English Language and Literature

College of Literature, Science, and the Arts

The University of Michigan: An Encyclopedic Survey was first published beginning in 1942. For its 2017 Bicentennial, the University undertook the most significant updating of the Encyclopedia since the original, focusing on academic units. Entries from all versions are compiled in the Bicentennial digital and print-on-demand edition.

This book was produced using Pressbooks.com, and PDF rendering was done by PrinceXML. Contents

1. English Language and Literature (1942) 1 W. R. Humphreys

2. English Language and Literature (1975) 22 Richard W. Bailey

3. English Language and Literature (2015) 27 John Knott

[1]

English Language and Literature (1942)

W. R. Humphreys

The Department of English Language and Literature, like most college departments, came into existence not by special creation, but by a process of evolution. The earliest program of courses, that for the academic year 1843-44, provided for work in rhetoric, but only in connection with a formidable curriculum in the Greek and Latin languages and literatures. The story of rhetoric’s uncertain and shifting attachments and its later history as a department (between 1903 and 1930), before its definite union with English, are told in a separate article (see Part III: Department of Rhetoric). It is true that even in the 1830’s the teaching of English existed as one of the fainter hopes entertained by the Regents. A resolution offered on June 21, 1837, and tabled on the same day, provided that “until otherwise ordained the Professor of Political Economy shall be also Professor of the Ancient and English Languages.” But no professor of political economy was 2 English Language and Literature

appointed; and it was not until 1841 that instruction in any subject was given. The first mention of English literature appeared in the University Catalogue for 1852-53, the first year of President Tappan’s administration. It was Tappan’s policy, however, to publish hopes as well as promises; he believed, no doubt, that publication might make the hopes come true — as, in the long run, many of them did. A professorship of rhetoric and English literature was announced, but no professor was named, and none was appointed. In the scientific course newly added to the classical course, and leading to the bachelor of science degree, work in English language and literature was prescribed for the first and second terms of the freshman year. In the departmental announcement, it was said that “the Professor of Ancient and Modern Languages, and the Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy” would “take charge of this branch, jointly.” These professors presumably held themselves ready to take charge also of the work in English language and literature in the proposed “university course” of postgraduate studies. But, as it is said in the Hinsdale-Demmon History of the University of Michigan (p. 87):

It is not now easy to get at the precise facts relative to the graduate work that was really done previous to 1878. In the first place we do not know how many of the so-called Graduate Courses were ever given; no doubt, however, it was a minority.

Advanced work in English must have belonged to the weak majority; for before 1860 English language and literature, as well as rhetoric and criticism, had disappeared from the “Programme of studies for the degrees of M.A. and M.S.” In the meantime, however, English had gained the part-time services of a professor. Dr. Haven, who was to return to the faculty later as President, received his first appointment in 1852 as Professor of the Latin Language and Literature; but two years later, having given over this professorship to Henry Simmons Frieze, he became Professor of History and English Literature. In 1856 he resigned. But when in 1863 he returned as President he served as Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature. English Language and Literature (1942) 3

For some time even the study of English literature was rhetorical in its main purpose. The Catalogue for 1854-55 stated: “The survey of our general Literature is necessarily cursory, and is designed chiefly to establish fundamental principles of criticism, and to cultivate correctness and propriety of style.” This seems to carry on the policy announced in the Catalogue for 1852-53 for the study of Greek and Latin: that is, to give the student “knowledge … of those rhetorical principles which will enable a person to express his thoughts in idiomatic and perspicuous English. In this department, therefore, nearly as much attention is paid to the study of English as to the study of Greek and Latin.” Nevertheless, the change in 1854-55 is important: the student is now to be taught the use of English not only from classical but also from English models. In 1856-57, the year after Professor Haven resigned, only rhetoric appears to have survived, and that only as taught by an instructor who also had to teach Greek. In the following year, however, the professorship of history and English literature was filled by the appointment to the faculty of a man who was to become one of its most distinguished members, Andrew Dickson White (Yale ’53, A.M. ibid. ’56, LL.D. Michigan ’67), later best known as minister to Russia, ambassador to Germany, and president of Cornell University. Together with Datus C. Brooks (’56, A.M. ’59), Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature, he brought renewed importance to the study of the English language and literature. This study was still limited to “members of the Scientific Department.” And, as the following statement shows, its purpose was still largely rhetorical: “The object of this plan is to secure an examination of the principles of our native tongue.” By the year 1858-59, work in English literature had been extended for the second semester of the second year to the classical as well as to the scientific curriculum. An added object of the study is indicated in the promise of “criticism of the Masterpieces of our Literature.” And Assistant Professor Brooks could hardly have avoided getting into literary history in his course: “English Language and Literature, particularly during the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman Periods, and the Age of Elizabeth.” There is no evidence in the catalogues, however, that expansion had gone so far as to 4 English Language and Literature

include graduate work in English. The activity of the undergraduate students, not only in rhetoric but in the English language and literature, seems to have been largely in original compositions and declamations; and “during the last two years the pieces spoken are original.” The tradition of eloquence was still strong. Although Andrew White made valuable contributions to the development of English studies in the University, his main interest was in history. His desire for a professorship exclusively in history was gratified in 1863, when Erastus Otis Haven (Wesleyan ’42, A.M. ibid. ’45, D.D. hon. Union ’54, LL.D. Ohio Wesleyan ’63) returned not only as President but also as Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature. Haven was immediately listed as offering graduate courses in philology and general culture, and a year later English literature was announced for the first time as a senior elective. But such progress as these announcements suggest was probably not substantial; on the contrary, the program in English must before long have suffered considerable shrinkage. For in 1865, President Haven moved over to the professorship of logic and political economy. He replaced his course in philology with one in logic. He continued to offer his course entitled General Culture; but that seems to have been from the beginning not a course in English but in comparative literature. Only Allen Jeremiah Curtis (Kalamazoo ’60, A.M. Michigan ’61), Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature, was left to carry on the work. Then in 1867, Tyler came. The events of the life of Moses Coit Tyler (Yale ’57, LL.D. Wooster ’75, L.H.D. Columbia ’87) are related in biographical sketches and other passages scattered through University publications and in the notable Jones-Casady Life of Moses Coit Tyler, published by the University of Michigan Press in 1933. The Life must be read by anyone who in our time would know Tyler’s career, his character, and his place in the history of the University and of American scholarship. In 1939 the Board of Regents named one of the new men’s dormitories in the East Quadrangle the Moses Coit Tyler House. In making the announcement the University Record described Tyler as “the English Language and Literature (1942) 5 man who more than any other individual awakened the country to the study of its own literary history.” That this is not an expression of merely parochial pride is attested by many witnesses. Barrett Wendell of Harvard said in an address to the Massachusetts Historical Society:

Untiring in research, unfalteringly conscientious to the most minute detail, nor yet ever content until he had so mastered every phase of his subject that he could set forth his results with luminous amenity, Moses Coit Tyler has left for those who follow him through the boundless aridities of our earlier literature only the comparatively agreeable task of generalization. Whatever he actually did was done so well that it need never be done again. (Wendell, 393-94.)

The only man who, since Tyler, has done work of comparable importance in the literary history of America is V. L. Parrington, himself a guest member of the Department of English in the summer session of 1927 and known internationally as the author of Main Currents in American Thought. In his bibliography for the period dealt with in Tyler’s books he referred to them twice as “invaluable” — a word of praise which he gives to no other book listed. From the Jones-Casady Life, which is always temperate in praise, may be culled such opinions of Tyler as the following:

He was … the first great historian of the national mind expressed in literature… Tyler may be said to have inaugurated the heroic age of scholarship in American literary history … Tyler’s success is a miracle of perseverance and painstaking care… His work remains monumental still… Tyler had written a truly great historical work, generous in its sympathy, revolutionary in its scope and range, brilliant in style — an enduring study, the first great work of scholarship in the field of American literary history.

Nor did Tyler have to wait for the acclaim of posterity. Among other evidences of his eminence in the opinion of his contemporaries, the Life tells us that he was included in a list of forty immortals chosen by ballot among the readers of The Critic and Good Literature, outranking Dana, Whipple, Lathrop, Story, and Parkman. Tyler was born in 1835 in Connecticut, spent his boyhood in Michigan, and attended the University of Michigan for one year. He completed his undergraduate work at Yale, studied theology 6 English Language and Literature

