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Gifts from UCLA Buddhist Studies scholar Robert Buswell and his wife Christina will establish first permanent endowed chair in Korean Buddhist Studies outside of Korea By Margaret MacDonald The UCLA Department of Asian Languages & Cultures has received $3.7 million in gift commitments from distinguished professor of Buddhist studies Robert E. Buswell, Jr. and his…

Eighty years ago, during World War II, the U.S. government forcibly removed Japanese Americans from the West Coast, incarcerating 120,000 in concentration camps. This May, an exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum lets visitors step into those dark days of 1942 through an augmented reality re-creation at the very site where thousands of Japanese…

Asian languages and cultures lecturer Juliana Wijaya worked as a linguist for Disney’s “Raya and the Last Dragon.” As a member of the Southeast Asia Story Trust, Wijaya reviewed character names to ensure accurate language representation in the film. (Photo by Anya Yakimenko/Daily Bruin. Photo illustration by Megan Fu/Daily Bruin)   From cultural nuances to…

The Department of Asian Languages and Cultures is excited to announce a brand new undergraduate major, Southeast Asian Studies, starting Fall 2021. Southeast Asia is a critically important area of the world, one with a significant population, with major economic importance, and one that is an epicenter for a number of major global issues. It…

In 2013, the UCLA Department of Asian Languages and Cultures faced a troubling possibility: its entire program in Japanese literature and culture might collapse. Both its faculty members in this popular field of study were being courted by an Ivy League institution, jeopardizing its efforts to hire a third faculty member. In the years since,…

Over the past few years there has been a sharp escalation in hate speech, hate crimes, and other forms of harassment against members of the Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander community in the United States. These examples of hate speech, violence and discrimination come in many forms, from political leaders using racist language in…

The National Endowment for the Arts announced that Michael Berry will receive a Literature Translation Fellowship of $12,500 to translate Soft Burial (Ruan mai) by Fang Fang into English. Michael Berry is one of 24 Literature Translation Fellows selected for fiscal year 2021. In total, the Arts Endowment will award $325,000 in grants to support…

The professorship is one of many recent career honors bestowed on Shih, who joined the UCLA faculty in 1993. UCLA International Institute, August 7, 2020 — Shu-mei Shih — professor of comparative literature, Asian languages and cultures and Asian American studies — was appointed the inaugural Edward W. Said Professor of Comparative Literature at UCLA…