Skip to content

For specific information related to your program or area of interest

Including how to apply, please visit the following pages:

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.

Cathryn H. CLAYTON, Ph.D.

Headshot of Dr. Cathy Clayton

Contact Information

Tel. (808) 956-5237, Email: cclayton@hawaii.edu

Educational Background

  • Ph.D. Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2001.
  • M.A. Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1996.
  • M.A. East Asian Studies, Stanford University, 1992.
  • B.A. Anthropology, Williams College, 1988.

Cathryn Hope Clayton is Associate Professor and Chair of the Asian Studies Program ​at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa,

Book cover of "Sovereignty at the Edge"

Specializations

Professor Clayton’s work explores the question of Chineseness: how and why it becomes a compelling form of collective subjectivity (be it nationalist, diasporic, regional, civilizational) at different points in time and space. Her research and teaching areas thus encompass sovereignty and imperialism, nationalisms and transnationalisms, “blood ties,” and collective memory, especially as they have played out in 20th-century China and Chinese communities abroad. Her first book examined how conceptions and practices of sovereignty shaped the categories through which Chineseness was imagined in Macau (a southern Chinese city that had been a Portuguese colony since the mid-sixteenth century), as that city prepared to be transferred from Portuguese to Chinese administration in 1999. She has also published on the Cultural Revolution in Macau, the social identification of hunxue’er or “mestizos” in Macau and greater China. Professor Clayton also maintains an active vocation as a Chinese-English translator.

Courses

  • ASAN 320C: Asian Nation Studies: China
  • ASAN 491G: Topics in Asian Studies
  • ASAN 600C: Approches: China
  • ASAN: 600Z: Approaches: Inter-Asia
  • ASAN 605: Practicum in Asian Studies
  • ASAN 620: Problems & Issues of Contemporary Asia
  • ASAN 627: Ethnic Nationalism in Asia
  • ASAN 650: Marriage and Family in East Asia
  • ASAN 710: MAIA Capstone
  • ASAN 750C: Research Seminar: China

Selected Publications

  • In preparation for submission. “Macau’s 123 Incident: the Cultural Revolution, the Cold War, and China’s Global Sixties” (expression of interest from Hong Kong University Press and University of Hawai‘i Press).
  • Under Review. Cui Zi’en, “The Platinum Precious Book of Public Toilets” (part of a collection of translated works of Chinese LGBT activist and filmmaker Cui Zi’en, under review by Duke University Press).
  • “Measuring Mixedness in China: A Study in Four Parts.” The Palgrave International Handbook of Mixed Racial and Ethnic Classification, Zarine Rocha and Peter Aspinall, eds., pp. 741-755. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
  • “Multi-ethnic Macau: From Global Village to Migrant Metropolis.” Social Transformations in Chinese Societies, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 145-160, 2019.
  • “Petri-dish Urbanism.” In Stefan Al and Lee Kah-wee, eds., Macau and the Casino Complex, pp. 15-25. University of Nevada Press, 2018.
Back To Top