The Dr. David Chu Program in Contemporary Asian Studies prepares undergraduate students to comprehend Asia’s role in new global dynamics. Several of the world’s largest and fastest-growing economies are in Asia, yet the outcomes of modernization across the region have been varied, as seen through differing approaches to government, wealth distribution, ethnic diversity, gender dynamics, human rights, religion, and migration. Our students consider all of these factors in present-day South, Southeast, and East Asia, in the context of the diverse histories that inform these societies. The CAS program provides students with the knowledge and analytical tools to grasp processes of change in Asian societies and draw meaningful linkages between them.

The CAS program provides a lens through which to examine the links between Asia’s history, its increasing influence in world affairs, the challenges and opportunities arising in this time of rapid transformation. Both the major and minor programs train students in pan-Asian and thematically driven multidisciplinary approaches to the student of the region, including anthropology, economics, geography, history, political science, and sociology.

Program Requirements

CAS majors and minors must take a sequence of required courses at the 200, 300, and 400 levels. Students can fulfill their remaining program requirements with CAS courses or approved courses offered by collaborating departments. Although there is no language requirement for the CAS major and minor, students are strongly encouraged to study an Asian language. One full course equivalent (FCE) in an approved Asian language can be credited towards the major or minor. Enrollment in the program is open to students who have successfully completed 4 FCEs.

For further information regarding program requirements and enrolling in a subject POSt, please refer to the Faculty of Arts and Science calendar.

Major (7.5 FCEs)

Minor (4.0 FCEs)

1. CAS200Y1 or ( CAS201H1 and CAS202H1)
2. CAS310H1 and CAS320H1
3. 2 additional FCEs from Group A, B, or C (excluding 100-level courses), OR 1 FCE from Group A, B, and/or C, and 1 FCE at any level in an Asian language.

Groups of Elective Courses

These are courses pre-approved by the Program to count towards the CAS degrees. Note that not all electives are offered every year. Some may not be offered on a regular basis and/or may only be offered to students enrolled in a POSt sponsored by the department or unit offering the courses. Students are responsible for checking co- and prerequisites for all courses listed below.

Group A: Political Transformation
These are courses pre-approved by the program to count towards Group A: Political Transformation. Students may use courses not on the list but must seek pre-approval from the program before enrolling in the course in question.

Group B: Social and Economic Transformation

These are courses pre-approved by the program to count towards Group B: Social and Economic Transformation. Students may use courses not on the list but must seek pre-approval from the program before enrolling in the course in question.

Group C: Cultural Expression/Exploration

These are courses pre-approved by the program to count towards Group C: Cultural Expression/Exploration. Students may use courses not on the list but must seek pre-approval from the program before enrolling in the course in question.

CAS201H1: Global Asian Studies: Insights and Concepts
This is a required course for all students enrolled in the CAS major.
This course addresses Asia empirically in contemporary global formations and as an idea in the global imagination. It introduces students to concepts and theories central to scholarship on Asia and its transnational formations. It provides foundational theoretical and conceptual material to understand global issues as they play out in the politics, economies, cultures and contemporary social worlds of contemporary Asian sites. Interdisciplinary analytical and research concepts are introduced to provide area studies grounding. This course provides preparation to delve into deeper research on Asia connected to broad questions about the nature of democracy, authoritarianism, market formation, social justice, and the media of cultural expression. It informs students aiming to take more advanced courses on Asia and globalization and provides one part of the foundation for the Contemporary Asian Studies major and minor. CAS201H1 introduces the theoretical and conceptual frameworks that are explored through further grounded empirical case studies in CAS202H1 (Global Asian Studies: Sites and Practices).

CAS202H1: Global Asian Studies: Sites and Practices
This is a required course for all students enrolled in the CAS major.
This inter-disciplinary course explores a variety of sites and topics in South, Southeast, and East Asia. It explores themes including contemporary and historical articulations of socio-economic development, (post)colonial political formations, urbanization processes, environmental change, political systems, religious formations, labour struggles, and gender studies. The course examines the diversity of Asian modernities, cross-regional linkages, and changing approaches to area studies over time. It provides the foundation for the Contemporary Asian Studies major and minor, preparing students for taking more advanced courses on Asia in the global context. CAS202H1 is a stand-alone course that may be taken following, prior to, or independent of its sister course, CAS201H1.

