Approaching Asia and the Pacific: Concepts, Tools, and Methods

This course immerses you in a flexible set of qualitative and quantitative approaches that you can use to conduct interdisciplinary and self-reflective research in Asian and Pacific studies. This course will offer an introduction to culturally diverse approaches to knowledge, including how people from Asia and the Pacific, especially from indigenous communities, have interpreted the world; humanistic and social science methods, such as participant-observation, discourse analysis, and archival research; and data sciences for the humanities, including statistical techniques, so that students without technical backgrounds can gain basic literacies in such practices as working with large data sets, understanding digital data, or creating maps. This course focuses on scholarly values of justifying methods and approaches, critically evaluating data, constructing rigorous arguments, and writing with clarity and purpose.