About

The Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Alberta offers degree programs at the undergraduate and graduate level in Chinese, Korean and Japanese language, linguistics, and literature. As the only university department between Toronto and Vancouver devoted solely to the study of East Asia, we provide our students with a valuable opportunity to build a solid foundation for a career involving this exciting and economically vigorous part of the world.

Courses on East Asia have been offered regularly at the University of Alberta since 1961, making our programme one of the oldest in Western Canada. East Asia-related courses at the University of Alberta were originally offered within the Department of History and Classics, but in response to the increasing demand for courses on East Asia an independent Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures was formed in 1981. Renamed the Department of East Asian Studies in 1994 to reflect the expanded range of topics covered in its courses, the department has continued to grow steadily and now boasts record enrolments in its language and culture courses.

We teach over 500 undergraduate students in our first-year language courses alone, with hundreds of students still on the waiting list. We also offer a range of courses on the histories, cultures, literatures, linguistics and religions of East Asia. Our East Asian Studies major, minor and honours programmes, offer our students a well-rounded education that prepares them for successful careers across the world. Our recent graduates hold a variety of positions working for schools, governments and technology companies as well as journals and newspapers. Many of them reside in Japan, China and other parts of the Asian world as well as right here in Edmonton, Alberta.

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