The Asian life at Boston University
Initiative plans to focus Asian studies disciplines at BU
Marty Meterko
Issue date: 2/8/07 Section: News
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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.