The School of Asian Studies was formed at the University of Sydney in 1991 as a confederation of the existing Departments of East Asian Studies, Indonesian and Malayan Studies, and the staff of the interdepartmental course unit for Indian Studies. The School was established in the Faculty of Arts to focus attention more pertinently on the study of Asian languages and cultural studies. The formation of the School was timely, coming in a period when Commonwealth and State governments in Australia were engaged in strengthening commercial and diplomatic links with the nations to Australiaþs near north and encouraging better understanding of the cultures of these nations, in part through educational initiatives.
By Peter Worsley
At the present time the School consists of the departments of Chinese Studies, Japanese and
Korean Studies, Indian Su-Continental Studies and Southeast Asian Studies. Teaching and
research on Asian countries also takes place at the University of Sydney in a number of other
departments in the Faculty of Arts, the Faculty of Economics, the Faculty of Science and in
the degree programmes of The Faculty of Engineering, the Faculty of Agricultural Science,
the Graduate School of Business, and the Faculty of Education. The university established the
Research School for Asia and the Pacific in the 1980s to liaise with the business community
investing in and trading with Asian countries.
The University of Sydney is Australia's oldest university, established by an Act of Parliament
in 1850. The teaching of Japanese began there in 1917, and is the oldest such course in
Australia. In 1918 a Chair of Oriental Studies was established. Japanese was taught at
Sydney until the Second World War. Following a break of ten years, the teaching of
Japanese was resumed in the 1950s and the Department of Oriental Studies was established
which also had as part of its task the teaching of Chinese. At the same time a Department of
Indonesian and Malay was established. This department together with the departments at the
Australian National University and the University of Melbourne, were the first departments
of Indonesian and Malayan studies to be established in Australia, and were the result of the
initiative of the Commonwealth Government which directly financed them in their early
years.
In 1994 the School had some 30 permanent academic and 5 administrative staff and provided
courses for 700 undergraduate students, 34 postgraduate students enrolled in master's
programmes and supervised the research of 56 postgraduates. The School's graduates
currently hold approximately 35-40 academic positions (including five full professorships) in
Australian and overseas tertiary institutions and significant numbers of graduates are
currently employed in government, education, trade and business organizations.
Cultural mix
There is a considerable cultural mix amongst the Schoolþs student body which varies between
the different departments in the school þ from a situation of few background speakers of
Indonesian and Thai in Southeast Asian Studies to a predominance of background speakers of
Chinese in Chinese and Korean Studies, and a complex mix in the case of Japanese. This is
an exciting if challenging learning and teaching environment. Staff, supported by the
School's newly established Teaching Committee, are designing strategies to address this
situation. In language courses, for example, students are streamed through different courses
which assume different levels of language proficiency. In cultural studies courses, which are
taught in English, teaching and learning strategies are being developed to address English
literacy problems amongst students and to provide better for the needs of students with Asian
backgrounds whose perspectives on Asia are different from those of fellow students and the
scholars who teach them and whose grounding is primarily in þthe Western intellectual
tradition". As elsewhere in Australian universities, the School is involved in the
development of criteria to assess the outcomes of student performance on graduation. Criteria
are required which describe the relationship between studentsþ language proficiency and
cultural knowledge and the levels proficiency and knowledge they require to function
adequately in employment. This process shall also involve comparison with similar
programmes in other universities in Australia and abroad.
The School's undergraduate courses provide for up to three years of study for a Pass degree
and four for an Honours degree. The programme provides the opportunity for students to
learn one of the seven Asian languages. These are Chinese, Hindi-Urdu, Indonesian,
Japanese, Korean, Sanskrit, and Thai. Students receive instruction in practical
communication skills in the language of their choice and, integrated with this, take cultural
studies courses which range across a number of disciplines which include cultural and social
history, linguistics, literature, philosophy, politics, the visual and performing arts, and
religion. In addition to these integrated language and cultural studies courses, the School also
participates in a course programme in Asian Studies designed to provide the opportunity for
the comparative study of the historical, cultural, political and religious aspects of Asian
societies. This programme is supported by the departments of Economic History and
Government and Public Administration, whose primary location is in the Faculty of
Economics, and the departments of Fine Arts, History, Music, Performance Studies and the
School of Asian Studies in the Faculty of Arts. The School shares staffing appointments with
the departments of Fine Arts, Performance Studies, and Religious Studies.