there and at Andover, and, though he never went on to a degree in theology, held pastorates for about three years in the state of New York. After a sojourn in Boston, he went to England in 1863, and when he returned to this country, late in 1866, it was as a “lyceum” lecturer and a writer for newspapers and magazines. In 1867 he became Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of Michigan. Except for an interval of eighteen months in 1873 and 1874, which he spent very unhappily in New York City as literary editor of Henry Ward Beecher’s Christian Union, Tyler taught at the University of Michigan until 1881. In that year Andrew White, his friend of long standing, offered him the new professorship of American history at Cornell, and, as White himself had done years before at Michigan, he left literature for history. The change, however, was not abrupt; though Tyler had done much to stimulate and guide the appreciation of literature as such, he was always primarily the social philosopher, reading books with an eye chiefly to their historical significance. His main interest will appear clearly to anyone who reads in his many essays or in his books. Of the latter, which show also his growing absorption in American as distinguished from British literature and history, the most important are The History of American Literature, 1607-1765; The Literary History of the American Revolution; Patrick Henry (in the “American Statesmen Series”); and Three Men of Letters (Berkeley, Dwight, and Barlow). Tyler’s character is a study in contradictions. Before he came to Ann Arbor he was best known as a health faddist and as a facile popular speaker. A present member of the department remarked recently that he would not be considered now even for a teaching fellowship. Yet it is doubtful if any member of our present faculty has a better record of sound, hard work. The work of some of us may not be referred to half a century hence as “a miracle of perseverance and painstaking care.” His industry, however, was like that of another great worker, Samuel Johnson. It was fitful. “The tranquillity of the place,” he wrote after his return from New York to Ann Arbor, “is like balm to my brain and nerves.” But this spirit was restless, and he could enjoy tranquillity only as long as he was satisfied with the work he was doing; only as long as he could hold himself to it “without English Language and Literature (1942) 7 remissness and without misgiving.” In his public utterances and in his writings, he appeared to share the complacency of nineteenth-century liberalism, and to accept with most of his contemporaries the current myth of progress; but his diary, like Johnson’s, records that his mind was troubled by many doubts and uncertainties. Year after year moods assailed him in which he wondered whether he ought not to return to the Christian ministry. In the main, he controlled his tendency to melancholy. He and his family lived happily together, he enjoyed many friendships, and he delighted his students with his easy eloquence and his humor. His work was sometimes interrupted, but its quality was certainly enhanced, by what the Jones-Casady Life calls his “feeling of the dreamlike evanescence of the world.” The influence of such a man as Tyler even in a department of the 1940’s would be very great. In his day, he practically was the Department of English, and its history was made by him. At first his teaching, except for one course, was in elocution and rhetoric. He did this work conscientiously, and, according to contemporary evidence, exceptionally well. But his important report to the president in 1872 indicates that it brought him more weariness than satisfaction. He spoke of the “delicate and fatiguing task” of reading essays and listening to speeches. He was searching hopefully for some method of “teaching English literature to students like ours.” It was in the study and teaching of literature that his real interest lay. The Jones-Casady Life stated that in 1874, when he returned from New York, Tyler, with Angell’s approval, “cut himself entirely loose from the instruction in elocution and rhetoric, and devoted his time to teaching literature.” Hinsdale said that in 1874 Tyler’s title was changed to Professor of the English Language and Literature (Hinsdale, p. 241), and the Alumni Catalogue published in 1923 also dates the new title from 1874. The Proceedings of the Regents (at that time not fully nor always accurately indexed) shows no earlier official change. But the annual catalogues for the years from 1867 to 1873 behave rather capriciously: according to them, Tyler’s professorship was of rhetoric and English literature in 1867-68, 1868-69, and 1870-71; but of the English language and literature in 1869-70, 1871-72, 8 English Language and Literature

and 1872-73. His report in 1872, mentioned above, appears in the Proceedings as coming from the professor of the English language and literature, and the same title appears elsewhere in the Proceedings of these years. It is evident that Tyler’s inclination from rhetoric to literature was strong during his earlier residence at Michigan, and that his inclination received at least semiofficial approval. In the part of the Hinsdale-Demmon History written by Hinsdale, Tyler’s coming is said to have “marked a change in the English department; henceforth attention was paid to the study of literature as well as to its accessories” (Hinsdale, p. 55). This statement implies not so much the shift from courses in rhetoric to courses in literature as the adoption of the method of literary study for which Tyler had been searching. His desire was that students might “come to know for themselves the exhilaration of original research.” By “research” Tyler did not mean quite what we now understand by the word, nor what he himself practiced. His first hope was only to escape from “the difficulty of interesting young people in critical estimates of books which they had never before seen or heard of.” Nevertheless, the assignment of readings in original sources led not only to the introduction in 1875 of the senior course announced as the Study of Masterpieces, but also to the offering of graduate seminars; though, as Hinsdale remarked, the word “seminary” was slow in finding its way into the catalogues. By 1881, when Tyler left for Cornell, the main course for future programs in English was set at the University of Michigan and also at other American universities, as the result largely of the pioneer work of Tyler. From 1881 to 1920, a period of thirty-nine years, Isaac Newton Demmon (’68, A.M. ’71, LL.D. Nashville ’96) was Professor of English and head of the Department of English. His connection with the University dates from 1865, when, after two years in Northwestern Christian University (now Butler College) and a term of service as a soldier in the Civil War, he entered the class of 1868. After his graduation he taught Greek at Alliance College, ancient languages at Hiram College, and mathematics at Michigan. For three years after that he was Principal of the Ann Arbor High School. In 1876 he returned to the University as English Language and Literature (1942) 9

Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and History, succeeding Harry Burns Hutchins, later President of the University, in that position. In 1879 his title was changed to Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Anglo-Saxon, and in 1881 to Professor of English and Rhetoric. During the headship of Demmon a good many persons believed that the department was not moving forward as it should. It is certainly true that Demmon did not favor expansion or innovation Generally speaking, he adopted changes in departmental policy reluctantly, often after holding out for some time against the pressure, not only of advice, but also of events. He was not, as Tyler was, a brilliant teacher. He was not, as Tyler was, a distinguished author. It may be that he did not receive his rightful share of the distinction that came to Tyler, for he was heard in his old age to say somewhat ruefully that in the opinion of his friends his part in the making of The History of American Literature had been much greater than Tyler’s brief note in the Preface acknowledged. Although he read with approval and appreciation anything well written by a member of his staff, he had so strong a distaste for what Henry Seidel Canby has recently called “cross-word puzzle scholarship” that the encouragement he gave others to publish was far from urgent. The man who during the years around 1900 attracted students from all over the country, and, notably, advanced students from the East, was Fred Newton Scott. In recognition of his eminence the Department of English was divided, and Professor Scott was for the rest of his time on the faculty (1903 to 1927) head of the Department of Rhetoric (see Part III: Department of Rhetoric). And yet — not long ago a woman of Ann Arbor whose memories of the University community run back into the days of Angell and Frieze and Adams and White and Cooley and the rest of the famous men of their generation was asked who was the biggest of the giants that were at Michigan in former times. She answered, as one surprised that the question needed to be asked: “Why, Mr. Demmon.” Giants of this breed cannot, of course, be measured; but the fact that such an answer could be given means something. 10 English Language and Literature

The one man who could have written with authority concerning Demmon, and concerning the Department of English during his administration, was Louis A. Strauss. If he had lived to do it, he would have written the article for which this is only a substitute. Fortunately, he did leave a record covering this period of the department’s history which it would be a wanton waste not to draw upon here. A digest, whenever possible in Strauss’s own words, follows. The original, a memorial read before the University Senate on November 22, 1920, may be found most conveniently in the Michigan Alumnus for March, 1921:

A ripe old age had crowned a life of incessant labor and high endeavor, a life replete with varied achievement and enriched by such a range and depth of experience as few men, and only big men, can know … Mr. Demmon died, as he had lived, a fighter to the last — a passionate devotee of truth and right and justice as he saw them, an uncompromising hater of sham and selfishness and oppression, according to his lights. Moderation was not one of his virtues: brutal frankness was … A thing was good or bad — there was seldom a middle ground. He spoke his convictions with a courage and disregard of convention that commanded the respect even of those who disagreed with him. His intensity frequently betrayed him into bitterness, but never into dishonesty. Friend and foe alike have felt the lash of his scorn … We shall consider his services to the University to which he devoted his life, under the following heads: 1. The Educator; 2. The Compiler of University Records, and Editor of University Publications; 3. The Bibliographer and Builder of the English Library; 4. The Teacher and Scholar. 1. From the outset of his career Professor Demmon evinced a keen and profound interest in educational problems, large and small, and exerted a powerful influence toward their settlement … Before the faculty of his college Mr. Demmon was invariably an ardent advocate of justice to the secondary schools … He held unwaveringly to the belief that the system of admission to the University by certificate from accredited schools, which the University of Michigan did so much to establish and standardize in the middle west, is incomparably better than the system of admission upon examination… It would thus appear that, in matters of educational policy, Professor Demmon was anything but a hide- bound conservative. On the contrary, he was progressive in his views, and a constant growth in liberalism is manifest to anyone who studies his life … That he did not stubbornly maintain a position in the face of obvious tendencies is well illustrated by English Language and Literature (1942) 11 his conduct in the matter of graduate fellowships. For many years he had flatly stood out against them. He said he did not believe in hot-house methods of building up and maintaining a graduate school. Gradually his views altered, until in 1909-1910, during his chairmanship of the Graduate Council, the Board of Regents, for the first time in the history of the University, set aside a considerable sum from the general fund for the support of fellowships; and this was accomplished largely through Mr. Demmon’s influence … 2. Professor Demmon’s arduous labors upon the early records of the University, the general catalogues, and necrology, are perhaps better known than appreciated by many of his colleagues … Mr. Demmon’s close friends frequently deplored his activity in this seemingly ungrateful field and urged him to discontinue the work, but the value of his efforts to the University and his efficiency, born of long training and enhanced by the possession of a prodigious memory, naturally induced the administrators of the University to avail themselves of his services as long as possible … Chief among the University publications brought out by Professor Demmon are: “The Semi-centennial Celebration of the Organization of the University of Michigan” (1888), “The Quarter-centennial Celebration of the Presidency of James Burrill Angell” (1897), “General Catalogue of Officers and Students, 1837-1891” (with Professor Pettee, 1891), and two subsequent editions of the same work under his sole editorship, those of 1837-1901 (1902), and 1837-1911 (1912). In 1906 appeared the history of the University of Michigan. The author, Professor Burke A. Hinsdale, died in 1900, and the Board of Regents entrusted to Mr. Demmon the difficult task of completing and editing the work and seeing it through the press. The trust was executed with his customary care and fidelity and with complete success … 3. Undoubtedly the work which Professor Demmon loved best and in which he achieved results of the most significant and lasting benefit to the University was that done in connection with the library. Any day he might be seen spending hours in the cataloguing rooms poring over book catalogues or checking up accessions, or in the stacks hunting for lost or misplaced volumes, or in the reserved collections jealously looking to the safety of the University’s choice treasures, or in the bindery giving directions for the preservation of some frail victim of the ravages of time, or in the corridors soundly berating some luckless library official for delivering a rare first edition into the hands of the Philistines — the students … Thanks to his untiring zeal and industry, the University possesses a Library of English Literature that is not approached in completeness and working value by any university library in the west … An eminent antiquarian book-dealer in New 12 English Language and Literature

