It has just been announced that the Dean of FAS plans to effectively dissolve the East Asian Studies program at U of T. All EAS language and literature courses will be moved to a “School of Language and Literature”, along with the departments of Germanic Languages & Literatures, Italian Studies, Slavic Languages and Literatures and Spanish & Portuguese. Professors focused on Asian history will be moved to the History department, professors who teach courses on anthropology moved to the Anthropology department, etc. There will no longer be an undergraduate program in EAS offered at this university.
We currently do not know what will happen to undergraduate students that are not in their final year of study at U of T. We do know that this will have huge ramifications for the interdisciplinary study of East Asia at this university in the future.
This has been proposed during the summer in order to avoid protest from students. We must act now, before the next phase of development occurs, in order to save East Asian Studies. You can send letters to the Dean at the following address:
Meric Gertler
100 St. George Street, Room 2005
Toronto, ON M5S 3G3
Phone: 416-978-4439
Fax: 416-978-3887
Email: officeofthedean.artsci@utoronto.ca
You can check out our Save EAS blog for updates. Please also join our facebook group here and sign the online petition.