Duke Student Government will vote tonight on a resolution calling for Arts and Sciences to hire more faculty specializing in Asian American studies.
After students argued last year in favor of establishing an AAS department and subsequent administrator interest in addressing those concerns, DSG will consider adding its support to the effort.
Senior Christina Hsu, Asian Students Association president, said she hopes that possible DSG approval will demonstrate continued student support.
"Students really are interested, but it's hard to keep that awareness up when there are no courses and no faculty members," said Hsu, a member of the task force overseeing the initiative. "This is a way to sustain student interest and support and a recognition that there is an... imperative for Asian American studies at Duke."
She added that the current absence of Asian Americanist scholars at Duke would make it difficult to create a strong program.
Last spring, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences William Chafe announced the approval of funding for course development grants--which professors will use to explore certain areas of Asian American studies in classes. Administrators also approved the task force that will oversee the AAS initiative and organize a symposium.
With Arts and Sciences currently experiencing a budget crunch, Anne Allison, chair of the cultural anthropology department and a member of the task force, said creating an undergraduate major and minor--as students had previously hoped--would be unrealistic.
"The program may not be the end result, but everyone's committed to doing something," Allison said. "We have to work within the parameters of what we have." Rather, Allison said, AAS might be placed under an American studies program and grouped with areas like Native American studies.
"A department requires tenured faculty, a real resource base," said Hsu, who submitted the proposal last spring for a new department. "To get a department is possible but not in the immediate future. Even now, being on the task force, just looking into possibilities for hiring faculty is difficult due to the budget crunch."
Lyndsay Beal, DSG vice president for academic affairs--whose committee will introduce the resolution--said she expects it to pass easily.
"We don't want to put in numbers because of the budget crunch now, we just want administrators to realize there is support for it," Beal said, adding that making the resolution too specific may alienate administrators.
Currently, administrators, students and faculty members are collaborating on the new task force, which plans "to explore not just the field of Asian American Studies but also what it might add to culture and life at Duke specifically," said Priscilla Wald, associate professor of English and a task force member.
"[Asian American studies] is really providing a model for thinking about transitional and global analyses," Wald said, especially noting the possibilities in literary studies. "Asian Americanist work is bringing together post-colonial theory and ethnic studies and it's... exploring what new insights we can gain from bringing these theories together."
In the meantime, Wald said the group hopes to bring prominent Asian Americanist scholars to advise the task force on how to build a strong program through a series of symposiums. Last spring, the administration approved a $10,000 grant to support the endeavor, which will bring one presentation on the subject to campus this Friday and additional meetings next semester.
Faculty can now also request course development grants to add elements of Asian American studies into their classes. Leo Ching, associate professor of Asian and African languages and literature and the first to take advantage of the available grant funds, will teach a class next semester, Hsu said.
"His class is at full enrollment, and with drop-add period not having started, that shows there is sustained student interest and a need for Asian American studies," Hsu said.
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