Provision for in-country training has for twenty years been provided for students of
Indonesian and Malayan Studies through an agreement with Satya Wacana University in
Indonesia. In 1996 a new Diploma in Indonesian and Malayan Studies and the availability of
Faculty funds for students studying abroad allows students of Indonesian in the School to take
advantage of courses offered in Indonesian universities by the new Australian Consortium for
In-Country Indonesian Studies. Less formal provision for programmes of study abroad are
also available for students in the School studying other languages within the provisions of
agreements between the University of Sydney and universities in a number of Asian countries
þWaseda, Hosei, Kwansei Gakuin, and Tokyo Metropolitan universities in Japan and Seoul
National and Yonsei universities in Korea þ and the School is currently pursuing
arrangements for the formal provision of study abroad programmes for students of Chinese,
Japanese, Korean, and Thai.
Research
The School provides a number of postgraduate masterþs programmes. Apart from the
programmes of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Indonesian and Malay cultural studies special
programmes in Chinese Translating and Interpreting and in Applied Japanese for Business
Purposes are currently available to students. Staff of the Department of Southeast Asian
Studies also participate in the programme of the Master of International Studies offered
through the Faculty of Economics. The School is able to offer postgraduate students research
supervision in the areas of China, Korea, India, and Southeast Asia in the disciplinary fields
of history, linguistics, literature, politics, religion, and the visual and performing arts. It is in
these areas that academic staff conduct their research.
The areas of research of particular strength in the School are, in Chinese Studies, Chinese
literature, history and thought, particularly literature in the Wei-Jin period (AD 220-316);
literature and history of the Song dynasty (960-1279); Buddhist and Taost studies; Chinese
women writers and the social history of Chinese women; 20th century Chinese history and
literature.
In Japanese Studies staff research is concentrated in the areas of classical and modern
literature, modern social and political history, art history and cultural studies, Japanese
linguistics, and Okinawan studies. Staff in the department are involved in international
research collaboration. Professor Hugh Clarke has been appointed Deputy Director of the
Research Institute for Okinawan Studies in Tokyo, and Dr John Clark was attached to the
International Research Centre for Japanese Studies in Kyoto in 1995.
In the Department of Southeast Asian Studies research is conducted in the areas of the social
and cultural history of premodern Southeast Asia, with particular reference to the study of
the literature and the art and architectural history of Java and Bali; the social, cultural and
political history of modern Southeast Asia in the fields of performance studies, literature, and
social and political history. Of particular note is the department's Ford Foundation Grant for
a performance studies research project in East Java; the presence of two ARC [Australian
Research Council] Fellows, one researching an aspect of the social history of Bali and the
other the religious history of ancient Java; and the ongoing comprehensive computerised
Bibliography of Indonesian Politics and Economy now in its third edition. Staff in
Southeast Asian Studies together with colleagues at the ANU are currently engaged in a
major project in Old Javanese studies involving the critical edition, annotation and analysis of
the ancient Javanese epic work, the Sumanasantaka.
The School is responsible for the publication of two monograph series. Staff of the
Department of Chinese Studies edit the University of Sydney East Asian Series,
School of Asian Studies Series. Nine volumes have been published in these two
series since 1988. The subjects these volumes cover are the works of a number of Japanese
and Chinese writers and thinkers which have been translated, annotated, and commented
upon in introductory essays. In addition there are two collections of essays on modernity in
Asian art and the modernization of Chinaþs past. The School also edits two journals the
annual Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia, established in 1956, and the
Review of Indonesian and Malayan Affairs first published in 1967 and published
twice a year.
Members of staff have also been responsible for the publication of language textbooks for
Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, and Thai, some of which have been widely used in Australian
schools and universities and some of which are marketed in Europe and the United States of
America.
School of Asian Studies
University of Sydney
Sydney NSW 2006
Australia
Dr Peter Worsley (SAS, University of Sydney) was an Affiliated Fellow at the
IIAS from February - May 1996.