<p>interdisciplinary PhD programs are bad news. and in general, new PhD programs are bad news. you have no idea how successful they’ll be at placing students into professorships or other positions because you are the guinea pig.</p>
<p>that said… harvard and princeton have extremely strong east asian studies masters programs, and if you don’t know what you want to focus on yet (history, geography, anthropology, politics), you can aim for one of those two programs and then earn a PhD in a single discipline afterward. those two schools will set you up for admission to any PhD program anywhere.</p>
<p>also, look at department websites for east asian studies and look at where those professors got their degrees. chances are the departments are full of economists, historians, geographers, political scientists, and literary theorists. very few, if any, will have received their degrees in “____ studies.” it is extremely difficult to get hired with an interdisciplinary degree.</p>
<p>if you’re unsure of your exact focus, my suggestion (a biased one) would be to look into history programs. anthropologists and historians can find a lot of common ground, and historians and economists or political scientists can find a lot of common ground, but anthropologists and political scientists tend to really butt heads. if you like observation and human experience and interacting with the people you study, lean towards anthro/history. if you like models, systems, categories, and compartments, lean towards poli sci or economic history.</p>
<p>i leave out economics because you need a lot of math and a lot of econ classes to get into an economics PhD program, and an international relations degree usually doesn’t have enough econ exposure to qualify you.</p>