Since the 2000s, a growing number of scholars have begun to rethink Asian studies in conjunction with the internationalization of higher education. Their efforts have taken the form of journal articles, edited volumes, and professional initiatives to transform the existing “West-centric” epistemologies and methodologies of Asian studies as well as make the networks of Asian-studies scholars more trans-national/trans-regional. Our proposed workshop will expand on this emerging movement by linking it to the decolonization and deimperialization of universities as the organizational infrastructures of Asian studies.

Historically, leading universities in Asia were founded by the agents of empires to train technocrats for colonial administration, whereas other universities were created by local elites to modernize their nations to counter imperial domination. Many of these universities in Asia, even after national independence, continued to take universities in the “West” as their models by borrowing theories and methods, even knowledge of their own societies, from them. In fact, this epistemic isomorphism has recently intensified with the internationalization of higher education, especially with the emergence of world university rankings. In this sense, the historical and contemporary trajectories of universities are coterminous with the evolving dynamics of decolonization and deimperialization across world regions.

Importantly, given the reality of the internationalization of higher education today, universities in Asia cannot pursue the decolonization of Asian studies without universities in other parts of the world—most notably, universities in the United States, an “imperial center” of Asian studies—simultaneously pursuing the deimperialization of their own. How, then, can we build alliances across countries and regions to articulate a new mode of knowledge of Asia that will transcend imperialist and nationalist visions?

As the first step to answer the question, our proposed workshop will examine how the production of knowledge of Asia is shaped by ways in which universities are organized and networked within and across countries and regions. For example, how and why are connections of Asian-studies scholars and their universities geographically and linguistically uneven and unequal? Our aim here is to identify the limits of the existing trans-national/trans-regional connections of Asian studies as reflective of the contemporary dynamics of (de)colonization and (de)imperialization of knowledge production. Such identification of the existing limits will allow us to diagnose structural problems that have kept Asian-studies scholars and their universities from collectively redefining Asia as a dynamic and interconnected formation—this diagnosis will help articulate strategies for decolonizing and deimperializing universities as the organizational infrastructures of Asian studies.