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Undergraduate Programs Information

Major or minor in Asian Studies.

Graduate Programs Information

Including: Master of Arts in Asian Studies, Master’s in Asian International Affairs, and Graduate Certificates in Asian Studies.

Student Testimonials

Christina Geisse

The Asian Studies Program was incredible because most professors were undertaking their own research, passionate about their subject of study, and enthusiastic about sharing their knowledge with students. It felt fresh and profound at the same time. Inspiring! 

Christina Geisse
Kim Sluchansky

I was able to delve deep and focus on the areas of Asian Studies that truly interested me, and therefore gained a much more thorough and developed understanding of my fields of interest, which are applicable to my current career path. Also, the professors are extremely helpful and want their students to succeed. They were very supportive both while I was at UH and after I graduated.

Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh – The Nutmeg’s Curse: April 18, 6:30 pm

The Department of Asian Studies, along with the Better Tomorrow Speaker Series, is co-sponsoring the first keynote event of the Center for South Asian Studies Spring Symposium on Climate Change and South Asia: a public, in-person talk by author Amitav Ghosh. 

Please join us for a searching conversation on the violent history of capitalism and colonialism and how empire set in motion environmental crises, from global warming to mass extinctions, that threaten to tear the modern world asunder. 
Amitav Ghosh: The Nutmeg's Curse. Climate, Colonialism, and Global Geopolitics. 6:30 pm Tuesday April 18, Art Auditorium

Register for Amitav Ghosh’s Talk

In his latest work of nonfiction, The Nutmeg’s Curse, Amitav Ghosh critically examines the mechanistic worldview underlying capitalism and imperialism, which turns the natural world and human life into resources to be exploited. Showing how human and environmental histories are interwoven from the early days of European colonialism to the present, he calls for respect for nature as an agentive force of its own. 

An engaging storyteller and incisive essayist, Amitav Ghosh has authored over 15 books, bringing the global histories of imperialism and environmental crisis to life through finely-drawn, memorable characters and deeply researched stories. With strong roots in South Asia, his pathbreaking work has continuously demonstrated the global connections that shape our shared histories. He was named one of the most important global thinkers of the decade by Foreign Policy magazine in 2019.

Amitav Ghosh was born in Kolkatta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria and is the author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and The Ibis Trilogy, consisting of Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire. The Great Derangement; Climate Change and the Unthinkable, a work of non-fiction, appeared in 2016. Gun Island was released in September 2019. Ghosh’s first-ever book in verse, Jungle Nama: A Story of the Sundarban, was published February 2021. His latest book, The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, was released in October, 2021. His essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic and The New York Times. They have been anthologized under the titles The Imam and the Indian and Incendiary Circumstances.  His works have been translated into more than thirty languages. 

He has received numerous book awards, such as France’s Prix Médicis, India’s Sahitya Akademi Award and Ananda Puraskar (1990); the Arthur C. Clarke award in 1997 and International e-Book Award at the Frankfurt book fair (2001); Crossword Book Prize, a major Indian award (2005); shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize (2008) and awarded the Crossword Book Prize and the India Plaza Golden Quill Award. He holds two Lifetime Achievement awards and four honorary doctorates. In 2007 he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest honors, by the President of India. In 2010 he was a joint winner, along with Margaret Atwood, of a Dan David prize, and in 2011 he was awarded the Grand Prix of the Blue Metropolis festival in Montreal. In 2018 the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honor, was conferred on Amitav Ghosh – the first English-language writer to receive the award. The same year, he was given the inaugural Utah Award for the Environmental Humanities.

This event is part of the Center for South Asian Studies Spring Symposium on Climate Change and South Asia (April 18-20, 2023), and is co-sponsored by the Better Tomorrow Speaker Series, the Department of Asian Studies, Halekulani Hotel, UH Press, the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Library, the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation, and Kamehameha Schools.

Reserve a spot at this in-person event with Amitav Ghosh at UH Art Auditorium.
Register for the Zoom webinars to attend panels and virtual keynote events of the CSAS Spring Symposium on Climate Change and South Asia.
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