---
title: Asian Studies
description: Asian studies explores the diverse cultures, histories, languages, and political systems of the Asian continent. Learners will analyze regional developments, historical transformations, and contemporary geopolitical issues across East, South, and Southeast Asia.
category: humanities
subcategory: area-studies
difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced
url: /subject/asian-studies
---

# Asian Studies

Asian studies explores the diverse cultures, histories, languages, and political systems of the Asian continent. Learners will analyze regional developments, historical transformations, and contemporary geopolitical issues across East, South, and Southeast Asia.

## Available Resources

5 Books • 2 Websites

## Websites

### 1. Association for Asian Studies

Scholarly society for Asian studies whose site opens the archive of Education About Asia, syllabus collections, and Journal of Asian Studies tables of contents. Useful mainly for locating credible teaching material and tracking current academic work.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.asianstudies.org/

**Tags:** asian-studies, area-studies, academic-journals, teaching-resources, scholarly-association

### 2. Asia for Educators

Columbia University teaching portal covering China, Japan, and Korea from antiquity to the present. Combines primary-source readings, timelines, and short essays by specialists, organised by period so you can follow one region chronologically.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://afe.easia.columbia.edu/

**Tags:** east-asia, chinese-history, japanese-history, primary-sources, area-studies

## Podcasts

### 1. ChinaTalk

**Author:** Jordan Schneider

Conversations exploring China, technology, and US-China relations. Guests include a wide range of analysts, policymakers, and academics. Hosted by Jordan Schneider.Check out the newsletter at https://www.chinatalk.media/

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** en | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://chinatalk.substack.com/

**Tags:** china, us-china-relations, technology-policy, geopolitics, semiconductors

### 2. Asia Matters

**Author:** Asia Matters

In the Asia Matters Podcast, we go beyond the headlines with experts from around the globe to help explain what's shaping the region. 

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** en-gb | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://asiamatterspod.com

**Tags:** asia, east-asia, geopolitics, current-affairs

## Books

### 1. An Introduction to Indian Philosophy

**Author:** Roy W. Perrett

Cambridge introduction to classical Indian philosophy organised by problem rather than school, comparing Nyaya, Samkhya, Mimamsa, Vedanta, Buddhist and Jain positions on knowledge, reasoning, metaphysics, self, language and value. Readers can place Indian arguments alongside familiar Western philosophical debates.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/052161869X?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** indian-philosophy, vedanta, nyaya, buddhist-philosophy, jain-philosophy, epistemology

### 2. Asia: A Concise History

**Author:** Arthur Cotterell

Single-volume survey tracing the civilizations of China, India, Japan, and the Middle East from antiquity to the present, emphasizing the exchanges between them. Gives a chronological scaffold before you specialize in one country or period.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470825049?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, area-studies

### 3. The Making of Modern Japan

**Author:** Marius B. Jansen

Narrative history of Japan from the Tokugawa settlement around 1600 through the Meiji Restoration, empire, war, and postwar recovery. Explains how institutions built under the shogunate shaped the state that emerged after 1868.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674009916?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, area-studies

### 4. The Karma of Brown Folk

**Author:** Vijay Prashad

Vijay Prashad's critical study of how South Asian Americans came to be cast as a model minority and how that image has been used against Black Americans. It covers US immigration policy, American Orientalism, caste and race, and anti-racist solidarity.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0816634386?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** south-asian-americans, model-minority, racialization, diaspora, immigration-policy

### 5. When China Rules the World

**Author:** Martin Jacques

Argument that China's rise will produce a modernity shaped by its own civilizational history rather than Western norms. Reading it gives you a well-known contrarian thesis to test against other accounts of Chinese power.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1594201854?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, area-studies

---

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