In their research and teaching, the department faculty concentrate in three regional areas--China, Japan, and Korea--and three basic intellectual disciplines--literature, linguistics, and language pedagogy. Crossing over the boundaries of these areas of study and disciplines, however, are clusters of intellectual commonality among the faculty that give DEALL a distinct identity as an East Asian Languages and Literatures department. These areas are: Early Text, Folklore and Popular Culture, Language Pedagogy, Linguistics, Modern Culture Studies, Performance, Poetry, Print Culture and Media Studies.