York once told a member of this committee that in his opinion Mr. Demmon was the best posted man as to English books and their market value, and on the whole the wisest purchaser in the United States … Many of his purchases have increased ten and twenty-fold in value, and would therefore have been beyond the reach of the University at a later time … The McMillan Shakespeare Library, the English Dramatic Library, the Carlyle and New England collections are notable achievements, but they are probably less significant as evidence of his thoroughgoing work than is the solid and representative character of the English library as a whole … He built for the future, and the future will build for him, upon the broad foundations he has laid, a monument more enduring than brass. 4. Liberal as were his views in matters of University policy, as a teacher and scholar Mr. Demmon was distinctly conservative. “A Man of the Old School” he was commonly called. This means, first, that his interest in his subject was broad and general, rather than highly specialized; and secondly, it means that he deprecated and resisted the latter day tendency to import into literary criticism and history the implications and methods of modern science … Whereas he took the lead in general educational reform and progress, in his own subject he followed, regretfully and sadly, the tendency of the times … Professor Demmon was anything but a showy teacher. He was less fluent in the class room than in the forum, where opposition frequently stirred him to eloquence. But he had traits that are more valuable in the long run than the ability to deliver impressive lectures or to make recitations “go” by dint of bustling methods, or a masterful domination of the class room through the imposition of his own personality … The atmosphere of Mr. Demmon’s classes was surcharged with fine emanations from his mind and character that were bound to make themselves felt. There was his reverence for good literature that has fixed the attitudes of thousands of students for life. There was a reserve, characteristic of big men, that at once told the ready instinct of the student mind that this man had vast resources of knowledge that he could but slightly draw upon in the class room … There was, again, a large idealism, bafflingly allied with the shrewdest common sense — a combination typically American and familiar to us all since the days of Emerson … Much of his best teaching was done outside of the class room. He was always glad to talk informally with individual students … Combined with the traits mentioned before, his geniality, his accessibility, his interest in and sympathy with the aims and ideals of the students won his way into their hearts and made them his grateful friends forever; and the majestic beauty of his face — an ideal teacher’s and scholar’s face — completed an impression that a student might well cherish as one of the greatest gains of his college course. English Language and Literature (1942) 13

Notwithstanding Demmon’s conservative policies the department under his direction grew steadily. A reading of the successive announcements makes this clear. Although at first Demmon took over the courses which had been given by Tyler and entrusted his own to Benjamin C. Burt, within a few years the work began to be spread. More and more, courses were assigned in accordance with the special trainings and abilities of the growing staff. Within ten years Demmon’s teaching was almost entirely confined to the “Masterpieces” courses inherited from Tyler, and to his seminary in American literature. Before the end of the century, courses in elocution and oratory and in English philology were announced independently of the English departmental program, and, without counting these, the number of the course offerings in English had more than doubled. To one coming to Michigan about 1910, the work in English seemed both in amount and in method very much like the work being done in certain other leading American universities, though, in a few of them, graduate work had been growing faster. Perhaps the pressure of general tendencies was enough for healthy progress; certainly the record of the Department of English in Demmon’s time shows few experiments tried and discarded, but rather a gradual and steady onward movement. Associated with Demmon were a number of men whose names are known to all who work in the English field. Some who left the University to carry on their distinguished work in other universities must be mentioned here. Charles Mills Gayley (’78, LL.D. ’04, Litt.D. Glasgow ’01), whose “The Yellow and Blue” has been sung by Michigan students and alumni for fifty years, after spending six years as a member of the Department of Latin, taught English for two years, and then went to the University of California, where he became Professor of English and Dean of the Faculties. Joseph Villiers Denney (’85, A.M. hon. ’10, Litt.D. Wittenberg ’20), of Scott and Denney’s Paragraph Writing fame, left Michigan for Ohio State University. There he was Professor of English, for many years Dean of the College of Arts, Philosophy, and Science, and for one year Acting President. George Hempl (’79, LL.D. ’15, Ph.D. Jena ’89), after teaching English philology and general linguistics here for seventeen 14 English Language and Literature

years, became Professor of Germanic Philology at the Leland Stanford Junior University in California. George Rebec (’91, Ph.D. ’97) began his university teaching as Instructor in English at the University of Michigan, but he is better known for his work in philosophy, first here and later at the University of Oregon. John Strong Perry Tatlock (Harvard ’96, Ph.D. ibid. ’03) began his connection with the Department of English in 1897 and remained until 1915. Since then he has been Professor of English at Stanford, Harvard, and California. Tatlock’s successor was Samuel Moore (Princeton ’99, Ph.D. Harvard ’11), an eminent philologist and Chaucerian who remained in the department until his death in 1934. During his later years he was also editor of the “Middle English Dictionary,” his appointment to this work having been recommended by a committee of the Modern Language Association of America. Shirley Wheeler Smith (’97, A.M. ’00) was Instructor in English from 1898 to 1901. He left, but he soon returned; and he still serves the University as Vice-President and Secretary. This roster of eminent names — and it might have been made longer — suggests that under Demmon’s direction the Department of English rapidly grew away from anything resembling a one-man department. The tendency has increased even faster since his retirement. It would be a tedious task either to set down or to read the names of the present members of the department, numbering about fifty. For the greater part, those who survive from Demmon’s regime and those who came later must await the notice of a future chronicler. But one name runs through so much of the history of the department during the past two decades that it demands more than passing attention. Demmon’s successor, not as head but as chairman, was Louis A. Strauss (’93, Ph.D. ’00). He spent most of his life in the University, and most of his life was devoted to its service. Immediately after his graduation in 1893 he entered the department as an assistant in English. In September, 1938, he began his forty-sixth year of teaching with undiminished zest and apparently in good health, but on the second day of the semester he died. For many years Demmon had depended increasingly on Strauss’s advice in the management of the department, and English Language and Literature (1942) 15 there was no doubt as to who was best qualified to succeed him. It is certain that Professor Strauss welcomed the appointment as chairman rather than as head. At first he tried calling the department to sit as a kind of committee of the whole, but this purely democratic system proved unwieldy and sometimes embarrassing, and it was abandoned by common consent. Since then, although regular meetings of the whole department and meetings, as needed, of different subcommittees have been held, official actions have ordinarily been taken by a departmental executive committee. This committee has been variously constituted; at present it is made up of those members of the department who are full professors. Strauss was an excellent presiding officer. The fullness of his experience and the clarity of his thinking gave him definite opinions on most questions under discussion, and he presented his opinions cogently. But it was not in his nature to be overbearing. He never exploited his authority. In argument he always shed more light than heat. He was never intolerant or impatient even with those who were both intolerant and impatient. To quote Earl Leslie Griggs’s “Appreciation” (Griggs, p. 38), Louis Strauss, “born before the day of specialization, made all learning his business. He seemed to have read everything in English literature.” He was well read also in other literatures, particularly in German. He was a lover of good music, and he had an almost professional knowledge of it. In this, and in his interest in painting, he resembled Browning; and his course in Browning, the course most familiarly associated with his name, was correspondingly strengthened. A man of great learning, he never paraded his learning. He had no touch of what is supposed to be the professorial manner. He was on friendly terms with all sorts and conditions of men, including tinkers and mechanics, men in locker rooms and guides on the northern lakes; and always without a hint of condescension, but because he was simply interested in what they did and what they thought. Strauss wrote well, but he published little. Whatever he did publish was recognized as of high quality. After the appearance of his edition of Farquhar, for example, the reviewer for the 16 English Language and Literature

London Times said that the introduction was the most sensible essay on Restoration comedy he had ever seen. In his teaching Strauss was eminently successful. To the last his courses maintained their drawing power and their strong influence. Much as the world had changed since his career began, he never felt, and others never felt, that it had left him behind. He was not too much disturbed by innovation and experiment, but viewed them with a regard at once speculative and sympathetic. What his deepest feelings were, even his dearest friends often wondered. They found in him, however, a serenity that seemed to say:

What is excellent, As God lives, is permanent.

Like Demmon, he was active in University affairs, not only in matters of general policy, but particularly in positions that brought him into personal contact with students. For many years he was the chief faculty sponsor of student dramatics. For some time before its work was taken over by the office of the dean of students, he was chairman of the University committee on student affairs. Later, for five years, he was chairman of the University Board in Control of Student Publications. In all these exacting positions he was acclaimed by students and faculty alike for his fairness and wisdom. In 1933 the Michiganensian was dedicated to him — one of many evidences that he and his work were appreciated. In his administration of the department, Strauss never looked out for his own interests. He knew this, and he was frankly proud of it. The rest of the men in the department knew it too, and harmony prevailed. To quote again from Griggs’s “Appreciation” (p. 39):

The epithet I have heard used most frequently to describe him is beloved … A young member of our staff — and he will forgive me, I know, for venturing to include so personal a reference — told me with tears in his eyes — “I loved that man.”

