Chinese currently ranks as the most widely spoken of the world’s languages and is the vehicle for an extremely large body of literature, in the broadest sense, that began to develop over three thousand years ago. Chinese civilization reached high levels in the development of literature and the arts, government and economics, historical documentation, and philosophy and religion, as well as in technology and material culture. China is rapidly becoming a major economic and political power in the modern world. Consequently, China will play a crucial role in world events in the next twenty-five years, and the Chinese language will be an essential tool for communicating with and understanding this large country that occupies the geographic and cultural center of Eastern Asia.

Japanese is the language of more than one hundred million people who are heirs to an exceptionally rich tradition in literature and the arts. It is the language of one of the world’s greatest economic powers and of much important innovation in such fields as engineering, chemistry, linguistics, management, and marketing. It is the language of one of the most important trading partners of the United States, and of a literary tradition in which many of the most important works were written by women.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is the only public institution of higher education in New England to offer Bachelor of Arts degrees in Chinese Language and Literature, Chinese Language and Linguistics, Japanese Language and Literature, and Japanese Language and Linguistics, as well as minors in Chinese and in Japanese. These programs offer students a sound command of the language as well as a solid background in literature, linguistics, culture, and civilization. The minors in Chinese and Japanese offer a combination of skills which can greatly enrich one’s educational experiences and enlarge postgraduate possibilities. East Asian Languages & Cultures supports study abroad programs in Japan, the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan which are aimed at increasing students’ fluency in Chinese and Japanese and the understanding of those cultures.