August 2007

Languages Divide and Conquer!
Two new departments replace MFLL this fall

Boston University’s language programs were given a new face, and an injection of new energy, last spring when the Board of Trustees approved the creation of two new departments, Romance Studies (RS) and Modern Languages and Comparative Literature (MLCL), to replace the Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures (MFLL). The change takes effect this fall.

The Department of Romance Studies, comprising programs in French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, as well as in linguistics, will be chaired by Christopher Maurer, a professor of Spanish and the former MFLL chair. The Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature will devote itself to programs in German, Russian Near Eastern (Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish), and East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) language and literatures, as well as a new program in comparative literature, on which the department will collaborate closely with RS, English, and Classical Studies. It will be chaired by William Waters, an associate professor of German.

The change, which creates the first new departments at CAS/GRS since the establishment of the Department of International Relations in the early 1990s, brings the total number of academic departments at Arts and Sciences to twenty-five, including the graduate-only department of Cognitive and Neural Studies. At a time when other universities are reducing departments, the move bucks a trend, and it resonates meaningfully with BU’s overall commitment to preparing global citizens.

The new administrative structure represents a broadening of the reach of language programs at BU, and an acknowledgement that the former MFLL, with annual enrollments of about 9,000, had outgrown its viability as an omnibus language department. The change will allow for a heightened sense of intellectual purpose, open new avenues of teaching and research, and address academic concerns that have had to be sidelined due to the size and complexity of the former MFLL. It will also create a more favorable environment for languages of growing strategic importance (i.e., Arabic, Chinese, Japanese), and build more robust programs in comparative literature, film studies, and translation studies.

The outcome, Professors Maurer and Waters say, will be better representation and enhanced leadership for language and literature at BU, just at a time when language and culture studies are more important than ever.

Web sites for the new departments are currently under construction; during the transition, the MFLL web site will remain in use to serve students and faculty.