To promote research and publications at the Asia Institute, Comparative and Interdisciplinary Research on Asia was established in 2000 under the directorship of Shu-mei Shih, associate professor with joint appointments in East Asian Languages and Cultures, Comparative Literature, and Asian American Studies. The program will collaborate in part with the Asia Institute's Chinese, Japanese, Korean, East Asian, and Southeast Asian studies centers toward promoting comparative, interdisciplinary, and theoretical work on Asia, and is committed to the following main research directions:

• comparative--covering multiple geographical locations in Asia and examining their societies and cultures from comparative perspectives;
• interdisciplinary--involving scholars from all disciplines and using a wide range of methodologies;
• theoretical and critical--interrogating existing theoretical paradigms for Asian and comparative studies and exploring alternative paradigms.

Each year the program sponsors two research projects, selected from proposals submitted by interested faculty and graduate students to a faculty advisory committee. Among the potential research topics are comparative colonialism in Asia, inter-Asian cultural studies, Asia under globalization, minor and diasporic cultures in Asia, digital and other media studies, transnational feminism, etc.

Launching the program in the 2000-01 academic year was a series of lectures by prominent scholars in Asia and the US under the broad topic of "Asia and the West." This lecture series began the critical work of rethinking what "Asia" means in the context of Western discursive hegemony, as well as how "Asia" is viewed in different contexts and from different perspectives. Two conferences on "minor" Asian societies, Taiwan and Hong Kong, were held, and their thematic emphasis was on globalization and postcoloniality. Visiting lecturers included Rey Chow, Kojin Karatani, Lydia Liu, and Indrani Chatterjee.

For the 2001-2002 academic year, "Unbounding Asia" was the theme of the lecture series. This series aimed to deconstruct the boundedness of nation, geography, culture, language, etc. in the constitution of "areas" within Asia. A conference entitled "Sensibilities of Transformation: The Linguistic Turn in Contemporary Japanese Literay Criticism" brought scholars working on the intersections of Japanese, Chinese and Korean literatures. Visiting lecturers included Arif Dirlik, Bruce Cummings, Esha De, David Palumbo-Liu, and Stephanie Donald.

2002-2003 academic year focuses on "Minor Voices in Asia," to further destablilize majoritarian perspectives and voices in examining Asia. Visiting lecturers include Gail Hershatter, Akhil Gupta and Nicole Constable, and a conference on comparative colonialism in East Asia entitled "Reconfiguring Colonialism" is being planned for February 2003.