When visiting Prof. Peter Shen begins his Chinese literature class Tuesday afternoon, it will mark the end of a more than five-year process to bring Northwestern to the level of its peers in studying Asian humanities.
Shen’s class will be the first in NU’s new department of Asian languages and cultures. The department, housed within the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, will fuse areas of study previously contained in the Asian Studies Program and the Program of African and Asian Languages. Language courses in Chinese, Hindi, Japanese and Korean will move to the new department, as will other literature and cultural studies classes focusing on Asia.
Chinese literature Prof. Paola Zamperini will chair the department through its nascent phase and for the next three years. Zamperini said she views the new department as an “evolution” rather than a simple split from NU’s earlier offerings in similar academic areas.
Zamperini credited Weinberg Dean Sarah Mangelsdorf with taking a significant interest in starting the department. Mangelsdorf arrived in 2008, Zamperini said, and noticed that NU was lagging behind its peer institutions. The University of Chicago has an East Asian Languages and Civilizations department, and Georgetown University has its own department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.
“She thought that this would be one of the priorities of her tenure here to make sure, first of all, that Northwestern students could choose to major in the field of the humanities while focusing strongly on a language,” Zamperini said of Mangelsdorf, “but also that we could have, on the campus, faculty like myself or like (Hindi literature Prof.) Laura Brueck who can represent scholarship in the area of literature and film studies and gender studies.”
Zamperini, who left Amherst College this summer, said the opportunity to head the new department without the constraints of a smaller school was too much to pass up.
“What really drew me to Northwestern was, first, the challenge of being able to be part of a very exciting new enterprise,” she said. “When I saw the opportunity of moving to a larger institution and the opportunity to really be involved in making a difference, in my disciplinary areas but also in the general field of Asian studies, at the academic level in a prestigious institution like Northwestern, I just couldn’t turn it down.”
Zamperini added that when she visited for her interview, she was impressed by the enthusiasm demonstrated by faculty, staff and students.
Weinberg sophomore Ben Bloch said he looks forward to the new offerings.
“When I first came to Northwestern, I asked around and there were people in other departments who told me they were planning this, and by my sophomore or junior year we should have a new department that would give me access to … new classes, new professors, possibly a new study abroad option, so I’m actually really excited this went through,” Bloch said.
Bloch, who took a freshman seminar in Japanese literature and a class in the language, highlighted more analysis of Japanese linguistically as an area where he hopes to see expanded course offerings from DALC.
The department will begin with eight-course minors in Chinese language and culture and Japanese language and culture, and Zamperini said a major is in the works. She said Fall 2014 is an “optimistic” timetable for unveiling the major and that the department plans to hire at least four new faculty in the next four years as it attempts to bolster its course offerings.
Although the Asian Studies program and the new department will have some overlap, Zamperini and history Prof. Peter Carroll compared the relationship between Asian Studies and DALC to that of American Studies and NU’s English department.
“Both the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures and the Asian Studies Program provide opportunities for students to make learning and using an Asian language a key component of their education,” the professors wrote in an email to department staff. “Knowledge of an Asian language offers entry into rich and complex cultures that are both fascinating and thought provoking.”
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