Since 1940, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures has continued to offer undergraduate and graduate instruction in the languages, literatures and civilizations of France, Spain, Latin America, Italy, and Portugal, with occasional courses in such fields as Rumanian, Catalan, Francophone areas outside of France, etc. The principal additions to the departmental offerings since 1940 have been the emergence of a section for Romance Linguistics and the building up of the programs in Portuguese and in Italian.
Since 1933, the department had been directed by a chairman, advised by an Executive Committee. When Hayward Keniston became chairman in 1940 a major change in the department administration was effected: an elected Executive Committee of four members was constituted. It had two members from the French-Italian side and two from Spanish-Portuguese. One member was elected each year for a four-year term. On Keniston’s appointment to the deanship of the College in 1945, Irving A. Leonard assumed the chairmanship. During his term of office, the administrative duties of the department were formally shared with an Associate Chairman for French: Warner Patterson held this appointment from 1945 to his death in 1948; Paul Spurlin filled the post from 1949 to 1951. When Leonard was succeeded as chairman by Charles N. Staubach, it was decided to supplement the Executive Committee by creating a Senior Advisory Council consisting of all the full professors ex officio. This Council was to advise the chair on matters concerning the appointment, retention, promotion, and salary of all members of the regular faculty. These two committees, and the Graduate Committee, were the agencies which, with the Chairman, effectively ran the department. When James C. O’Neill assumed the direction of the department (as Acting Chairman 1959-60, Chairman 1960-73) he urged his colleagues to consider merging the Executive Committee and the Senior Advisory Council into one effective committee to advise the chair, but they preferred to retain the operating arrangement, and it was continued. When O’Neill resigned the chairmanship in 1973, Frank Casa was appointed chairman.
The department offers instruction at all levels in the French, Italian, Portuguese, Provencal, and Spanish languages and literatures, and in Romance Linguistics. This was already an extensive enterprise in 1940, and its dimensions have increased impressively since then. In 1940, the department had a regular staff of 33 faculty members who taught a total of 205 separate classes during the academic year (Summer Session programs are not included in statistics here or later). In 1975, there were again 33 full-time members in an instructional staff which was teaching 429 separate classes. These years — 1940-1975 — witnessed the invention and then the enormous expansion of a new teaching rank, the Teaching Fellow or part-time graduate assistant. In 1940, there were no classes taught by Teaching Fellows. In 1975, 266 classes were in their charge.
In 1940, the department was still quartered in the Romance Languages Building where it had been since 1928. The first language laboratory, however, was in the South Wing of University Hall. New quarters were allotted to the department in 1959 in the newly-acquired Frieze Building. A language laboratory founded by the department and made available to other language departments had been moved to Mason Hall. In 1971, the present Modern Languages Building was at last completed and the department moved to its present quarters on the fourth floor.
Undergraduate enrollments in the department are largely a function of the foreign-language requirement for various degrees in the College, and of the recommendations for language competence made by the several preprofessional programs. Since the College has maintained a basic requirement of fourth-semester foreign-language competence or the equivalent for the B.A. degree, a large commitment to elementary and secondary language instruction continues to be one of the major responsibilities of the department.
With the beginning of the war, special language training courses were designed in all sections of the department for students who were soon to enter military service. From 1941 to 1945 such courses were offered in the regular year in French, Spanish, and Italian. Faculty members also lectured on foreign civilizations and gave language training courses in military installations away from Ann Arbor. Then in the summer of 1942 the department furnished staff for both language and area studies in the Civil Affairs Specialist Training Program (CATP) and subsequently also for the Army Specialist Training Program (ASTP) in languages. After the end of hostilities, a special program was set up in the University for the training of field officers from the various military services for possible postwar assignments in Latin America. It had two parts, one an interdisciplinary course in the culture and society of Latin-America, the other an intensive language program in Portuguese and Spanish.
