So for my research paper in 11th grade, I am doing US’s foreign policy which for my examples I wrote about the policy of US to India, Arab-Israeli conflict and counterterrorism. I find these topics very interesting, but I am very nationalist and I wanted to do something to change my country -India. So I was going to major in Asian studies with a South Asia concentration. I think international relations is very cool, but I feel like I’ll be forced to learn about countries which might bore me. I don’t want to major in intl. relations and then regret it. Is there a way to major in intnl relations but focus on the South Asian relations part of it? Please advise me!!
I think the difference is not that you’re going to have to study a lot of boring countries, because there’s enough diversity in Asia that what area you study could be the same either way. The difference is that you will be forced to take political theory with IR. Asian Studies will give you more flexibility in which discipline you specialize in–schools with strong South Asian studies are going to have specialty areas in sociology, history, language, art etc. in addition to politics and economics. Asian studies is a perfect major for someone interested in that area but not exactly sure how they’d like to approach it.
But it really depends on the school and how the programs are are structured. For reference, Wisconsin has a pretty fabulous South Asian program http://southasia.wisc.edu/undergrad/