About

The BU Center for the Study of Asia (BUCSA), created in 2008, coordinates and supports the activities of scholars and students across the university.  Its mission is to foster communications and build community within the university, while also expanding the public outreach efforts of faculty and students in order to contribute to interest in Asia among the broader community.

Boston University is home to a vibrant community of scholars and students of Asia working across the university in disciplines ranging from language, literature, music, archeology, and philosophy to geography, politics, and public health.  Its Asia-related resources are among the largest and most comprehensive in the northeastern United States, and BU scholars, students, and alumni have made significant contributions to the study of Asia at both the national and international levels.

BUCSA Featured News

  • Democratic Careening: Accountability Dynamics Across Asia

    Dan Slater, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and the author of Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press,2012), will discuss his new project, tentatively titled Advancing Accountability: Democratic Dynamics in the Post-Colonial World. Slater proposes the term “careening” as a way of capturing the unsettledness that character-izes so many democracies that are clearly struggling but are not collapsing.

  • George Washington in China: The Image of a New Political Leader

    Rudolf Wagner will discuss the Chinese appropriation of George Washington to frame the image of a public leader in a post-Imperial China. Early Chinese biographies of George Washington were indirectly discussing the features a new kind of Chinese public leader might have to embody if he was to lead China out of its demise. Here was the promise of a colony of almighty England that had won its independence under Washington's leadership, and had set up institutions that now made it into a quickly rising power that was respected by all. Candidates for the role of China's... [ More ]

  • Awash in Debt: Chinese State Liabilities and Monetary and Welfare Implications

    In recent years, Boston University's Center for the Study of Asia has hosted a number of conversations with renowned political economists. Joining them, on Tuesday, December 6, was Victor Shih, Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University and author of Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation, the first book to inquire about the linkages between elite politics and banking policies in China. Shih is a frequent adviser to the financial community on the banking industry in China. In his talk at BU, Shih focussed on Chinese state liabilities, a weak spot in China's "miracle economy"... [ More ]

  • Betting on Biotech: Innovation and the Limits of Asia’s Developmental State

    On Friday, December 2, Joe Wong, Associate Professor of Political Sciences at the University of Toronto – where he holds a Canada Research Chair in Democratization, Health, and Development – and author of Healthy Democracies: Welfare Politics in Taiwan and South Korea, was at Boston University talking about issues animating his latest book, Betting on Biotech: Innovation Beyond the Development State. Over forty people attended the afternoon lecture, which was organized by Boston University’s Center for the Study of Asia with support from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Boston. On one level, Wong's new book is about the... [ More ]