East Asian Area Studies (MA)

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Return to: USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

The East Asian Studies Center offers an interdisciplinary master’s degree in East Asian Area Studies. The program provides a wide range of language, cultural, social, historical, political and economic courses and faculty expertise; individual courses of study may be designed to meet both continuing academic and professional objectives. Students may concentrate primarily on one country (China, Japan, Korea) or develop region-wide expertise through a combination of course work and the thesis project.

Admission Requirements

Prerequisites

While an applicant for admission will normally have significant experience in East Asian language(s) and area studies as demonstrated through course work completed for the undergraduate degree, programs may be arranged for promising students without prior experience in East Asian studies. There is no formal language requirement for admission.

Criteria

Please refer to the EASC website for a detailed explanation of application requirements: dornsife.usc.edu/eascenter/masters.

Degree Requirements

This degree is under the jurisdiction of the Graduate School. Refer to the Requirements for Graduation section and the Graduate School section of this catalogue for general regulations. All courses applied toward the degree must be courses acceptable to the Graduate School.

Foreign Language Requirement

Students must be able to demonstrate oral and written proficiency in Chinese, Korean or Japanese through the third year level (equivalent to six semesters) before the MA program is completed.

Course and Thesis Requirements

Six courses (24 units), four of which must be at the 500 level or above, plus the thesis (4 units) are required. All students must complete: (1) EASC 592 ; (2) EALC 531 , EALC 532 or EALC 533 ; and (3) one other course from a Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences department. The three additional courses (12 units) may be taken from college departments or professional schools. All courses must be approved by the center director or adviser. A maximum of two courses at the 400 level may be counted toward the degree. All students must register for EASC 594a Master’s Thesis EASC 594b Master’s Thesis for the thesis project.