East Asian Studies at GW

The East Asian Studies (EAS) program at the George Washington University is the largest and most influential of its kind in Washington DC, with a national and international reputation for excellence. GW is a comprehensive research university, training over 11,000 undergraduate and 14,500 graduate students in its schools of Arts and Sciences, International Affairs, Business, Education, Media and Public Affairs, Engineering, Law, Medicine, Public Health, and Nursing. Located near the White House, the State Department, and the World Bank, GW has consistently attracted faculty and students interested in international affairs and area studies, particularly to its Elliott School of International Affairs (ESIA). With institutional roots at GW dating from 1898, the Elliott School is the largest school of international affairs in the nation, with over 2200 undergraduate and over 800 graduate students.

While EAS expertise is found throughout the University, the Sigur Center for Asian Studies (SCAS) and the Institute for Korean Studies (IKS), housed in SCAS, serve as institutional centers of gravity. Together, they have over 75 affiliated EAS full and part-time faculty and are the academic home of ESIA’s undergraduate and graduate programs in Asian Studies. The Sigur Center has actively pursued its mission to “increase the quality and broaden the scope of scholarly research and publication on Asia, promote US-Asian scholarly interaction, and educate a new generation of students, scholars, analysts, and policymakers” since its founding in 1991. Likewise, established in 2016, IKS has worked to expand “the depth and breadth of Korean Studies at GW by focusing on a humanities approach.” SCAS and IKS will jointly be the perfect foundation for an East Asia National Resource Center (EAS-NRC), providing a superb base from which to broaden priority language and area studies instruction to maintain our national security and economic competitiveness.

The Global Resources Center (GRC) is a specialized library service point tailored to the needs of George Washington University’s globally-focused academic programs.

The Language Center supports language teaching, learning, and research at GW. The Language Center provides resources and services to ensure the highest caliber language teaching for GW students, faculty, departments, and programs.