The formation of a Boston University Asian studies department is necessary to satisfy students studying the area’s history and culture, according to professors and students who met last night to discuss the progress of an initiative to coordinate Asian-related disciplines on campus.
More than 40 professors, graduate students and undergraduates met in the School of Theology to form a foundation for the Asian Studies Initiative at BU and discuss the creation of an Asian studies department.
The new student initiative has not received official approval as a student group from the Student Activities Office, but it already has an executive student committee and a faculty adviser. The goal of the meeting was to provide a foundation for the group’s development throughout the upcoming year.
“It’s not really a club,” said faculty adviser Eugenio Menegon, a BU Chinese history professor, before the event. “Its motives are not so much social . . . but more to make undergraduates and graduate students on campus more aware of the richness [in Asian studies] that there is on campus.”
Menegon said he began to develop ideas for the initiative last year with other BU students when he realized there was an important “missing piece in the picture” for students interested in Asian studies.
“In the last three years, with faculty, we started organizing ourselves,” he said. “Before, there were single individual faculty people, and there was a program in Asian studies, but not really a lot of coordination going on.”
There is no formal BU Asian studies department, Menegon said in an Oct. 30 Daily Free Press article. BU offers related degrees, including an East Asian Studies major, a Japanese language and literature major and a Chinese minor.
Menegon said after reading that article, he realized there was a lack of connection in BU’s Asian community.
“BU is actually very rich in Asia-related resources . . . we’re trying to get things better coordinated, make people aware of all the resources that are here,” said Robert Murowchick, director of the International Center for East Asian Archaeology and Cultural History , during the event.
College of Fine Arts assistant music professor David Herbert said, if approved, ASIABU would “encourage better interdepartmental cooperation.”
Students and faculty mingled and ate Asian appetizers before Menegon spoke about the group’s initiative and BU Asian programs development, including the creation of a possible master’s degree program.
He also discussed the possibility of incorporating a new international study abroad program to Keio University in Tokyo at some point next year.
ASIABU committee members Charmine Cheung and Ceren Ergenc presented short speeches at the event, discussing their hopes for a more coordinated Asian studies program.
Cheung said unlike other cultural groups on campus, ASIABU wants to be a “non-ethnic” group focused on bringing together the BU community with an academic interest in any aspect of Asian culture or history.
ASIABU members applied for official group status earlier in the month and expect to receive an answer in two or three weeks, Cheung said. She said although she is optimistic about the approval, there would be continued effort to establish a stronger BU Asian studies program regardless of whether or not the university approves the initiative.
“As long as there are people interested . . . we will be able to keep going at BU,” the College of Arts and Sciences senior said. “We don’t have to have school support to do something like this. We can do it ourselves.”