The South Asia Regional Studies Department was recently renamed the South Asia Studies Department, in an attempt to better define both the discipline and its objectives within the University's academic curriculum.
"The original name reflected a different view of what the department should be," School of Arts and Sciences Dean Samuel Preston said, adding that the department is more oriented towards cultural studies.
The decision was reached in the fall of 2002 by Preston and the department's chairman, Michael Meister, along with Walter Licht, former associate dean of the department.
Jody Chavez, assistant director for SASt, said that the name change reflected Penn's commitment to center all South Asia teaching in the SASt Department.
The new title was also designed to eliminate the word "regional" -- a "relic" of the 1950s, SASt Professor Harold Schiffman said.
"The term 'regional' gives the impression that there is knowledge of the region that is not useful outside that region, and that is not true," Schiffman said, adding that the change "should have happened a long time ago."
However, the department has faced larger problems over the past few years -- the necessity of the SARS Department was questioned in 2000, as it had not appointed any full-time faculty in 25 years and the number of standing faculty had decreased to less than half the original number.
And in the fall of 2000, for the first time in the Penn program's existence, the U.S. Department of Education denied the department Title VI funding.
The future of SARS -- a department established in 1947 as the first department of its kind in the nation -- remained in limbo until March 2002, when Preston announced that it would remain an independent department, with some changes in structure and the potential for a new name.
Students enrolled in the program agreed with this statement, and said that they approved of the University's intent to clarify the department's interests.
"The name change reflects the University's commitment to South Asia," fifth-year Ph.D. student John Nemec said.
He added that the change was well received among the student body.
"We're very excited -- this will rejuvenate the department, and that is good," Nemec said. "The department itself will be a core South Asia Department that focuses on the humanities -- especially on language and culture."
Nemec also said that, with this new name, the discipline's goal of interfacing humanities with the social sciences would become evident.
Despite the elimination of the old acronym from the department's denomination, SARS will continue to be used to denote the graduate group, an association of faculty members from different disciplines who contribute their expertise in specific fields and regions to the department.
"We kept 'regional' because it effectively describes what they do," Chavez said.
While associations with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome were more than likely to occur during the outbreak over the past year, members of the department said that the decision to change the name was reached well before then and that the Asian illness was not a factor in their decision.
According to Chavez,"We really changed the name before any of that happened."
