Durham, N.C. -- Last summer, sophomore Lee Fan took her first trip to Japan. Her biggest surprise? She was not surprised by what she saw.

By the time she arrived in Japan, she felt she has already visited the country. At Duke, she had been introduced to the popular culture through courses, film screenings and speakers.

"Media is a really good reflector on the culture and the society," said Fan, who is Chinese and grew up in Chapel Hill. "Japan was exactly like what I imagined from the movies I watched (at Duke), the news I watched."

In recent years, Duke’s approach to teaching East Asian studies has evolved from a traditional area studies model to an interdisciplinary approach, with a number of faculty members working on contemporary mass culture and globalization. That evolution has been accompanied by increasing interest in the discipline among students.

Durham, N.C. -- In the old days, students interested in Asia might have focused their studies on ancient history or contemporary politics. Now, Duke students also might find themselves playing with Pokemon cards, watching the Chinese film "House of Flying Daggers" or discussing why Korean soap operas are such a hit in Japan.

New faculty members research such topics as gender and culture, as well as film in Korea, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. New courses this year include Japanese anime, Chinese media and popular culture, Korean film, modern Chinese cinema, and Chinese and Korean music. Plans are underway to add courses in Chinese television, Buddhism and Tibet, among other topics.

Duke recently hosted a conference on the study of martial arts at which scholars discussed topics from the intermingling of the U.S. and Asian film industries to violence in martial arts films. Numerous Asian films are shown each semester, with this semester’s offerings including Zhang Yimou’s "Hero" and a Japanese film about the legendary blind swordsman Zatoichi. What’s more, Perkins Library is building a collection of Chinese television programs and films that a faculty member says is the largest collection in the U.S.

Students have responded to these changes, said Ralph Litzinger, director of the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute.

Last summer alone, 19 undergraduates traveled to East Asia for independent research projects.

Another example is Litzinger’s Chinese politics course. In 2001, it drew six students; now, it routinely enrolls 40.

 "It’s a sign that Asian studies has visibility at the undergraduate level that’s making students realize it’s something worth thinking about," said Litzinger, an associate professor of cultural anthropology. "We’re also feeding off the fact that Asia is in the press all of the time."

Fan is one of the students in associate professor Tomiko Yoda’s Japanese cinema class this semester. On a recent evening, the focus of the class was Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu’s "Tokyo Story," but the conversation strayed into broader topics of Japanese families and religion.

"(Asian consumer culture) is both very familiar, but different," Yoda said. "This has become an interesting focus of intellectual engagement for students."

For many years, Litzinger said, Asian studies at Duke was centered around a country – a professor or a student concentrated on China or Japan or Korea, for instance. This "traditional area studies" approach has its origins with World War II and the Cold War, when the United States was interested in training soldiers in foreign languages and cultures.

With global changes that increasingly necessitate understanding relationships between countries, Duke’s scholars responded with research and courses that consider Asia in the world context.

Litzinger credits a four-year, $2 million grant from the Freeman Foundation in 2002 for inspiring a more coordinated effort to reshape Asian studies. The grant, which expires next year, provides funding for course development or enhancement, undergraduate study abroad, research and internships, and visiting scholars.

"What a lot of the faculty are thinking about is the relationship between area studies and globalization," Litzinger said. "We have come to the realization that you can’t get at the complexity of the world by looking at one nation-state in isolation. Globalization necessitates a shift in scale.

"What people are looking at now are how these media images move between different places in East Asia and what happens when they make their way into the United States."

This shift in the way scholars approach the study of other cultures isn’t limited to Asia, or to Duke. Gilbert Merkx, vice provost for international affairs, pointed out that Duke’s Latin American and European Studies programs have undergone similar efforts to redefine themselves.

In the field of East Asian studies, though, Duke is "on the cutting edge," Merkx said.

"APSI (Duke’s Asian/Pacific Studies Institute) is an early innovator in the field of East Asian studies," he said. "Traditionally, area studies programs tend to be focused on social sciences and literature and history. To have a heavy focus on culture studies is relatively new in Asian studies and is very characteristic of Duke. We have a higher proportion of humanities in area studies than at most universities. But this is now becoming the trend."

The interdisciplinary nature of Duke, professors say, is what has made the evolution of Asian studies a success. The faculty involved with Asian studies are housed in departments all over the university, including English, cultural anthropology, Asian and African Languages and Literature, and art and art history.

"What makes Duke distinctive is interdisciplinarity – we try to do innovative work and collaborations," said Leo Ching, chair of the Asian and African Languages and Literature department. "It’s quite unthinkable in well-defined East Asian departments elsewhere. We’re smaller in terms of faculty numbers, but we’re also younger and we’re trained in a way that is drastically different than the older generation. Most of us, I would even say all of us, have moved away from the area studies model."

Duke’s strength in Asian culture extends outside the classroom.

Duke professors are increasingly quoted in international news outlets on these topics. Cultural anthropology chair Anne Allison, for example, was interviewed last week on Japanese pop culture for a National Public Radio program. Last fall, Ching was quoted in New California Media on the "Asianization of Hollywood," Litzinger wrote an extensive piece on media activism in London’s China Review magazine and assistant professor Guo-Juin Hong appeared in The New York Times discussing "House of Flying Daggers."

Events, such as the Cine-East film festivals, routinely draw 60 to 70 people, including students, faculty, staff and community residents. And Duke has worked with Chinese language teachers in public schools.

Professor Kang Liu is the first director of Duke’s Program in Chinese Media and Communications Studies, which began last March at the Sanford Institute of Public Policy.

The program has already hosted several Chinese television executives and has plans this spring to train the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics communications staff. In October, Duke will host a conference on Chinese television -- the first, Liu said, to be held outside of China. Planning is in the early stages, but Liu hopes to attract top-level U.S. and Chinese television executives, as well as scholars from around the world.

Events like this could help to raise Duke’s profile in East Asia, said Liu, who is writing a book on Chinese television and has plans to conduct research on democratization and the Internet.

"I believe we will help tremendously if we succeed in bringing high-profile visitors from China," he said.

For more information, contact: Kelly Gilmer | (919) 681-8065 | kelly.gilmer@duke.edu