A Transnational Approach to 'ReOrient' Asian Studies to Global Studies

This article is written in line with the debate on internationalisation in higher education, especially taking into consideration the connections between the rise of East Asia and the need to internationalise the universities in the West. The author focuses specifically on his professional experience as a member of the Expanding East Asian Studies programme at Columbia University (from now on ExEAS) in 2003-2004. He briefly illustrates his contribution to ExEAS and focuses on the ways this specific endeavour forced him to rethink critically his previous experience as researcher and instructor of East Asia-related disciplines. Through this article, he aims to problematise some of the established categories with which East Asian studies is often approached, and he points out the need to reconsider the shifting points of dialogue, rethinking the reductionist ways in which China and Japan are often constructed within the Western academy. (Contains 17 notes.)