: Statistical analysis of orthographic features to enable dating and attribution of scribeship in classical Japanese texts, and development of a deep-learning model to automatically extract orthographic data in order to facilitate the statistical analysis.
Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project: Established in 1996 to edit, study, and publish the earliest collections of Buddhist manuscripts yet discovered, dating to the first century C.E.
Early Rekhta Poetry Project: An interdisciplinary collaboration to further understanding of literary exchanges along poetic networks in eighteenth-century multilingual South Asia.
Japanese Visiting Scholar Program: The department hosts a senior scholar from a leading Japanese research university to co-teach a graduate seminar with department faculty on a topic of shared interest.
Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics: A major international project involving many UW faculty as authors, editors, and advisers. The encyclopedia was published in January 2017 and is now a major reference in the field.
Korean at the Nexus of the Northeast Asian Linguistic Area (in conjunction with Cornell University): Research on the status of Northeast Asia as a linguistic area or sprachbund, with a focus on Korean’s central role among the languages of this region.
Reading Decoloniality (with University of Warwick (UK)): An inter-institutional research hub with an open-source publication (ISSN 2977-8573), reading group and residencies that produce and disseminate international and interdisciplinary scholarship for liberation.
UW Translation Studies Hub: A project funded by the Simpson Center for the Humanities that aims to coalesce energies on campus and beyond by building on existing and emergent faculty and graduate student research courses, and initiatives in public engagement around translation.

Areas of Research

Ancient Chinese Syntax and Phonology
Applied Chinese Linguistics
Applied Japanese Linguistics
Asian Cultural Studies
Asian Film and Media
Book History and Print Culture
Buddhist Studies
Classical and Modern Chinese Literature
Classical and Modern Japanese Literature
Comparative Literature
Digital Humanities
Early Indian Buddhism and Buddhist Manuscripts
Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies
Hindi Literature and Linguistics
Indian Ocean Cultural Studies
Indian Philosophy
Japanese Visual Culture
Literature and Cultures of Indonesia and the Malay World
Medieval Hindi Religious Literature
Modern Korean Literature
Okinawan Fiction
Philology
Sanskrit Literature and Religious Texts
Second Language Acquisition
Sociolinguistics
Textual Criticism
Translation and Interpretation
Urdu Literature
Writing Systems

OUTREACH

The department sponsors two evening lecture series for the general public: the annual endowed Andrew L. Markus Memorial Lecture (inaugurated in 1998) and the Washin Kai lecture series on Japanese language, literature, and culture (inaugurated in 2018).

The department faculty regularly lead language pedagogy workshops for teachers, including UW in the High School; organize colloquia and cultural events; host poetry readings; give public lectures; advise local nonprofit organizations; and judge language competitions.