Athens, Ga. – Late last week, officials at the U.S. State Department announced plans to address the country’s shortage of foreign language speakers with a new program, the National Security Language Initiative. Beginning fall semester 2006, students at the University of Georgia with an interest in foreign languages and cultures will have a new option when choosing a major: the bachelor of arts in Chinese language and literature.
The new major, recently approved by the University System of Georgia Board of Regents (BOR), will be administered by UGA’s department of comparative literature.
In appealing to the BOR, the university pointed out that while China’s global economic and political influence is great, Chinese language is not taught commonly in the state’s public postsecondary institutions. Demand for a major in Chinese language and literature at UGA has grown in recent years, with approximately 157 students enrolled in related courses as of last fall (the comparative literature department currently offers a minor in Chinese language and literature).
The goal of the new major – the first such major at a public institution in Georgia – will be to foster UGA students’ understanding of Chinese society and culture through a 120-semester-hour program. The program will include four upper-level Chinese language and literature courses, four Asian literature and cinema courses, and three Asian culture courses along with roughly 21 semester hours of electives.
In addition to the new major, the program offers, in cooperation with UGA’s Office of International Education, many opportunities for UGA students to study Chinese abroad at several locations for one and two semesters. Most students who complete a whole year abroad studying Chinese return to UGA speaking the language fairly fluently. A one-year study abroad is comparable in cost with a regular academic year’s expense at UGA. For more information on the Chinese major or on studying Chinese, Japanese or Korean abroad, contact Dezso Benedek, director of Asian language programs, at cmsdezso@uga.edu.
A unit of UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, the department of comparative literature is global, multicultural and interdisciplinary in orientation with a wide range of undergraduate and graduate offerings in the world’s literatures, languages and cultures. The department has a full-time faculty of 19 and stands out among comparative literature departments for its commitment to global study and its integration of language and literature offerings. The department currently teaches three African languages – Swahili, Manding and Yoruba – and courses in the literature, culture and cinema of Africa. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Hindi language courses are supplemented by courses in the literature, culture and cinema of Asia. The department also offers courses in European literature from the Middle Ages to the present, and the literatures of East and Central Europe. For more information, visit www.uga.edu/~cml/.
The Franklin College serves more than 16,000 undergraduate and graduate students each year through the teaching and research of more than 630 faculty members as well as through the resources of 30 academic departments and more than 20 centers and programs. For more information, visit http://www.franklin.uga.edu/ and http://www.drama.uga.edu/.
##
