<p>johnwesley - Actually, Film/Media Studies is somewhere between Cognitive Science and Arabic in terms of curricular development. Arabic is just about to add its first tenure-track line, which will help stabilize the program, but I agree that it’s not particularly strong at present. In the specific case of Arabic, a language offering, something IS better than nothing for the students who would not otherwise be able to study the language at all (especially those who can’t afford supplemental summer study). For film, the program is not really geared toward production, nor would I advocate for someone to attend Swarthmore if they were very interested in film.</p>
<p>However, Swarthmore’s linguistics department has three fully tenured professors and a few more visiting professors at any given time. They graduate ~30 majors every year. In terms of standalone linguistics at SLACs–please note, I am excluding universities and schools with heavy dependence on iffy consortium offerings like Wellesley w/ MIT–only Pomona/Pitzer and Reed can compare. Carleton is also investing in its linguistics program, but is still in the early stages, just having become “regularized” as a major in 2010.</p>