Learn to read manga in the original language
TU Dresden’s Center for East Asian Studies offers language classes in Chinese and Japanese as well as supplementary qualifications in East Asian Studies
Beate Diederichs
At TU Dresden’s Center for East Asian Studies, students can learn Chinese or Japanese, complete a supplementary qualification in East-Asian Studies or take individual modules from the course. “At the moment, we are developing connections between three Chinese Centers at other German universities and pooling our resources,” says the Director, Dr. Birgit Häse.
Geishas, samurai, the cherry blossom festival, technological trailblazer…all of these are commonly associated with Japan. As well as manga, of course. Japanese comic books, have a large fan base here in Germany. “It’s true that around two-thirds of the participants in our Japanese courses say that they want to learn the language because they are interested in manga and anime and want to read these in the original language,” reports Birgit Häse.
Since the Center for East Asian Studies was founded in 1998, students at TUD have been able to learn Japanese here at levels A1 and A2 of the European Common Framework for Language Learning. As of recently, Chinese is available up to level B1. To understand manga or attend a lecture in China or Japan, this level is nowhere near enough, but it is a start. For many students, it offers an introduction to the world of the Far East. Many of the roughly 175 Chinese and 375 Japanese-learners currently studying each semester then register for a module of the East Asian Studies program, or opt to complete the entire qualification. “They complete it as a supplement to their main subjects. It entails a significant investment of time and shows that they really want to expand their horizons, which we are naturally delighted to see,” says the Director of the Center. Between 50 and 80 students are currently registered for the East Asian Studies program.
Birgit Häse is Director of the Center for East Asian Studies at TU Dresden. She founded it in 1998, after studying Sinology, German Studies and Journalism, completing a doctorate on literature by women in China at the FU Berlin, and spending many years working in academia. “Founding the Center for East Asian Studies is part of TU Dresden’s internationalization strategy and is meant to encourage students to travel more to East Asia,” explains Birgit Häse. The Center belongs to the Faculty of Linguistics, Literature and Cultural Studies. The language teachers are native speakers whose work is administered by TUDIAS and under the conceptual supervision of Birgit Häse. The modules of the East Asian Studies program – for example on art history in Japan or the history of China between 1942 and 1989 – are taught by Sinologists or Japanologists working on a freelance basis. Teaching and research at the Center are dedicated to Japan and what Birgit Häse refers to as “Greater China”, meaning Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Singapore alongside the People’s Republic of China.
The Center for East Asian Studies does not train Sinologists and Japanologists, “Although our courses are open to all students at TUD and are free of charge. We are particularly oriented toward students in the STEM fields and economics,” emphasizes Birgit Häse. The Center would like to attract students from these subject areas with its courses and enable them to study or work in East Asia during or after their studies. “Every year, some of the students from our courses travel there. They benefit from the partnerships we have with universities in East Asia and, for example, don’t have to pay tuition fees,” notes Birgit Häse. Some of these students will also work internationally after graduation, as the Center knows from experience.
At the moment, the Center for East Asian Studies at TUD and three other Chinese Centers at German universities are in the process of founding a network to pool their resources. Taking the lead is the Center for Cultural Studies on Science and Technology in China at the TU Berlin, a university with which Birgit Häse has had wide-ranging academic contact. “We are planning, for example, to generate a joint pool of instructors so that we can consistently offer subjects,” she said. They would also like to open up the Summer School in Shanghai run by TU Berlin to other participants of the network. It would also be possible to organize central meet-ups and workshops for students from the four universities when they are in China. “A more distant goal of the network is to provide intercultural support for double degrees at Chinese and German universities,” Birgit Häse announces. But the way to that goal would mean bringing many aspects of the general framework and academic culture of the two countries closer to one another.
For more information, please visit: www.tu-dresden.de/gsw/slk/lsk/oaz
This article was published in the Dresdner Universitätsjournal 01/2019 on January 15, 2019. You can download the whole newspaper as a PDF file for free here. Please contact doreen.liesch@tu-dresden.de to order the Universitätsjournal as a printed newpaper or as a PDF file. For more information, please visit: universitaetsjournal.de.