A project worthy of special mention is the department’s part in the Foreign Language in the Elementary School program (FLES). When the national enthusiasm for FLES began to emerge, the department organized special FLES training programs in the summer sessions, in which teachers from elementary schools learned the techniques of teaching French or Spanish to students at that level. These programs began in the summer of 1956 and continued for many years with nationally recognized success. The department was also a major participant in one of the pioneer Institutes supported by the National Defense Education Act (NDEA). The Institute at Michigan in the summer of 1959 was one of four held in the nation, the forerunners of many NDEA language institutes to come in the years to follow. It offered special remedial training in French, Spanish, Russian and German to a group of 100 high school language teachers and superintendents chosen in a nation-wide selection.
The department has also been a major supporter of and contributor to several collegiate programs of note. It was represented on the college committee which first devised the Great Books courses for freshmen in 1945, and faculty members from Romance Languages have consistently figured among the teachers in these courses. The departmental faculty has also played an important role in the program in Comparative Literature, with staff members serving on the directing committee and faculty of the program, as well as filling the posts of Director or Associate Director at various times. When the Residential College was created in 1967, members of the department were instrumental in the early planning of the curriculum, particularly in connection with a novel scheme for integrating foreign language into the programs. The department has supplied the necessary junior teaching staff in French, Spanish, and Italian, and its professors frequently offer courses and seminars in the core curriculum.
James C. O’Neill
FRENCH
The French language and literature have been taught in the College since at least 1848. By 1940, the regular French staff numbered 16 persons who offered a total of 118 classes during the academic year. Since that time, the number of full-time teachers has not varied as greatly as one might expect, because the increasing need for instruction was in large part being met at the level of basic and intermediate language teaching by the employment of a greater number of Teaching Fellows. The peak of student enrollment in French was in 1965 when 305 classes were taught.
The French section offers instruction in the use of French at all levels, in the methods of teaching French, in French civilization and history, and in French literature of all periods. The methods used have followed the development of new approaches in applied linguistics and pedagogy, but the objectives have remained the same.
From the early years of this century, training in the active use of correct French had been provided both in courses and through extracurricular activities. The production of an annual French play performed by students began in 1907 and continued uninterruptedly, except in wartime, for some fifty years.
The range of extracurricular activities in support of language learning in the department has slowly declined over the last few decades. In 1940, the French section had a very active Cercle Francais supported both by town and gown. It met twice monthly, sponsored and usually staffed the annual play (frequently underwriting the publication of a special edition), and organized an annual series of French lectures given by members of the faculty and distinguished guest speakers. Until the late fifties, there was an attractive Maison Francaise during the Summer Session, located in one of the large sorority houses, with a resident French directress. The French House which now exists in University housing during the regular year serves a similar purpose but for a smaller and different clientele. On the other hand, courses such as those on French film offered by Professor Roy J. Nelson and the easy access to numerous French films on campus every year now offer a source of practice and enrichment which for many years was nowhere available.
The most significant recent addition to the undergraduate program in French is undoubtedly the provision of opportunities for supervised study abroad. In 1962 a Junior Year Abroad, run jointly by the Universities of Michigan and Wisconsin, was set up at Aix-en-Provence. Every year, 25 students from each university spend an entire academic year enrolled regularly in the Universite de Provence, earning a full academic year’s credit in their home university. The two universities alternate in providing a French faculty member to be the Resident Director. In the summer of 1974, a program of intensive study of French at the elementary and intermediate levels was established at La Rochelle. Under the direction of French staff from this department, students do a semester’s or a year’s work for regular university credit. Some are able to complete the College foreign-language requirement during this intensive seven-week session.
The overall picture of graduate studies in French during these thirty-five years is rather different from that of the undergraduate experience. In the thirties, the department had made an active effort to develop a graduate program equal to that of other major universities, and the French section profited from it immediately.
The French section also offered three special graduate programs. Mention has been made of the FLES programs, which included a section for French, in the Summer Sessions from 1955 to 1961. Between 1952 and 1956, a special six-week program for teachers of high-school French and Spanish was organized under the direction of Professor Benjamin Bart, then supervisor of basic instruction in French. Under the National Defense Education Act, a series of Institutes was organized and directed by Professor Jean Carduner. Four of these NDEA French Institutes were offered, the first two in Ann Arbor in 1966 and 1967, the second two in France, at Sevres and Cahors in 1968 and 1969. These Institutes were created for a special clientele — teachers of advanced high school courses in French literature and civilization, or supervisors of such programs. Some 150 students took advantage of this opportunity to upgrade their professional skills.