When, in 1936, Strauss was upon his own request relieved of the chairmanship of the department, he was appointed Isaac Newton Demmon Professor of English. The appointment was approved by the Regents “in view of his success throughout the English Language and Literature (1942) 17 years in developing an unusually strong department of English.” Perhaps the most obvious evidence of the strengthening referred to is to be found in a number of important additions to the staff. James Holly Hanford (Rochester ’04, Ph.D. Harvard ’09), a leading authority on Milton and now of Western Reserve University, came in 1921. In the same year came Oscar James Campbell (Harvard ’03, Ph.D. ibid. ’10), now of Columbia University, whose activity both as teacher and scholar has been largely devoted to the drama. Earl Leslie Griggs (Colorado ’22, Ph.D. London ’27), who came in 1929 and is now at the University of Pennsylvania, is well known as a Coleridge specialist. Howard Mumford Jones (Wisconsin ’14, A.M. Chicago ’16) joined the department in 1930. Now at Harvard University, he continues his widely read studies in American literature and American culture. These men were members of the department for eight, fifteen, ten, and six years respectively. Their contributions were varied, but they were all alike in the stimulus which they brought to our teaching, and in their help in building the program for graduate study. Others who began their work at Michigan in Strauss’s or in Demmon’s time might be spoken of in similar terms; but since, happily, they are still active in the department, no account of their achievements is ready to be written. The following holders of the fellowship in creative arts, which was established and maintained during President Burton’s administration, were in effect and to its great advantage associate members of the English Department: Robert Frost, then as well as now perhaps the most eminent of American poets; Robert Bridges, poet laureate of England; and Jesse Lynch Williams, American dramatist and novelist (see Part II: Fellowships in Creative Arts). Many distinguished scholars have been at times, oftenest during summer sessions, guest members of the department. Among them were: V. L. Parrington, already mentioned with reference to his Main Currents in American Thought, from the University of Washington; Ernest de Selincourt, of Birmingham, England; H. E. Woodbridge, from Wesleyan University; T. M. Parrott, from Princeton; H. S. V. Jones, from the University of Illinois; Douglas Bush, from Harvard; Ernest 18 English Language and Literature

Sutherland Bates, editor of The Bible as Living Literature and celebrated historian of American traditions; G. E. Reynolds, from the University of Colorado; R. P. McCutcheon, from Tulane University; Louis B. Wright, from the Huntington Library; and Jacob Zeitlin, from the University of Illinois. One of the earliest policies adopted during Strauss’s chairmanship involved the abandonment of the survey course as an introduction to English literature. Instead of attempting to teach sophomores the history of English literature, the staff turned to the less ambitious but still hard task of teaching them how to read, introducing historical considerations only as they might be needed for the appreciation of individual authors. Like Moses Tyler long ago, we were conscious of “the difficulty of interesting young people in critical estimates of books which they had never before seen or heard of.” If we did not commit ourselves to Tyler’s hope, that they might “come to know for themselves the exhilaration of original research,” it was partly because we were trying to adapt the method to students who were younger and possibly not as well prepared as his. The year 1924 saw the introduction of the English honors course for seniors, an offering which put on record again the department’s belief in the value of emphasis on the student’s own reading. Admission to this course was limited “to students of high standing and to those deemed qualified to do independent work.” At first nine hours of credit were given in each semester of the senior year. Later, in order to allow greater flexibility in the making of senior programs, the work was reduced to correspond to five hours of credit in each semester, and a three-hour preliminary course for juniors was added. Members of the department in charge of the honors work have carried it in addition to their regular teaching schedules. Their successful experience has been drawn upon in the planning of the degree program for honors in liberal arts, instituted by the College in 1939. The English proseminar, providing for studies in several different fields, was introduced in 1927. It is expected that candidates for the master’s degree will elect three proseminars, giving six hours of credit in all toward the total of twenty- four hours required for the degree. By this provision not only English Language and Literature (1942) 19 candidates for the doctor’s degree, who elect seminars, but also all graduate students have some training in advanced, independent work. Early in 1928 the Division of English, embracing the Departments of English, Rhetoric, and Speech, was established by authority of the Regents. This rather loose organization, operating chiefly in the field of graduate work, lost most of its usefulness in 1930, with the complete reunion of the Departments of English and Rhetoric. There were good reasons for their separation in 1903, and even better reasons for bringing them together again in 1930, but the story is too long to be told here. It may be read in the thoroughly informed account written by Strauss for the Michigan Alumnus. It is safe to say that nobody concerned would welcome a second separation. Among the richest contributions which the work in rhetoric brought to the reunited department were the Avery Hopwood and Jule Hopwood prizes for creative writing. The administration of this endowment is explained in a separate article. Other articles deal with the immense labor being done by members of the department in editing the Middle English and the Early Modern English dictionaries. When the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts ordered the division of student work into a general and a degree program, each two years long, the Department of English Language and Literature took the action quite seriously. It set rather exacting requirements for admission to concentration in English, including the requirement of a qualifying examination before third-year work might be undertaken. There seems to be a general opinion that the department has been too exacting in this respect, as no other department has thought it wise to adopt a similar policy, and, accordingly, the year 1939-40 was the last in which the concentration qualifying examination was given. Since the department became responsible in 1930 for the work in freshman composition, it has tended to ask for fewer impressionistic sketches and for more themes that test the student’s power of clear analysis and sound construction. This does not mean a declining interest in the finer and rarer elements of writing. It does imply a conviction that the use 20 English Language and Literature

of language as an instrument can with some success be taught to the average student, and that he may be guided to the attainment of a respectable degree of literacy. Those who have the interest and competence to write with a less utilitarian purpose have in advanced courses a wide range for the exercise of their talents. In order that the department may know what to expect of incoming freshmen, and that high-school students and their teachers may know what the department expects, it has conducted for some years what is known as the Correlation Project. Teachers from certain schools, large and small, are invited to send several times a year samples of their students’ work, each set containing a theme written by each member of a class in composition. Members of the departmental committee in charge of the work then read, comment upon, and grade the themes, and return them. The work with freshmen is definitely benefited by the interchange, and the teachers who co-operate are good enough to say that they and their students share in the profits. In other ways, too, the department works to improve its teaching. Frequent conferences are held with high-school teachers who are in residence for graduate work. In such conferences the teachers exchange ideas, and by showing what their problems are they help the staff not only to deal wisely with the young people, but also to give future teachers better training. To come now suddenly to the top of the academic ladder, there are the summer programs for advanced study in different fields. These are conducted under the auspices of the University, not of any single department (see Part IV: Summer Session). In organizing two of them, however — the Linguistic Institute and the Graduate Conference on Renaissance Studies — the Department of English has had a leading part. It was also active in the graduate study program in American culture and institutions, in the summer session of 1940. These programs all bring to Ann Arbor scholars of international reputation, and many less well known who come to confer and learn. It is not by accident that this writing has slipped into the present tense, for most of the things that have been said about English Language and Literature (1942) 21 the department during Professor Strauss’s chairmanship apply equally to the present regime. In 1936, after the dean of the College had asked the opinions of the members of the department, Louis Ignatius Bredvold (Minnesota ’09, Ph.D. Illinois ’21) was appointed Chairman. His policy, and that of the department, is to consolidate and to further the progress made in earlier years.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Calendar, Univ. Mich., 1871-1914. Catalogue…, Univ. Mich., 1844-71, 1914-23. Catalogue and Register, Univ. Mich., 1923-27. General Register Issue, Univ. Mich., 1927-40. Griggs, Earl L.”Louis A. Strauss.” Mich. Alum. Quart. Rev., 45 (1938): 38-41. Hinsdale, Burke A.History of the University of Michigan. Ed. by Isaac N. Demmon. Ann Arbor: Univ. Mich., 1906. Jones, Howard M., , and Thomas Edgar Casady. Life of Moses Coit Tyler. Ann Arbor: Univ. Mich. Press, 1933. President’s Report, Univ. Mich., 1853-1940. (P.R.) Proceedings of the Board of Regents …, 1864-1940. Strauss, Louis A.”Isaac Newton Demmon.”Mich. Alum., 27 (1921): 364-72. Strauss, Louis A.”Regents Merge Two Departments.”Mich. Alum., 36 (1930): 331-32. University of Michigan. Catalogue of Graduates, Non- Graduates, Officers, and Members of the Faculties, 1837-1921. Ann Arbor: Univ. Mich., 1923. University of Michigan Regents’ Proceedings …, 1837-1864. Ed. by Isaac N. Demmon. Ann Arbor: Univ. Mich., 1915. (R.P., 1837-64.) The University Record, 1938-40. Wendell, Barrett. [Memorial on Moses Coit Tyler.]Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 2d ser., 14 (1900-1901): 393-94. [2]

English Language and Literature (1975)

Richard W. Bailey

During the years of the Depression, a new constituency of students began to enroll at Michigan. As scholarships and employment under NYA and WPA programs made it possible for more students to attend and for families to educate more of their children, women entered in greater numbers and the diversity of undergraduates noticeably increased. In response, the department supplemented its offerings by giving more attention to modern literature and increased its efforts, already well-advanced under the leadership of Clarence D. Thorpe and Charles C. Fries, in the preparation of secondary school teachers. In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the Army proposed that the campus be converted to a manpower training depot, and emphasis on essential war needs led to a plan from within the University that the department be abolished to free its faculty for more martial endeavors. While this idea was not pursued, the war had a profound effect on offerings and organization. English Language and Literature (1975) 23

