In the second year, a region other than Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia may be studied but only with the permission of the CA-OS Examination Board. Students then follow optional courses outside the CA-OS course and may learn, for example, about Latin America, Europe, East Asia, Middle East ... Students themselves therefore must fill in the Area Studies choice of 10 ECTS with one or more elective courses from the range available in Leiden University or other Dutch universities.
On the other four CA-OS courses in the Netherlands students can find various regional anthropological modules, but may also visit the Leiden Faculty of Humanities which offers entire study programmes in various Area Studies. However, students should be aware that many such programmes do not offer all their subjects as optional subjects for external students. Available courses may be found in the e-guide under Optional courses and students may register via Usis according to the information in the course descriptions. Students may follow courses at another Dutch university only if they register in time as Guest Students (see the websites of the relevant universities) and if the desired courses are open to elective students.
Students are advised to pre-submit their choice of courses to the Examination Board as replacements for CA-OS regional modules. Such requests may be sent via e-mail to the Examination Board (see the page Examination Board) ) or by submitting petitions in Usis (see the tabs for the 'Electives' where in this case the instruction for Situation 6 applies).
When choosing regional elective courses, Students should take into account the following:
the subject must cover a number of aspects of contemporary society in a region: economy, culture, history, political design, art ... students may therefore follow multiple courses on different themes within the same region.
a region is in principle broader than a nation state, but in some cases might also cover large nation states (think of Russia, China, the US ...)
language courses are not seen as regional modules, but may be followed in the third year as interpretations of the free elective space
the regional elective courses must in principle have a level of 200, but a maximum of 5 ECTS at level 100 may be recognized. Higher levels are clearly satisfactory.