Between 1848 and 1940, the department had awarded 110 master’s degrees in French and 14 Ph.D.s in Romance Languages and Literatures, with French as the major field. Between 1940 and 1975, 341 master’s degrees in French and 84 Ph.D.s in “Romance Languages and Literatures: French” were granted.
James O’Neill
ITALIAN
Professor Camillo P. Merlino had been the only regular professor of Italian from his appointment in 1930 to his resignation in 1937. After his departure, Vincent A. Scanio was for many years the only full-time staff member of the Italian section. In 1940, ten classes were offered. During the war years, special classes in Italian were provided to various military and civilian programs, and a Conversational Grammar by Professors Scanio and McLaughlin was widely used and received official commendation from the government. As enrollments increased, they were accommodated by the employment of Teaching Fellows and by bringing a series of Visiting Lecturers from Italy to supplement the staff for the upperclass offerings.
By 1970 there were 40 classes taught in Italian. The development of the Romance Linguistics section of the department included the offering of various courses in pre-Italic and Old Italian language, and these courses were available to graduate students in Italian. Since 1940, five master’s degrees and one Ph.D. have been granted in Italian.
ROMANCE LINGUISTICS
Before 1948, a few courses in philology were offered in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. All of them were ancillary to literary studies, although some courses were required of students in the different languages. Their principal purpose was to provide students with a knowledge of the medieval languages — French, Italian, Provencal or Spanish — so that they could read the literatures of the early periods. In 1949, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures instituted its first courses in the field of Romance Linguistics and established a graduate degree program separate from those in literature. In the period 1950-75, 58 master’s degrees and 34 doctorates in Romance Linguistics were awarded.
The involvement of Romance Linguistics in elementary language instruction bore valuable fruit also. During World War II linguists had set up a language teaching program for the benefit of civilian administrators, Army and Navy personnel, and prospective members of the occupation forces. It was based on linguistic principles (what was later called Applied Linguistics) and aimed at a practical oral-aural mastery of the language apart from any literary or aesthetic purposes. Under the auspices of the department, a language laboratory was established, and elementary instruction began to show the influence of the postwar trends in language teaching. The existence of a program in Romance Linguistics led eventually to the establishment of an autonomous Romance Linguistics section within the department.
SPANISH
The Spanish section of the department in 1940 counted three tenured faculty members and offered a total of 78 classes during the academic year 1940-41. In addition to the normal basic language instruction, the upper class and graduate program included a rotation of courses in Cervantes, the theater of the seventeenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the novel of the medieval and Golden Age periods and of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There was one course in Latin-American literature and one in grammar for future teachers.
Staff and course program remained substantially unchanged during the war years. With the end of the war came a major expansion. In 1945, 121 classes were being taught, including nine intermediate literature courses, three for teacher preparation, and eleven graduate courses. A year later, instruction in Portuguese was reintroduced, with basic language courses and two semesters of Portuguese and Brazilian literature. The expansion of the section reflects the greatly increased American interest in Spanish-speaking countries and the development of high school language programs. This is clearly evident in the statistics: by 1960, the section was offering 143 classes in the academic year, of which 26 were at the advanced undergraduate level, and 17 were graduate courses.
During these years, the Journal Club enjoyed a revival of interest, and Spanish plays were performed annually for the University community as well as for large numbers of high school students and their teachers throughout the state who came to Ann Arbor for the performances and for the Spanish fiesta which often accompanied them. It was in general a stimulating time for Spanish staff and students.
The decade of the sixties was a period of intense activity both in teaching and in scholarship, as the Spanish section sought to handle the problems created by a swollen student population. 167 classes were taught in 1965 and 174 in 1970. Since 1974, the undergraduate offering has been broadened by a seven-week intensive summer program at Salamanca, for elementary and intermediate language study.
Monroe Z. Hafter
The University of Michigan, An Encyclopedic Survey ... Wilfred B. Shaw, editor, Volume VI, pp. 212-219.