Some of the junior staff enlisted for military service, while others engaged in civilian war work. Many of those remaining in their University positions offered accelerated courses for Armed Services personnel. Members of the department led in the formation of two new programs that responded to the changed circumstances of the war years. Joseph K. Yamagiwa directed the Army’s Japanese Language School for the training of Intelligence officers and faculty of the newly-created Department of Far Eastern Languages and Literatures. Charles C. Fries organized the English Language Institute in 1941, initially to teach English as a foreign language to speakers of Spanish and later as a center for the preparation of foreign nationals as teachers in their home countries. Like Yamagiwa’s program, the Institute continued after the war and eventually became an independent unit of the University. Both efforts brought new faculty to Michigan. From the beginnings, long service had become a tradition in the department: Demmon had been head from 1881 to 1920; Louis A. Strauss from 1920 to 1938; Louis I. Bredvold from 1938 to 1947; and in 1947, Warner Grenelle Rice began two decades of leadership under which the department prospered as it grew. Rice built the Library and, in addition to his regular duties in the department, served as Director of the University Library from 1941 to 1953. At the beginning of Rice’s chairmanship in 1948, enrollment on the Ann Arbor campus stood at 21,360; by the end of his service, it had increased beyond 36,000. Such growth naturally led to a marked increase in the size of the department, and Rice seized the opportunity to enrich its staff and curriculum. During the two decades of Rice’s chairmanship, faculty were encouraged to develop organized programs of study for both undergraduates and graduates. Joe Lee Davis and Marvin Felheim established American Culture, while Austin Warren brought Comparative Literature to status as a distinct field of graduate teaching. John Arthos and H. V. S. Ogden were particularly active in College Honors and Great Books, and Marvin Felheim instituted the first film courses at the college level. In the early 1960s, Alan T. Gaylord and James H. Robertson joined a coalition whose efforts resulted in the 24 English Language and Literature

establishment of the Residential College. In most such initiatives, faculty retained their appointments in the department, but when the Department of Linguistics was formed in 1961, Chavarria-Aguilar, Gedney, and Pike were appointed to the new administrative unit with Albert H. Marckwardt as Chairman-Designate. Though Robert Frost and Robert Bridges had held visiting appointments for brief periods during the 1920s, creative writing came to occupy its important position at Michigan only after the mighty stimulus of the 1930 bequest that supports the Avery Hopwood and Jule Hopwood prizes. Designated for student writers of fiction, poetry, drama, and the essay, the Hopwood awards continue to attract young writers to whom faculty within the department have devoted themselves with special energy. The teaching of introductory composition has drawn on a substantial part of the department’s energy and, from the earliest days, provided employment for graduate students pursuing doctoral studies. Though many faculty seldom teach in the freshman program, a few have given special leadership, particularly Carleton F. Wells (who devoted himself to the difficult work demanded of the Director from 1936 to 1949), John Weimer, Hubert M. English, Jr., Sheridan Baker, Walter H. Clark, and Bernard Van’t Hul. In his chairmanship Rice emphasized departmental responsibility to educate on all levels. When he joined the department in 1929, there was little question that the University should inform the thinking of secondary school teachers, both in their preparation and through regular contacts with University faculty. Though other colleges and universities in the state came to assume a larger share of this work in the postwar years, Michigan’s English professors continued regular contacts with teachers through school accreditation visits, meetings of such organizations as the Michigan Schoolmasters’ Club (among whose founders in 1886 was John Dewey) and the Michigan Council of Teachers of English, and, in the 1960s, sponsorship of a series of NDEA summer institutes for high school teachers. Cooperation with the School of Education was maintained through joint appointments. Rice himself was a English Language and Literature (1975) 25 member of the Commission on English, a national project designed to foster cooperation among school teachers and university faculties and to provide a rationally organized curriculum for students preparing for college study. Rice supported yet another effort, known as English in Every Classroom, a project aimed at youth who might never reach college. When Fred Newton Scott surveyed the English Department at Michigan in 1894-95, twenty-one courses were taught by four regular faculty and two graduate assistants; the equivalent of 3,500 hours of credit was given that year for study in English. Eighty years later, nearly five hundred courses and sections were taught by seventy-nine staff members of professorial rank (a high in the department’s history), a dozen lecturers, and nearly a hundred graduate students assigned to part-time teaching duties; 45,000 hours of credit were awarded for the year’s work in the department. These figures do not include graduate teaching that serves the programs and other departments closely linked to English faculty interests, such as American Culture, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics. With Rice’s retirement in 1968, the department came under the leadership of Russell A. Fraser (1968-73). Like Rice, Fraser encouraged initiatives that led to the formation of new programs of study, among them the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, the Medieval and Renaissance Collegium, and Women’s Studies, of which Margaret A. Lourie served as Director. At Fraser’s initiative, the department’s teaching schedule was reduced to five from six days a week and the normal course load for faculty from six to four courses each year, thus bringing the department in line with the work load established for most departments in the College some years earlier. During the 1970s, as enrollments in the University stabilized, the number of faculty was accordingly reduced. The department found it hard to respond to an abrupt decline in the number of students preparing for careers in secondary school teaching — from 400 students in 1968-69 to 130 in 1972-73 — and the deference to renewed demands for relevance disturbed the existing balance of historical and contemporary survey courses. When Jay L. Robinson was appointed Chairman in 26 English Language and Literature

1975, he inherited innovation but not the growth that had made possible many of the achievements of the past. Even so, substantial funds from the Ford and Mellon foundations were secured to put the Middle English Dictionary on a sound financial footing and to begin the work of the English Composition Board. New faculty have been appointed and new programs have been instituted including the intensive annual New England Literature Program, a six-week course of study in composition, creative writing, and American literature held in rural New Hampshire. The 1970s brought a new awareness of the need for curricular reform responsive to students’ interests and the necessity of searching for new approaches, some of them interdisciplinary in conception and some responding to such neglected modes of artistic expression as film, fantasy and science fiction, and popular culture. In such new efforts and within the traditional domain of English studies — literature, language, and composition — the department has retained both continuity and the position of leadership established at Michigan more than a century ago. [3]

English Language and Literature (2015)

John Knott

The University catalogue for 1854-55 describes the study of English as “designed chiefly to establish fundamental principles of criticism and to cultivate correctness and propriety of style.” Texts from English literature entered the curriculum initially as rhetorical models, supplementing Greek and Latin ones. Under a few early professors (Erastus Haven, Andrew Dickson White, Moses Coit Tyler) the study of English grew to embrace philology and then literary history as well as rhetoric and eventually American as well as English literature. Courses in literary “masterpieces” became a staple of the curriculum. The Department of Rhetoric split off from what was then known as the Department of English and Rhetoric in 1903 and under the leadership of Fred Newton Scott took responsibility for instruction in rhetoric and composition, also offering courses in journalism and creative writing. By 1930 the rationale for maintaining a separate Department of Rhetoric was no longer 28 English Language and Literature

compelling, and it was reabsorbed into what became the Department of English Language and Literature. The mission statement that currently appears on the departmental website, which has superseded the catalogue as the source of official information, suggests how far the present department has come from the original aim of cultivating “correctness and propriety of style” through the study of a few classic works of English literature. The mid-nineteenth century ideal now seems quaint, more suited to a gentlemanly elite than to the Michigan undergraduates of today, and it would be difficult to find faculty who would agree that the fundamental principles of criticism are self-evident. The stated aims of the present department embrace four related activities: “surveying and analyzing the diverse range of texts in the English language; researching and teaching the rich history of that language; fostering exceptional creative as well as critical writing; and studying texts in relation to other cultural phenomena.” The department continues to regard teaching writing, creative as well as expository and analytical, as one of its central responsibilities and remains committed to the study of the history of English language, one of the Michigan department’s distinguishing strengths. Yet its purview now extends well beyond English and American literature, to texts in English (Anglophone literature) representing a variety of nations and cultures, and the faculty study these texts in relation to cultural and social contexts, often drawing upon methodologies from other disciplines. This faculty has become strikingly more diverse ethnically, far more open to women, and more pluralistic in its aims and its scholarly and creative pursuits. The pace of change has accelerated over the past several decades, as the department has undergone a series of dramatic transformations, in the process significantly improving its national reputation.. The appointment as chair of Russell Fraser, a prominent Renaissance scholar then chairing the Vanderbilt English department, marked the beginning of the modern history of Michigan’s department. Fraser was the first chair to be appointed from outside and served for five years (1968-73), breaking the tradition of long-serving heads of department English Language and Literature (2015) 29 appointed from within; his predecessor, Warner G. Rice, had served from 1948 to 1967. Fraser managed to reduce the standard teaching load from three to two courses a semester and overhauled salary and promotion procedures, broadening participation by introducing faculty subcommittees in both areas. He pushed to increase the scholarly productivity of the faculty and raise the national visibility of the department, in line with college expectations. Under Fraser’s leadership the department continued to be known for outstanding undergraduate teaching, in lower-level courses as well as advanced ones, and for outreach to the community in the form of involvement with high schools and with extension teaching, strongly encouraged in the Rice era. The undergraduate curriculum was liberalized, however, by the introduction of new kinds of thematic and generic courses, including film and “black literature.” Fraser founded a new undergraduate program that he would subsequently direct, the Medieval and Renaissance Collegium. In the Ph.D. program exam-based sequences of courses replaced requirements intended to assure comprehensive coverage, allowing for more specialization. Fraser’s tenure as chair was marked by several notable senior appointments, including Joseph Blotner, author of the definitive biography of William Faulkner, and Robert Hayden, the widely recognized African-American poet and Detroit native who would subsequently become Poetry Consultant of the Library of Congress (a position now known as Poet Laureate). Albert Marckwardt returned to Michigan as a member of the English Department (he had been the first chair of Linguistics) after retiring from Princeton. Modernist and Yeats scholar George Bornstein and Ira Konigsberg, an eighteenth-century scholar who would become one of the first to teach and write about film at Michigan, joined the faculty as associate professors. Fraser’s assistant professor hires included John Kucich, a scholar of Victorian fiction; Americanist Robert Weisbuch; eighteenth- century scholar Lincoln Faller; and Eric Rabkin, an expert in narrative theory who would become known for teaching and writing about science fiction and fantasy. In the early 1970s eighteenth-century scholar Emily Cloyd became the first woman to earn tenure in English. The fundamental change in 30 English Language and Literature