CAS310H1: Comparative Colonialisms in Asia
This is a required course for all students enrolled in the CAS major and minor.
This course analyzes the impact of colonialism in South, East, and Southeast Asia and the various ways in which pre-colonial traditions intersect with and reshape colonial and postcolonial process across the various regions of Asia. The course will examine the conjunctures of economy, politics, religion, education, ethnicity, gender, and caste, as these have played out over time in the making and re-making of Asia as both idea and place. Attention will be paid to postcolonial and indigenous theories, questions of ‘the colonial’ from the perspective of Asian Studies, and debates about the meaning of postcolonialism for the study of Asia now and in the future.

CAS320H1: Comparative Modernities in Asia
This is a required course for all students enrolled in the CAS major and minor.
Since at least the late 1700s, the effects of capitalism across the globe have profoundly transformed the landscapes of human livelihood, consumption, production and governance in Asia. While colonial empires have declined, new empires have emerged, and a growing number of countries have witnessed the rise of nationalism and independent states, social, political and technological revolutions, and most recently neoliberal globalization. This course theorizes and explores these dramatic changes in a comparative framework. It is aimed at students wishing to better understand the great transformations of modern Asia in a global context.

JPA331Y1: Issues in Contemporary Chinese Politics
The course covers topics of interest in China from the Communist takeover in 1949 through to the reform period of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. It will also address aspects of China’s diplomacy related to its growing economic power.  (Given by the Department of Political Science and the Contemporary Asian Studies Program)

CAS350H1: Asian Youth Cultures
In focusing on youth in Asia, this course brings together two disputed cultural formations of substantial contemporary importance. Both youth and Asia are increasingly invoked on the global stage in support of a wide range of interests. Examining practices of young people and the idea of youth in the context of Asia requires critical attention to the promises and fears that attach to the rise of Asian economies, international demographic transitions, the growth of a global middle-class, increasing consumption disparities, changing immigration patterns, expanding technological skills, global/local environmental concerns, and young people’s shifting political priorities and loyalties. The course may consider: youth subcultures, styles, music, and politics.

CAS360H1: Asian Genders
This course will explore ways that gender is mobilized and produced in parts of Asia. It seeks to understand gender in its diversity and in attempts to “fix” or locate it in various bodies and places. Attempts will be made to see how gender is made knowable in terms of sexuality, medicine, nation, class, ethnicity, religion, and other discourses.

CAS370H1: Asian Cities
This course offers students a multidisciplinary investigation of urban life in Asia. The thematic focus will be on how the urban intersects with Asian modernities and postcolonial formations. Drawing on recent scholarship in the social sciences, we examine the realignment of cultural, political, and economic forces associated with Asia’s diverse processes of urbanization.

JHA384H1: Japan in the World, mid-16th to mid-20th century
This course examines Japan within the context of world history from the mid-16th to the mid-20th century.  Rather than seek comprehensive coverage of Japan’s national history along a linear timeline, we will use Japan as a lens through which to consider key moments in the history of the modern world.

CAS390H1: Special Topics
Course content varies in accordance with the interest of the instructor.

CAS393H1/Y1: Independent Research
Supervised independent research on a topic agreed on by the student and supervisor before enrolment in the course. Open to advanced students with a strong background in contemporary Asian studies. A maximum of one year of Independent Research courses is allowed per program. Contact hours with the supervisor may vary, but typically comprise of one hour per week. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

JHA394H1: The Asia Pacific War
This course examines the Second World War in the Asia Pacific region and highlights: (1) how imperialism and colonialism of both the Euro-American and Japanese varieties were central to the War’s outbreak, conduct, and “resolution”; (2) various “local” rather than simply national experiences and memories of the War, including those of marginalized groups in Japan and its colonies, “comfort women,” victims of war atrocities, Asian North Americans, African Americans, and Pacific Islanders.

CAS400H1: Interdisciplinary Research Methods in Contemporary Asian Studies (Formerly CAS400Y1) 
This is a required course for all students enrolled in the CAS major.
This seminar addresses Asian worlds – In Asia, transnationally, and locally – to cultivate new approaches to global processes and problems. The course explores key Asian sites that open new configurations for studying interactions between economic/environmental development, political change, and migration and cultural politics. It provides an advanced and systematic overview of the research methodologies that students have been exposed to throughout the CAS program. These include historical-archival, ethnographic, visual/media, and statistical/quantitative methods that allow us to map Asian political, economic, and cultural formations, and through them, global challenges. The seminar builds interdisciplinary conversations attentive to both critical problematizing and problem-solving, to qualitative and applied projects. Together with CAS450H1, it is the required capstone to the Contemporary Asian Studies major.

CAS413H1: Asia and Canada
This course is an interactive, participatory seminar. It will provide an opportunity to complement theoretical understanding about Asia acquired in other courses through hands-on research and experiential learning. The course will enable students to link studying Asia and Canada to career trajectories in the field of development and research.

