The Department of South Asia Studies has undertaken a comprehensive and coordinated revision of its curriculum at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The motivation for this re-engagement is twofold.
We seek not only to respond to, but to lead changes in international research and in the academy, which recognize and critically interrogate the past models of Oriental Studies and Area Studies. Oriental Studies was a disciplinary grid born of colonialism's encounter with the languages and cultures of Asia and the Middle East. In this model, the movement was from language to discipline, with Oriental literature, comparative linguistics, and comparative religions all coming out of the encounter with perceived radical difference. Area studies was a disciplinary grid born of American imperialism's encounter with emerging post-colonial nations and attempt at accessing and managing them in essentialized regional identities. In this model, the movement was from disciplines such as political science and anthropology to particular language worlds, with language playing an instrumental role in the gathering of information and the construction of models of understanding. We seek to create a new model of Languages and Disciplines, in which languages and disciplines are in dynamic interplay, by creating a curriculum in which the relation of disciplinary formation and language world is not taken for granted, but interrogated as a legitimate subject of inquiry. Neither linguistic world nor discipline should have absolute priority, lest we reproduce the idea of immersion in the 'authentic' or the top-down approach of area studies. Rather, models and terms of inquiry from prior historical moments in the history of the field should be presented within a curriculum that also equips the student with the intellectual, linguistic, and cultural-historical means to create new and evolving models of understanding. Our new model must be more alert to our particular historical milieu than prior models were. We must make our model of Languages and Disciplines interrogate and challenge globalization, which seems to ignore, or even to obliterate, specificities of culture and language.
We seek to implement the mandate the Deans of the School of Arts and Sciences have given us by newly constituting us as a Department of South Asian languages and cultures. This mandate challenges us to redefine the roles of the former Indo-Iranian Division of the dissolved Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and the former Department of South Asia Regional Studies. Our new curriculum will contribute powerfully to the enhanced commitment of the School of Arts and Sciences to cross-cultural analysis and of the University at large to a multiple engagement with the world. At the undergraduate level, the new curriculum will introduce students to a broad spectrum of courses on the disciplines, languages, and cultures relevant to the study of South Asia. At the graduate level, we aim to foster future scholars and practitioners of South Asia Studies who are alert to the interplay of languages and disciplines at our current and at future historical moments.
The undergraduate program in South Asia Studies at Penn continues to be one of the strongest in the nation, offering foundational, intermediate and advanced-level courses in a wide range of disciplinary topics and languages.
We seek to attract and to create in our graduate program a community of faculty and students with the intellectual tools and agility to meet the demands of today's and tomorrow's leadership and employment circumstances. Our M.A. and Ph.D. programs will be articulated in ways that do not assume or mandate a progression from the former to the latter, yet make it possible. The graduate program of the former Department of South Asia Regional Studies was virtually confined to an M.A. program, which sacrificed depth to breadth, while the graduate program of the former Indo-Iranian division of the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies was exclusively a Ph.D. program, which sacrificed breadth to depth. Our curriculum will offer students the opportunity to be trained in clusters of primary and allied disciplines and languages in order to be prepared for evolving intellectual questions and challenges in the field.
Our objective is a flexible and meaningful interplay that is responsive to their particular interests and career plans.
We seek to develop a graduate curriculum that ensures sustained engagement with our languages and disciplines matrix. Our requirements and examination procedures must be constructed so as to engage students both in the history and current practice of disciplines, and to achieve language competencies adequate to sustain their research and career goals. Disciplinary and linguistic competencies must be maintained at a level that would suffer prompt attrition if left uncultivated. Our requirements must also prepare students for the multi-lingual and multi-cultural reality of South Asia and its intersection with their disciplinary focus.
We further plan to play a leading role in, and take advantage of, a Post-Baccalaureate Program in Less Commonly Taught Languages just introduced at the initiative of Associate Dean for Graduate Studies Jack Nagel with the endorsement of National Resource Center Directors. Priorities in superior language proficiency set by the U.S. Department of Education reinforce the academic necessity for students to acquire and maintain language skills that are adequate for the fulfillment of their research and professional goals. Such a target is difficult to achieve even for excellent candidates for admission in our graduate program who come from institutions at which South Asian languages are not offered. A threshold-crossing program will be a national first, and will afford students primary language and cultural preparation that will make them stronger participants in our own graduate program and at other institutions.
The M.A. program and the initial stages of the Ph.D. program are designed to engage students in a comprehensive survey of the history and methodologies deployed in the South Asian field and in a broad yet flexible spectrum of disciplines, while building their language competency. The M.A. examination and the Ph.D. qualifying examination are common to all candidates, yet allow candidates flexibility in answering questions that best pertain to their personal interests and career goals. In the years that follow the successful completion of the qualifying examination, doctoral students proceed to focus on a cluster of primary and allied disciplines, their history and methodologies, while enhancing and maintaining their language competency at a level at which it may meaningfully intersect with their disciplinary focus and fully support their research and professional goals. The Ph.D. preliminary examination is individual. Students are challenged to demonstrate an integrated knowledge of primary and allied disciplines and of language competency that is adequate to support their individual plans for doctoral research.
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