Greetings from the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies (CAPS) at the University of Iowa! 

Founded in 1986, CAPS was launched as a university-wide interfaculty initiative to provide a resource on campus for faculty, students, and visitors interested in or engaged with the study of East Asia and Southeast Asia. Generous endowment gifts from E&M Charities and the Stanley family of Muscatine provided vital support for its establishment. Today, CAPS is the University of Iowa’s academic gateway to the Asia Pacific. It initiates and promotes innovative research projects and teaching programs on the region, coordinates Asia-related activities at the university, and promotes dialogues about the region through public programs which engage partners in Asia as well as institutions from all over the world.

Major gifts from the Stanley Foundation, the Korea Foundation (Seoul), the Hua Hsia Foundation (Taipei), the Japan Foundation (Tokyo), the Freeman Foundation (Vermont), and the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia have accelerated CAPS’ growth over the last four decades. Support from these gifts has generated three endowed professorships in Asian, Korean, and Chinese studies, enabled the hiring of other faculty and staff, and supported many lectures, workshops, courses, faculty and student travel, and outreach programs.

As the world is increasingly connected both economically and culturally, an understanding of the Asia Pacific has become essential to the work that is done in any number of disciplines across academia. CAPS aims to foster world-class research and serve as a hub for creative connections between the Asia-Pacific region and the University of Iowa, the state of Iowa, and the Greater Midwest.

Get involved! Contact our associate director, Dongwang Liu, at dongwang-liu@uiowa.edu to be put on the CAPS email list to receive updates on our programs and event announcements. We look forward to seeing you at our events.