The Department of Asian Languages and Literature was established in 1956, which is one of the oldest departments in the Midwest. When the Russian Program joined the Department in 2007, the Department changed its name to the Department of Asian and Slavic Languages and Literatures (ASLL). The Department now consists of five academic programs, the Chinese Program, the Japanese Program, the Korean Program, the Russian Program, and the South Asian Program, each specialized in a respective target language and related area studies.