CAS414H1: Public Culture and Media in Asia
This upper-level seminar will introduce students to the interdisciplinary study of popular culture and mass-mediated cultural forms in Asia. Through readings about popular protest, festivals, cinema, print, television, and music this course provides methodological tools to interpret the politics of representation and the formation of alternative modernities in the Asian continent and among the diaspora. The course will furthermore familiarize students with a range of theoretical lenses for conceptualizing the different meanings of the public from a modern Asian perspective.

CAS420H1: Asia and the new Global Economy
This course explores the rise of Asia and its integration into the new global economy (labour, capitalism, knowledge economy, economic nationalism, inequality, gender, the meaning of capitalism, democracy, among others), exposing students to different disciplinary perspectives. Geographical coverage is pan-Asian, including East, Southeast and South Asia.

CAS430H1: Nationalism, Revolution, and Reform in Asia
This course explores the far-reaching social, political, and cultural transformations in East, Southeast, and South Asia, focusing on the regions’ twentieth-century revolutionary histories and struggles to establish modern nation-states. The course adopts a topical approach within a chronological and comparative framework to highlight major historical movements and theoretical issues significant to the Asian experience.

CAS450H1: Asian Pathways Research Practice
This seminar builds on the systematic overview of research methodologies of the Contemporary Asian Studies major and its capstone course, CAS400H1. CAS450H1 provides students with the opportunity to research questions of contemporary relevance stemming from Asia and its transnational networks and communities. Addressing a range of methodologies, including historical-archival, ethnographic, visual/media, and statistical/quantitative, the course emphasizes research experience outside the classroom, in Asia as well as locally with communities in Toronto. Students will develop their own research contributions while working collaboratively.

CAS490H1: Special Topics
Course content varies in accordance with the interest of the instructor.

CAS498Y1/H1: Independent Research
Supervised independent research on a topic agreed on by the student and supervisor before enrolment in the course. Open in exceptional circumstances to advanced students with a strong background in Contemporary Asian Studies.  Application for enrolment should be made in the preceding term. A maximum of 1 FCE of Independent Research courses is allowed per program. Contact hours may vary, but typically comprise of one hour per week.

Courses with priority enrolment

In addition to the CAS and joint courses listed above, the following courses offer priority enrolment to CAS students:

CIN376Y1     Chinese Cinemas
HIS389H1     Topics in History: South Asia in Globalization
JPA376Y0     Transforming Global Politics: Comparative and Chinese Perspectives
POL215Y1     Politics and Transformation of Asia-Pacific
POL328H1     Politics and Government in South Asia
SAS114H1     Introduction to South Asian Studies

While the Asian Institute does not sponsor any language courses at the University of Toronto, students in CAS are strongly encouraged to take at least one year of an Asian language while in the CAS program.   On St. George campus, the Department of East Asian Studies offers courses in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.  Alternatively,  UTM and UTSC also offer courses in Asian languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Sanskrit, and Tamil.

Quantitative and Qualitative Reasoning Competency

The Contemporary Asian Studies program requires students enrolled in the major subject POSt to complete 0.5 FCE towards a required Quantitative and Qualitative Reasoning Competency. The specifications for this requirement have been updated and will be in effect for all students who enrol in the subject POSt starting in the 2015-2016 academic term. The requirement is designed to encourage students to enhance their research and analytical skills, tools that will greatly enhance their interdisciplinary study of Asia in the CAS program. Below is a list of pre-approved courses; students may use courses not on the list but must seek pre-approval from the program before enrolling in the course in question.

n.b. For students who enrolled in the CAS major POSt prior to 2015-2016, the specifications for this requisite are: 0.5 FCE in Breadth Requirement Category 5: The Physical and Mathematical Universes, or another half course approved by the program director, to fulfill the Quantitative Reasoning competency required in the program.

More Information

Part of the undergraduate experience takes place outside the classroom; bringing the lessons and themes learned in courses and applying them to real-world situations and student activities. Learn more about how to get involved here.

For the most up-to-date course and program information, and for general information about undergraduate study at the University of Toronto, please refer to the current Faculty of Arts and Science Calendar.

Have questions? Email the program administrator at ai.asianstudies@utoronto.ca or call 416-946-8832.  The program office is open Monday- Friday 9 AM- 5 PM for drop in consultations as well.

The Contemporary Asian Studies program has a vibrant student life component, including lots of active student organizations and opportunities to get involved in extracurricular activities. See our student groups below.

CASSU (Contemporary Asian Studies Student Union)
InDepth Conference
Synergy: The Journal of Contemporary Asian Studies