the direction of the department promoted by Fraser triggered vigorous resistance from some faculty, including senior members of an executive committee newly liberated from the sway of a powerful, long-serving chair. Discord rooted in differences over expectations regarding hiring, promotion, and merit pay persisted for several years. It was exacerbated by a sharp decline in the promotion rate for untenured faculty, partly as a result of denials at the college level, and reached a climax during the short tenure of Fraser’s successor as chair, John L. Styan (1973-74), one of the pioneers of “performance criticism” of drama. After a year of departmental turmoil, Styan resigned to become chair and Andrew Mellon Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. The department was in danger of being placed in receivership by the College over concerns about its ability to govern itself when Jay Robinson, who had been trained in English linguistics and then broadened his interests to include literacy and composition, was appointed as chair to replace Styan. During his tenure (1974-81) Robinson succeeded in establishing a new tone and reviving the morale of the faculty while sustaining the effort to raise the department’s scholarly profile. He lured two senior scholars from Indiana University, Martha Vicinus and Robert Lewis. Vicinus, an internationally prominent scholar of nineteenth-century labor and feminist literature and history and the first female full professor in the department, would go on to become director of the Program in Women’s Studies and then chair of English. In 1994 she was appointed Distinguished University Professor of English, Women’s Studies, and History. Lewis, an accomplished medievalist, would succeed Sherman Kuhn as editor of the Middle English Dictionary (MED) and bring that internationally acclaimed project to completion in 2001, 71 years after work on it had begun at Michigan in 1930. Robinson also brought C.A. Patrides from York University, bolstering an area of traditional strength at Michigan by adding a major scholar of English Renaissance literature. American literature scholar James McIntosh was hired from Yale University as an associate professor. Assistant professor appointments included medievalists Macklin Smith and Thomas Toon; Alan Wald, specializing in the literature of the English Language and Literature (2015) 31

American Left; and Enoch Brater, an expert in modern drama who left the niU versity of Pennsylvania to come to Michigan. Robinson faced a period of declining undergraduate and graduate enrollments and steady erosion of faculty strength, from 82 full-time equivalent faculty (FTEs) in 1971 to 67 in 1978 and from 37 assistant professors to 13 over the same period. Declines in undergraduate enrollment and English concentrators could be explained partly by a severe drop in teaching certificate candidates and the popularity of the college’s new Bachelor of General Studies degree, but they also mirrored a national trend. The department responded by simplifying requirements for the concentration in 1975, replacing a system based on large survey courses with one that required a series of three core courses offered in independent, faculty-taught sections that featured selected major writers. The new requirements offered greater freedom in the choice of electives and represented a move away from the ideal of comprehensive coverage. A required senior seminar would be added later, and more faculty would be assigned to courses intended for students in their first two years. The department also intensified efforts to attract non-concentrators by creating new thematic, upper level courses and aggressively publicizing them, prompting a move to college-wide publication of course descriptions. Enrollments began to rise again as this strategy took effect. In 1973 Walter Clark and Alan Howes had begun a summer New England Literature Program (NELP) based in New Hampshire that would prove extremely popular with undergraduates. A new graduate degree created primarily to train students for community college teaching, the Doctor of Arts, had been introduced in 1971. While chair Robinson served as Executive Director of the MED, helping to secure major grants from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) that made it possible to hire additional editorial staff to accelerate work on the dictionary. Robinson also collaborated with Daniel Fader in a successful effort to establish an English Composition Board (ECB) reporting to the dean, which was empowered by a vote of the LS&A faculty in 1978 to administer the introductory composition requirement and a new upper 32 English Language and Literature

level writing requirement that could be met by courses taught in departments across the college. He would later succeed Fader as director of the ECB. Whereas the MED built upon Michigan’s traditional strength in philology and editing, involvement with the ECB reflected the department’s longstanding commitment to rhetoric and the teaching of writing. The creation of the ECB led to reforms in the teaching of introductory composition and a revival of the departmental tradition of involvement in K-12 education. With substantial support from the Mellon Foundation, the ECB sponsored faculty-led workshops in Michigan high schools and summer conferences in Ann Arbor for high school teachers. Bernard van t’Hul and Richard Bailey, a leading scholar of the history of the English language and of lexicography committed to working with schools and community colleges, participated in these activities along with Robinson and Fader. Departmental initiatives in the 1980s would involve ongoing workshops for Rogers City, Michigan, schools on the teaching of writing and William Alexander’s work with Detroit students in connection with his course in Theater and Social Change. Alexander would subsequently develop the Prison Creative Arts Program (PCAP), beginning with a theater workshop in 1990 and growing to include annual exhibitions of prisoners’ art accompanied by a series of related events. The work by Alexander and his students with Michigan prisoners, in collaboration with Janie Paul of the School of Art and Design, would gain national recognition, and. Alexander would be named University Professor of the Year in 2006 by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). During the late 1960s and 1970s the department began compiling annual lists of faculty by areas of primary interest. In addition to traditional historical periods these included major genres (poetry, drama, fiction), a cluster of areas related to the department’s commitment to the teaching of English language and rhetoric (language, composition, pedagogy), and also the newly popular area of critical theory, reflecting the surge of interest in theory across the profession. A Committee on Scholarly and Creative Activities (COSCA) sponsored scholarly presentations by faculty and a series of poetry readings by visiting poets. More women were hired (Americanists Julie English Language and Literature (2015) 33

Ellison and June Howard and modernist Margot Norris as well as Vicinus), and active efforts to hire minority faculty continued, with Carolyn Gipson and fiction writer Gayl Jones joining the faculty in this period. Lemuel Johnson, poet and critic of African and Caribbean literature, had been hired in 1968 and became actively involved in developing the Center for African- American and African Studies (CAAS), becoming its director in 1985. Renaissance scholar John Knott was appointed to succeed Robinson but delayed the beginning of his term to serve as Acting Dean of the College for the academic year 1980-81, taking over as chair in January of 1982. Ejner Jensen, who as Associate Chair under Robinson had played an important role in calming the departmental discontent that Robinson inherited, served as Acting Chair for the fall of 1982. Knott urged his colleagues to establish a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program that would build on Michigan’s history of hiring writers as regular and visiting faculty and supporting creative writing through the nationally known Hopwood Awards for student writers. The MFA program was launched in 1983 with newly hired fiction writer George Garrett as director and with the hope that teaching opportunities in a burgeoning undergraduate creative writing program and the prospect of winning Hopwood Awards, along with an augmented writing faculty, would be sufficient to attract students until additional means of support could be found. When Garrett left to accept an endowed chair at the University of Virginia in 1985, fiction writer Nicholas Delbanco was hired from Bennington College to replace him. During Delbanco’s directorship (1985-2002) the program grew to become one of the best in the country, with graduates bringing it recognition through prize-winning publications and with applications steadily increasing, from 28 in 1983 to 300 by 1992. MFA students became a presence in graduate courses in literature, required by the program in addition to writing workshops, and largely took over the teaching of introductory courses in creative writing. Knott hired poets Richard Tillinghast and Alice Fulton to teach in the MFA program and Tobin Siebers (from Columbia University) to fill a pressing need in critical theory. Anne Gere 34 English Language and Literature

was appointed jointly with the School of Education to teach courses in rhetoric and pedagogy and contribute to the Ph. D. Program in English and Education, which she would subsequently direct, initially as co-director with Robinson. Gere would later become President of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), following several predecessors in the department in holding that position. Knott pursued a strategy of hiring promising associate professors early in their careers that would become common practice as the department sought to build the strength of the faculty rapidly. In addition to Gere, Siebers, and Tillinghast, Victorian scholar Herbert Tucker joined the faculty as a tenured associate professor during this period, as did Miltonist and restoration scholar James Turner and eighteenth-century scholar James Winn, soon to publish what would be recognized as the definitive biography of John Dryden. As the quality of appointments rose, the department increasingly found itself having to defend against outside offers in competitions that it sometimes lost. After several years Tucker left for the University of Virginia and Turner for the University of California at Berkeley. Winn eventually left to become chair at Boston University. Such losses were unwelcome but signalled that English was coming to resemble stronger LSA departments in attracting highly sought after faculty. Assistant professor appointments from the 1980s included Renaissance scholar Michael Schoenfeldt; Kerry Larson in American literature; Michael Awkward in African-American literature; and the first departmental couple, Linda Gregerson and new historicist Steven Mullaney, both Renaissance scholars and Gregerson also a poet who would come to play an important role in the MFA program. The departmental commitment to studies of dramatic performance, pursued by Enoch Brater among others, was strengthened by the appointment of director and critic John Russell Brown as chair of Theatre and Drama and Professor of English and that of theater critic Benedict Nightingale as Professor of English. During this period the department began fundraising efforts supported by the college, chiefly by hosting gatherings of Hopwood winners in Ann Arbor and New York. It also worked through differences with the ECB having to do with authority English Language and Literature (2015) 35 over introductory composition courses, laying the foundation for a more cooperative relationship in the future. As the MFA program became established, many more visiting writers came to campus, some for short-term residencies. More lecturers came as well, as faculty hosted lecture series and conferences that brought the department into the mainstream of the profession. Knott and John D’Arms, chair of Classical Studies, collaborated in planning a new Humanities Institute at the request of the provost and the dean of LS&A. They were joined on a small planning committee that defined the aims and structure of the Institute by the deans of LS&A and the School of Music (Peter Steiner and Paul Boylan) and Domna Stanton of Romance Languages. Knott would serve as Interim Director for the Institute’s startup year, and Winn would become the Institute’s first Director. By the mid-1980s undergraduate enrollments were increasing at the rate of ten percent a year, with Weisbuch energetically promoting new and revamped courses as Associate Chair, and the number of English concentrators had risen to 600 from a low of just over 200 in 1975. The curricular reforms of the 1970s made the concentration more attractive, and large lecture courses such as those offered by Rabkin and Ralph Williams grew in popularity. Disputes over the canon of English and American literature were spreading in the profession, however, and these were reflected in departmental debates. The principle of pluralism in critical approaches as well as in scholarly and pedagogical aims was well established in the department by this time, and new approaches and interests were reflected in assistant professor appointments such as that of Anne Herrmann to teach feminist criticism and theory and Anita Norich to teach Yiddish American literature. Traditionalists co- existed, sometimes uneasily, with others who advocated more active efforts to expand the curriculum to include literature by women and minorities. The consensus about what should be required of English concentrators was dissolving, with commitment to the idea of a “core” of canonical texts weakening as disagreements about what should be included increased. The time was ripe for another round of curricular change, and also 36 English Language and Literature

