Mission Statement

Sixty percent of the world’s population lives in Asia. For thousands of years, people in Asia have been creating and recreating languages, societies, and cultures—producing extraordinary works of literature, art, thought, music, and religion; reinventing communities and cuisines; studying the past and imagining the future. In ways that often go unnoticed, that rich, diverse, cacophonous history continues to shape the global world we inhabit. Especially here in Los Angeles, a city home to more people of Asian origin or descent than any other in the United States, Asia is all around us. It is part of our lives.

The Department of Asian Languages and Cultures is where UCLA students come not just to study but to engage with the incredible diversity of Asia. Few other departments anywhere in the world can offer as many Asian languages, both contemporary and premodern, as our accomplished language instructors do, or offer courses on such a wide range of topics taught by world-class scholars—from anime to Zen, from contemporary Southeast Asian literatures to Chinese discourse analysis, from postcolonial theory to women in Korean history. Our classes are designed to deepen students’ knowledge of languages and topics that really matter in the world today, and to help them hone their ability to read and think carefully, and to interact with others in a spirit of openness, inclusiveness, and humility, in ways that enrich their lives.

All this explains why our courses are among the most popular on campus, why our undergraduate majors have gone on to succeed in so many fields, and why graduates of our Ph.D. programs have embarked upon such stellar careers, leading the way in their respective areas in scholarship, teaching, and service.

Asian Languages and Cultures educates students from across the UCLA campus, and from all around the world. Our academic engagement embraces the contemporary and the ancient, thinking and doing, cultivation and service, and is rooted in both global and local communities. In the most fundamental way, we offer students a chance to learn how to be more aware of themselves in the world, and to grow in directions they never knew they could.