Over the last decade, Laura Brueck has been in perpetual motion.
Since arriving at Northwestern University’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences in 2013 as an associate professor of South Asian literature and culture, Brueck has played an instrumental role in the development and evolution of the department of Asian Languages and Cultures (ALC) throughout its entire decade-long existence.
“It’s been a breathless 10 years of hiring, recruiting, and developing courses, of constantly building and thinking about the next thing,” says Brueck, who has served as ALC department chair since 2016.
On May 8, however, Brueck took a much-deserved moment of pause and reflection at ALC’s 10-year anniversary event inside Scott Hall’s Guild Lounge. Alongside colleagues, students, and campus partners, Brueck celebrated the department’s 10-year run and its steady climb into a recognized force in Asian humanities education, scholarship, and research.
“It was a great opportunity to pause and celebrate all that we have accomplished while also looking ahead to the opportunities that remain,” Brueck says. “We also wanted to make sure to thank a host of other people who have supported us along the way.”
The origins of a department
ALC’s story begins with the foresight of former Weinberg College Dean Sarah Mangelsdorf. Recognizing Northwestern was falling short of its potential in the study of Asian languages, history, religion, and culture, Mangelsdorf assembled a planning group to envision what a potential department of Asian languages and cultures might look like.
At a time when other colleges and universities across the U.S. were minimizing the liberal arts and humanities, Mangelsdorf’s eventual decision to establish ALC was a particularly bold and enterprising one.
Spurred by a $750,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation, Northwestern launched the department in 2013 and hired its first tenure-line faculty – Brueck and Paola Zamperini, a noted scholar of Chinese literature and culture.
Zamperini, the ALC’s founding chair, and Brueck then got to work. They led faculty searches and developed curriculums for undergraduate and graduate students. While courses from the existing Program of African and Asian Languages and the Asian and Middle East Studies Program transferred into other departments, many others found a home at ALC.
Zamperini and Brueck focused on creating a department rooted in Asian humanities, crafting a contemporary model of Asian Studies distinct in U.S. higher education. They thought carefully and strategically about incorporating various Asian languages, arts, and media into a diverse humanistic study and cultivating a truly interdisciplinary study of Asian humanities.
“We wanted to build a department, a community of faculty, and a curriculum that encouraged study of language and place as well as Asia’s interactions with the broader world,” Brueck says.
A spirited and focused evolution
Over the last decade, ALC has emerged a leader in the study of comparative Asian culture, sharpening and broadening its curriculums, adding to its constellation of scholars, and enlivening partnerships with complementary Weinberg College departments and programs.
From Brueck and Zamperini being ALC’s lone tenure-line faculty in 2013, the department now hosts eight such faculty members studying and teaching courses covering the diversity and richness of Asian literatures and media cultures.
In particular, ALC has increased its language faculty significantly while also adding rigor and depth to its curriculum and course offerings. The two-year Hindi curriculum, for instance, has sprouted into a four-year Hindi-Urdu curriculum, while the department now teaches up to five years of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
“We shifted the curriculum as we’ve learned what students wanted and needed,” Brueck says.
Meanwhile, a grant from the Korea Foundation recently enabled the department to hire two faculty – Dahye Kim and Jeong Eun Annabel We – who specialize in modern Korean literature and cultural studies. The presence of Kim and We has elevated ALC’s national profile in Korean studies and positioned the department to better address swelling student interest in Korean culture.
Brueck says ALC’s growth has been fueled by collaboration with other Weinberg College departments, such as the Department of History and the Department of Religious Studies, as well as programs like Comparative Literary Studies, which has been an increasing source of many of ALC’s PhD students. Institutes like the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs and the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities as well as campus offices like Foundation Relations have also contributed to ALC’s spirited evolution.
“We don’t exist in isolation, and we’re strong as a department because of our many partnerships at Northwestern,” says Brueck, who notes an uprising in Asian-focused scholarship and research across Weinberg College.
A bright future
With ALC hitting double digits, Brueck looks to keep the momentum going.
In the coming academic year, the department will introduce a speaker series examining the direction of Asian humanities over the coming decade. Brueck calls the series an opportunity to establish Northwestern as a nexus of dialogue about the future of Asian humanities.
“We, of course, want to strengthen our department, but we also want to contribute to the broader world of Asian Studies and develop ourselves as an innovative leader in the interdisciplinary and integrated study of Asian humanities and languages in the 21st century,” Brueck says.
In addition, ALC is looking to expand its language offerings, including supporting a nascent Tibetan language and literature curriculum and exploring potential courses in Southeast Asian languages. Department leaders also aim to further enhance a robust undergraduate curriculum in Asian humanities as well as a thriving PhD program with particular strengths in comparative caste studies and the environmental humanities.
“We have a lot of room to grow and are excited by what the future might bring,” Brueck says.
Left to right: Professor Emerita Phyllis Lyons, Dean Adrian Randolph, and Associate Professor and Chair of the department of Asian Languages and Cultures, Laura Brueck (Photo credit: Justin Barbin)