The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures offers an undergraduate major in East Asian Religion, Thought, and Culture. Knowledge of philosophical and religious traditions is important to understanding many aspects of East Asia's diverse cultures. This major seeks to train students in these traditions in a way that is grounded in a familiarity with the texts, languages, and cultures of East Asian societies, while also examining how these traditions have been (and might better be) brought into humanistic disciplines.
Students who major in the department have a variety of backgrounds and many students are double majors in a broad spectrum of other departments and programs, including anthropology, applied mathematics, architecture, art history, art practice, Asian studies, business, comparative literature, computer science, economics, English, linguistics, mass communications, molecular and cell biology, political economy, political science, psychology, rhetoric, and theater arts.