an escalation in the hiring of minority faculty, when Weisbuch was appointed chair. Weisbuch’s tenure as chair (1987-1994) was marked by fundamental changes in the undergraduate and graduate programs and in the composition of the faculty. With June Howard as his Associate Chair, Weisbuch initiated discussions that led to broadening the traditional canon, first through a vigorously debated but ultimately embraced New Traditions requirement (1988) that concentrators take a course in minority literature or literature written by women, then through a thorough revision of existing requirements (1990-91). The core courses were dropped in favor of a structure intended to ensure some chronological distribution of elections and the inclusion of American literature but with less concern for communicating a sense of literary history. A new preprequisite designed to expose students to a variety of critical approaches early in their careers (What Is Literature?) was added and the senior seminar made optional. The well-regarded English honors program, which had existed in some form since 1924, continued to offer a sequence of seven courses spanning English and American literature, with one of these now devoted to critical theory. An alternate honors track was established for students who preferred to design an individualized program with a faculty member, along with a new honors track in creative writing. By the early 1990s the number of concentrators in English had risen to over 1000, and enrollments in English courses generally had almost doubled since 1979. Applications to graduate programs had quadrupled over the previous decade, partly because of the addition of an MFA program, but dissatisfaction with the role of the MA program had grown. The department decided to discontinue admitting students to a separate masters program and instead admit a smaller number directly to the Ph.D. program, finding a way to guarantee first-year fellowship support as well as support for three additional years through teaching. Qualifiying exams were simplified, and a third-term review replaced the use of the masters program to screen prospective Ph.D.. students. One effect of the changes was to make the department more competitive in the annual effort to recruit top graduate students. English Language and Literature (2015) 37

In 1990 admission to the DA program was suspended, a reflection of declining interest on the part of concerned faculty as well as a dearth of applicants. The small Ph.D. program in English and Education remained strong, typically recruiting about five new students with prior teaching experience a year and consistently placing its graduates. The program began to focus on literacy and composition theory as well as teacher training under the leadership of Robinson and Gere. The MFA program continued to become more competitive with the top programs as regular and visiting faculty were added and more University resources were found to use for student support in the first eary . Weisbuch strengthened the department’s cohort of writers by appointing poet Thylias Moss and fiction writer Charles Baxter, who would become a mainstay of the MFA program. Leonard Barkan joined the faculty from Northwestern as Professor of English and Art History, buttressing a Renaissance group still recovering from the untimely death of Patrides in 1986. The ranks of departmental medievalists, depleted by retirements, were augmented by the addition of Theresa Tinkle and Karla Taylor, the latter coming from Yale University as an associate professor. Americanists Jonathan Freedman, also from Yale, and Patricia Yaeger, from Harvard University, were appointed as associate professors. Marjorie Levinson, a new historicist working on English romanticism, was hired from the University of Pennsylvania as a professor. Weisbuch took advantage of the University’s Target of Opportunity program to increase the department’s minority representation dramatically. Simon Gikandi, originally from Kenya and an expert in African and Caribbean literature and postcolonial theory, joined the department as an associate professor, along with Stephen Sumida, who specialized in Asian-Pacific literature. Marlon Ross came as an associate professor as well, on an appointment split between the department and CAAS. A series of assistant professor appointments (Sandra Gunning, Rafia Zafar, Veronica Gregg, David Artis) further increased the department’s commitment to African-American and African literature. Other junior appointments of Asian-American and Latino faculty, including Rei Terada in English and Comparative Literature, 38 English Language and Literature

were made possible by the Target of Opportunity program and a strategy of embracing joint appointments with LS&A programs. Trading four lecturer positions for three junior faculty ones and committing more faculty to introductory courses made possible further assistant professor appointments, including that of modernist John Whittier-Ferguson. The addition of thirty new faculty in five years during Weisbuch’s tenure as chair raised the overall strength of the department to 71 full-time-equivalent faculty (up from 60 in 1987). It also changed the demographics of the faculty, increasing the representation of women, a majority of those hired during this period, as well as that of minorities. A new category that appeared on the list of faculty by areas in a 5-year plan prepared in 1992, “Ethnic and Global Literatures in English,” reflected a significant shift in the department’s understanding of the scope of its mission. Another kind of shift, in staffing of lower level writing and literature courses, was taking place during this period. While the department was assigning more faculty to these courses, including some to a new literature-based course in introductory composition, it was also relying increasingly on lecturers to teach lower level courses. The lecturer cohort was anchored by a group of nine senior lecturers chosen for their excellence as teachers and appointed to three-year terms. Under William Ingram as Director of Composition, they assumed a major role in training graduate students who were beginning their teaching experience. The increased use of lecturers, including a larger number appointed to one-year terms, was necessary in part to compensate for the declining number of doctoral students teaching composition courses and some introductory literature courses as graduate student instructors (GSIs). At this time the department was also contributing approximately 4.5 faculty FTEs to directing and teaching in interdisciplinary LS&A programs. English was supplying much of the leadership of these programs, with implications for the department’s ability to cover its own courses. In the early 1990s English faculty directed CAAS, Women’s Studies, American Culture, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics as well as the English Composition Board and the Institute for the Humanities. English Language and Literature (2015) 39

Faculty were publishing a growing stream of books, copies of which were prominently displayed in the chair’s office. They were hosting major conferences (on Robert Hayden, editorial theory and the editing of modernist texts, and minority literatures). They were increasingly winning national fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA), and NEH. Several conducted summer institutes for teachers funded by NEH, and several more spent a year as fellows of the National Humanities Center. English was well represented among faculty and graduate student fellows of the Humanities Institute, given a year to pursue writing projects in a community that fostered interdisciplinary work. The influx of new faculty, many in emerging fields, had an energizing effect and contributed to the gradual rise in the department’s standing in national rankings. Weisbuch’s successor as chair, Martha Vicinus (1994-98), oversaw the relocation of the department from Haven Hall to the upper floors of Angell Hall and an adjoining floor of a new building connecting Haven and Angell, Tisch Hall. Faculty and graduate student instructors shared the new space in Tisch, along with the offices of a newly constituted First and Second Year Studies Program, the successor to the introductory composition program. The main departmental offices and a majority of the faculty offices moved to spacious, renovated quarters in Angell that included attractive new public space suitable for hosting meetings and visiting speakers. This period also saw the transformation of the ECB in 1998 into the endowed Gayle Sweetland Writing Center, dedicated to the study of composition and pedagogy by graduate students and faculty across the college. A series of directors drawn from English (Tinkle, Jensen, Vicinus, Gere) would strengthen the links of the Sweetland Center with the department and expand its activities to include appointing faculty fellows from other LS&A departments, sponsoring national conferences, offering a range of writing courses for graduate as well as undergraduate students, and conducting research on writing. Many of its lecturers would be drawn the ranks of recent graduates of the MFA program, and some would be jointly appointed with English. 40 English Language and Literature

Under Vicinus the department reorganized lower-division courses, making all of them writing intensive and committing more tenure-track faculty to teaching at this level, an effort recognized by an LS&A departmental award for undergraduate teaching. Periodic reviews of lecturers on continuing appointments were instituted, to ensure excellence in teaching from this growing cohort. The honors program, directed by Whittier-Ferguson, introduced a new course designed to prepare students for writing the honors thesis and, thanks to a generous donor, established the John Wagner Prize for the best thesis of the year and began to support student research trips. An annual Honors Convocation in which students described their theses to an audience of parents, faculty, and friends as part of graduation activities had been established by this time. A new joint Ph.D. program in English and Women’s Studies was launched in 1995. Faculty members continued to be recognized for outstanding undergraduate teaching. An impressive number would be named to Thurnau professorships, established by LS&A in 1988 (Rabkin, Williams, Weisbuch, Howard, Tinkle, Whittier-Ferguson, Alexander, Gere, Anne Curzan). Undergraduates voted to recognize three with the Golden Apple award given to the person judged the best teacher in LS&A: Rabkin, senior lecturer John Rubadeau, and Williams twice, the second time with a lifetime award on the eve of his retirement. In February, 1997, Vicinus convened the first meeting of a new English Advisory Board made up of highly successful graduates with a continuing interest in the activities of the department. Their advice and engagement would give a major boost to departmental fundraising and lead in time to a series of significant gifts, including two establishing awards for graduate student teaching (the David and Linda Moscow Prizes and the Ben Prize for outstanding teaching by a lecturer, honoring alumnus Laurence Kirschbaum). The department decided to shrink the Ph.D. program further in response to the scarcity of tenure-track jobs, a reflection of the fact that institutions of higher education had begun to rely on more adjunct faculty as their budgets were cut. Meanwhile, the MFA program continued to rise in national reputation. Moss and Fulton both won MacArthur awards, and Baxter won a Leila Wallace—Readers’ English Language and Literature (2015) 41

