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Chinese Collection Overview

While the International and Area Studies (IAS) department regularly collects scholarly works in English to support Chinese Studies, it only recently established the Chinese language collection as a part of the East Asia Collection.

Duke’s Chinese collection focuses on the following:

  • contemporary economics: statistical yearbooks, reports, etc.
  • politics and society
  • popular culture: films, TV dramas, fashion magazines, etc.
  • Buddhist and avant-garde art history

In addition, the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library houses several collections on China:

Collection Collaboration

Duke has a long-standing cooperative collection development agreement with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), which held collection responsibilities for Chinese materials for many years. This agreement was modified in 1996 in response to the dramatic growth in East Asian studies programs on both campuses. Duke is concentrating on materials that UNC does not collect extensively, especially popular culture and the contemporary social sciences. We have built a unique collection of Chinese film and TV dramas, core history and literature titles, popular magazines and statistical yearbooks.