International Studies - East and Southeast Asia Concentration

Located at the crossroads of cultural and economic interactions, the East and Southeast Asia region is home to some of the earliest cradles of civilization. With a third of the world population residing in this region, East and Southeast Asia has a very heterogeneous ethnic, political and cultural composition. The physical geography of the region offers a mix of continental, archipelagic and island environments that not only result in rich fishing grounds, beautiful harbors and vast reserves of geothermal and other natural energy, but has also served as the landscape for geophysical hazards such as tsunami, typhoon, earthquake and volcanic eruptions, not to mention maritime piracy and regionalist thinking among its inhabitants. Ranging from religious practices such as Catholicism (Philippines), Shintoism (Japan), Buddhism (Laos/Cambodia), or Confucianism (China), to forms of governance such as absolute monarchy (Brunei), totalitarianism (North Korea), single-party socialism (Vietnam, Laos) and constitution-based democracy (Singapore, South Korea). East and Southeast Asia's diverse forms of geographic, political and cultural features make for a fascinating study from the local, national and regional scales.