About

The Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures aims to give students critical skills in language and culture to participate effectively in today’s globalized society. Learning about this region of the world is critical not only because East Asia plays an important role on the current global stage but also because by doing so, you will expand your horizons, learn to see the world through a different, more informed lens. It will provide a seed for transformative personal growth. Through our comprehensive offering of courses spanning over a wide range of subjects, such as the languages, literature of all historical periods, theater, film, and other cultural manifestations through the ages, you will learn the cultural traditions that inform East Asia today.

EALL offers majors in Chinese and Japanese, and minors in all the three East Asian languages if you desire an East Asian perspective in your academic credential. Our language instruction, though demanding, assures that it is of the highest quality and produces excellent students.

Our alumni have entered into industry and academia—secondary education, politics, business, government, law, computer science, military service, academia, university administration, software engineering, translation, to name a few.

Mission/Program Description

Our mission is to educate our students to gain fluency, competence, and critical knowledge of the languages and cultures of East Asia. Our faculty produces new knowledge about this region of Asia through talks and publications on cultural artifacts of literature, historical memory, visual studies, translation, and SLA.

Department History

A program in Chinese studies began in the early 1960s and a fulll-fledged department came into existence in 1965. It served only a small number of Chinese and Japanese students then. The Korean language program was moved from the Linguistics Department in the early 2000s. Many renowned scholar-teachers called this Department home, among them Yi-T’ung Wang, J. Thomas Rimer, and Keiko McDonald. Now the Department houses one of the largest Chinese, Japanese, and Korean programs in the northeast.

World Class Facilities

The University of Pittsburgh is one of the leading centers of study relating to East Asia. Our Asian Studies Center promotes, coordinates, and supports a variety of activities, including conferences, workshops, cultural events, research, and teaching on campus and in the region.

The Hillman Library is the home of one of the largest East Asian libraries in the United States, with a total collection of over 430,000 Chinese, Japanese, and Korean books and periodicals. In addition, Hillman Library Media Center has a large collection of East Asian films, which include rare North Korean films, videos, and DVDs, numbering over 5,600 titles.