Advanced Topics in Asian Studies

After completing the core undergraduate foundation in Pan-Asian history, classical philosophies, regional literatures, and modern institutions, advanced learners branch out into specialized research trajectories. This advanced curriculum provides five interdisciplinary specialization tracks designed for upper-division research, independent inquiry, and applied policy analysis.

Geopolitics, Security, and Strategic Competition in the Indo-Pacific

Investigates great-power competition, maritime flashpoints, nuclear deterrence doctrines, and regional security architectures across the Indo-Pacific corridor.

Hegemonic Rivalry and US-China Strategic Competition: By More Than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific Since 1783 (Michael J. Green/Columbia University Press) - Traces the historical evolution of US grand strategy and balance-of-power diplomacy across East Asia since the founding era.

Hegemonic Rivalry and US-China Strategic Competition: Chinese Foreign Policy: International Relations and Strategy (MIT OpenCourseWare/M. Taylor Fravel) - Upper-level university syllabus and analytical project frameworks examining Chinese deterrence, territorial disputes, and grand strategy.

Maritime Security and Contested Sovereignty in the South China Sea: The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia (Bill Hayton/Yale University Press) - Investigates the historical claims, international law of the sea (UNCLOS), resource competition, and naval rivalries in the South China Sea.

Regional Security Architectures and ASEAN Centrality: The Making of Southeast Asia: International Relations of a Region (Amitav Acharya/Cornell University Press) - Provides a foundational constructivist analysis of regional identity, norm localization, and the institutional dynamics of ASEAN diplomacy.

Nuclear Deterrence and Strategic Postures in Asia: Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict (Vipin Narang/Princeton University Press) - Unpacks the distinct nuclear postures—catalytic, assured retaliation, and asymmetric escalation—governing strategic stability across China, India, and Pakistan.

Cross-Strait Geopolitics and Taiwan's Security: Why Taiwan Matters: Small Island, Global Powerhouse (Shelley Rigger/Rowman & Littlefield) - Analyzes Taiwan's democratic development, global semiconductor centrality, and asymmetric deterrence options amid rising cross-strait tensions.

Comparative Political Economy and State Transformations

Analyzes developmental state models, industrial policies, state capitalism, agrarian shifts, and infrastructure statecraft across Asia.

The East Asian Developmental State Model: Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization (Robert Wade/Princeton University Press) - Seminal theoretical text explaining how state-guided investment, bureaucratic discipline, and industrial targeting shaped East Asian late industrialization.

State Capitalism and China's Political Economy: China's Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption (Yuen Yuen Ang/Cambridge University Press) - Examines the political economy of access money, local state corporatism, and regulatory risk under China's market-Leninist growth model.

Agrarian Transitions and Critical Land Politics: Powers of Exclusion: Land Dilemmas in Southeast Asia (Derek Hall, Philip Hirsch, & Tania Murray Li/NUS Press) - Investigates how state regulation, market forces, force, and legitimation dispossess smallholder farmers and transform agrarian landscapes across Southeast Asia.

Infrastructure Statecraft and Geo-Economic Connectivity: Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia (David M. Lampton, Selina Ho, & Cheng-Chwee Kuik/University of California Press) - Details how mega-railway infrastructure projects are negotiated, contested, and leveraged by Southeast Asian nations balancing Chinese influence.

Authoritarian Resilience and Regime Durability: Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia (Dan Slater/Cambridge University Press) - Develops a historical-institutionalist theory showing how elite protection pacts formed against mass unrest fostered durable authoritarian regimes in Southeast Asia.

Critical Asian Historiography, Decolonial Methodologies, and Subalternity

Explores Subaltern Studies, borderland spatialities, "Asia as Method," and critical approaches to knowledge production.

Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Historiographical Critique: Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Dipesh Chakrabarty/Princeton University Press) - Landmark theoretical critique demonstrating how modern historical scholarship universalizes European conceptual categories and how non-Western modernities must be rethought.

"Asia as Method" and Decolonial Cultural Studies: Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization (Kuan-Hsing Chen/Duke University Press) - Proposes using Asian societies as mutual reference points for theory-building rather than relying solely on Western intellectual frameworks.

Zomia and Non-State Frontier Spatialities: The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (James C. Scott/Yale University Press) - Theorizes upland Asia as an intentional refuge from lowland state-making, taxation, and conscription.

Afro-Asian Solidarity, Bandung, and Non-Aligned Internationalism: Bandung, Global History, and International Law: Critical Pasts and Pending Futures (Luis Eslava, Michael Fakhri, & Vasuki Nesiah, eds./Cambridge University Press) - Open-access volume reinterpreting the 1955 Bandung Conference, postcolonial sovereignty, and Third World legal and political projects.

Religion, Secularism, and Identity Politics in Modern Asia

Examines modern religious nationalisms, state-religion institutional boundaries, caste assertion, and politicized spiritual movements.

Majoritarianism and Hindu Nationalism in South Asia: Majoritarian State: How Hindu Nationalism Is Changing India (Angana P. Chatterji, Thomas Blom Hansen, & Christophe Jaffrelot, eds./Oxford University Press) - Comprehensive volume analyzing the ideological shifts, legal restructuring, and statecraft underpinning the rise of Hindu majoritarianism.

Theravada Monastic Nationalism and State Violence: Buddhist Warfare (Michael Jerryson & Mark Juergensmeyer, eds./Oxford University Press) - Interrogates the relationship between Buddhist doctrine, monastic political mobilization, and state-sanctioned violence across South and Southeast Asia.

State Regulation of Religion in Modern China: The Religious Question in Modern China (Vincent Goossaert & David A. Palmer/University of Chicago Press) - Traces how Chinese regimes from the late Qing to the contemporary Communist state have categorized, suppressed, and co-opted religious traditions.

Political Islam and Democratization in Southeast Asia: Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Robert W. Hefner/Princeton University Press) - Demonstrates how Islamic civic organizations, intellectuals, and piety movements shaped public democracy and pluralism in modern Indonesia.

Caste Annihilation and Dalit Radical Thought: Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition (B. R. Ambedkar/Verso) - Canonical philosophical text analyzing the structural violence of the caste hierarchy and outlining the intellectual foundations of Dalit liberation.

Environmental Humanities, Hydropolitics, and Climate Governance

Interrogates transboundary river basins, monsoon ecologies, critical mineral extraction, and atmospheric governance across Asia.

Transboundary Hydropolitics in Asian River Basins: Unruly Waters: How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons Have Shaped South Asia's History (Sunil Amrith/Basic Books) - Examines the interconnected history of monsoon water systems, state engineering projects, and transboundary water contestation across South and Southeast Asia.

Monsoon Ecologies and Planetary Climate Crisis: The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (Amitav Ghosh/University of Chicago Press) - Explores the historical, cultural, and political failures to confront accelerating ecological vulnerability across Asian deltaic coastlines.

Extractive Frontiers and Resource Colonization: Nature, Culture, Imperialism: Essays on the Environmental History of South Asia (David Arnold & Ramachandra Guha, eds./Oxford University Press) - Landmark collection investigating colonial ecological disruption, forest enclosure, and peasant resource struggles in South Asia.

Megacity Urbanism and Critical Urban Ecologies: Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global (Ananya Roy & Aihwa Ong, eds./Wiley-Blackwell) - Investigates speculative urbanism, transboundary ecological footprints, and social inequality across emerging Asian mega-regions.