Digest fellowship. His novel The Feast of Love, set largely in Ann Arbor, would be chosen as a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction orf 2000. With fellow Victorian scholar John Kucich as her Associate Chair, Vicinus hired modernist Suzanne Raitt and Renaissance and feminist scholar Valerie Traub as associate professors. Sidonie Smith, known for her work on autobiographical writing by women, joined the faculty as Director of Women’s Studies and Professor of English. Jamaican poet Lorna Goodison augmented the department’s growing contingent of creative writers. Fiction writer Eileen Pollack was hired to direct the undergraduate creative writing program (she would subsequently join the tenure-track faculty as an assistant professor). Assistant professors appointed during this period included Yopie Prins, specializing in Victorian poetry and translation; eighteenth-century scholar David Porter; Adela Pinch in nineteenth-century British literature, and Susan Scott Parrish in early American literature. Vicinus, supported by the department’s Executive Committee, set high standards for scholarship. A cluster of negative decisions in tenure cases by the Executive Committee generated enough discontent, particularly among recently hired faculty, to complicate faculty governance. Vicinus decided to return to her busy scholarly career a year early, and Tobin Siebers agreed to serve as Interim Chair for 1998-99. His brief tenure was marked by a series of important appointments, including fiction writer Peter Ho Davies, modernist Sara Blair, Alisse Portnoy in rhetoric, and Xiomara Santamarina and Ifeoma Nwankwo in African-American studies. David Halperin joined the department as a collegiate professor, strengthening the growing presence in gender and sexuality studies; he would subsequently be named Distinguished University Professor of the History and Theory of Sexuality. Lincoln Faller, chair from 1999 to 2002, presided over a period of celebrations. The completion of the MED in 2001 was celebrated at the annual conference of medievalists in Kalamazoo, Michigan, as well as locally. It subsequently would become available online, along with selected medieval texts and bibliographic resources, in the Middle English Compendium 42 English Language and Literature

edited by Frances McSparran, faculty medievalist and longtime associate editor of the dictionary. Writers and editors from around the country gathered for a conference honoring Lawrence Goldstein for his transformation of the Michigan Quarterly Review into a highly regarded general quarterly, known for special issues on such subjects as The Automobile and American Culture and the Secret Spaces of Childhood, in twenty-five years as editor. The twentieth year of the MFA program was celebrated by a reunion that drew many of its graduates back to Ann Arbor. The occasion coincided with an unusually rich time for visiting writers (including Nobel Prize winners Seamus Heaney, Wole Soyinka, and Derek Walcott) and the creation of the Helen Herzog Zell professorship for visiting writers of fiction. This period was marked by efforts to redefine traditional areas of study that would continue as faculty rethought assumptions about what literature should be studied and what contexts were relevant to understanding it. These were encouraged by the formation of faculty interest groups, with the help of funds from the college, to encourage collaborative activity by faculty in particular areas. A related aim was to recapture the attention of faculty with joint appointments who were finding their intellectual homes in the interdisciplinary programs in which they held an appointment. As joint appointments multiplied with the University’s growing emphasis on interdisciplinary work the possible costs to the intellectual life of the department were becoming apparent, as were the possibilities for difficulties at promotion time. The department had to learn to strike a balance between encouraging faculty to play active roles in the interdisciplinary life of the college and university and claiming their allegiance. The rethinking of fields took a variety of forms, reflecting and in some cases helping to shape national trends in the discipline. With Schoenfeldt as director the Medieval and Renaissance Collegium became the Program for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) and extended its reach to the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The growing use of the term early modern in preference to Renaissance studies suggested the greater engagement with history and culture by faculty English Language and Literature (2015) 43 working in sixteenth and seventeenth-century English literature. Faculty in American literature offered a course titled “What is American Literature?” in which they juxtaposed newer or neglected texts in American literature (Native American, Latino, African American, Asian American) with classic ones. At about the same time Gere was enlisting other faculty as well as English graduate students in a national project known as Making American Literatures that involved bringing high school and university faculties together to rethink the teaching of American literature by asking what new writers, representing different ethnicities, should be included and how the definition of literature should be broadened. Through this project summer workshops funded by the university and area school systems as well as NEH explored new approaches with secondary school teachers. Appointments under Faller continued the trend of reinvigorating traditional areas while developing new ones. Fiction writer Reginald McKnight was appointed in creative writing. Distinguished Canadian translator and poet Anne Carson also joined the faculty, with joint appointments in Comparative Literature and Classical Studies, leaving after several years to accept a position at New York University. Assistant professor appointments included Anne Curzan in rhetoric and English language, Joshua Miller in twentieth- century American, Catherine Sanok in medieval, Julian Levinson in Jewish American literature and the Frankel Center of Judaic Studies, Susan Najita in Asian American and Pacific Island studies, and Andrea Zemgulys in nineteenth and twentieth-century British. Areas of specialization became increasingly difficult to characterize as the interests of faculty grew more wide-ranging and interdisciplinary and the boundaries between genres and historical periods more fluid. This period saw the first of several residencies by England’s Royal Shakespeare Company, with marathon performances of the three parts of Shakespeare’s Henry VI followed by Richard III. Williams acted as instigator and liaison for a related series of class visits and presentations, a role that he would continue to play in future residencies. English climbed from 14th to 11th in the latest U.S News and World Report ranking of Ph.D. 44 English Language and Literature

programs, continuing its rise from 17th in the 1980s, and the MFA program was ranked 6th. The addition of an assistant director of the MFA program would prove important to its future development, making it possible to mount more ambitious schedules of visiting writers as well as to deal with increasing demands on the faculty director. In a significant policy change, the department moved from having tenured members of the Executive Committee decide on tenure recommendations to involving the whole tenured faculty in these decisions. Faller oversaw the transition, establishing expectations about the responsibility of faculty for informing themselves about the candidates and developing procedures to be followed in the deliberations. As Interim Chair for 2002-3 Patricia Yaeger presided over the department in a difficult budgetary environment in which it was nonetheless possible to continue to make some appointments. Poet and translator Khaled Mattawa added further diversity to the faculty of the MFA Program with his background in Arabic literary tradition. Gregg Crane joined the department as an associate professor, with interests in law and literature (and a law degree) as well as nineteenth-century American. Assistant Professor Jennifer Wenzel brought expertise in African and South Asian literatures in English and in postcolonial theory. The department continued to support outreach activities, including the work of Delbanco and other writers with the Detroit Writers in the Schools program and that of Ellison with the national Imagining America project on artists and writers in public life that she directed. It also assumed responsibility, with LS&A, for the annual Bear River Writers’ Conference, founded by Tillinghast to bring together aspiring local writers and nationally known ones in a northern Michigan setting on Walloon Lake, Sidonie Smith, who served as chair from 2003 to 2009, had earned undergraduate and masters degrees from the department in a very different era for women, the early to mid 1960s. As chair, she pursued a policy of “maintaining the best of the old while pursuing the best of the new” in literary, rhetorical, linguistic, and cultural studies, aided by Freedman as associate chair. Lucy Hartley and Daniel Hack were hired as English Language and Literature (2015) 45 associate professors to strengthen a contingent in nineteenth- century British literature diminished by the retirement of Vicinus and the departure of Kucich to Rutgers University. The appointment of poet A.Van Jordan from the University of Texas as a professor as well as fiction writer Michael Byers and poet and fiction writer Laura Kasischke as assistant professors renewed the faculty of the MFA program, depleted by departures including those of Fulton, McKnight, Baxter, and Tillinghast (to retirement). Michael Awkward, who had left earlier to accept a position at the University of Pennsylvania, was persuaded to return to Michigan as Professor of English and African-American Studies. A series of assistant professor appointments added faculty in traditional fields with new interests and critical approaches: Gillian White in modern British and American poetry and poetics; Megan Sweeney in twentieth-century American, joint with CAAS; Christina Lupton in seventeenth and eighteenth-century British; Sean Silver in eighteenth-century British. Victor Mendoza, with an appointment in Women’s Studies as well as English, added to the departmental presence in minority literatures and gender and sexuality studies. Several appointments broadened and invigorated the department’s evolving commitment to performance studies. Assistant Professor Amy Carroll brought training in anthropology and expertise in Latin American performance. Associate Professor Petra Kuppers added a broader understanding of what constitutes performance and also expertise in disability studies, an emerging field that Siebers played a significant role in defining through his theoretical and personal writing. Professor W.B. Worthen, a leader in studies of dramatic performance with his work on Shakespeare and modern drama, joined the department from the University of California, Berkeley, and remained for several years before departing for Columbia University. Well-known Shakespearean scholar Barbara Hodgdon became a member of the faculty after retiring from Drake University. By 2008 the gender balance of the department would have shifted to the point that the ranks of the tenure-track faculty contained more women than men, reflecting a shift thatas w occurring in much of the profession. The scope of English studies, nationally as well as at Michigan, 46 English Language and Literature

was continuing to expand as faculty interests became more comparative, transnational, and interdisciplinary. Modernists explored various “modernisms,” and Americanists began to describe themselves as specializing in U.S. literatures. In their teaching as well as their research faculty in traditional fields expanded their sense of what texts and methodologies were relevant and moved beyond a single-minded focus on national literatures. Some played active roles in interdisciplinary initiatives involving colleagues from other departments, including a popular one in Atlantic Studies. Global and postcolonial literature, ethnic literatures, and gender and sexuality studies claimed increasing attention, along with emerging critical fields. In addition to disability studies, visual culture studies attracted faculty including Blair, Porter, Hartley, and Zemgulys. Other faculty (S. Smith and Wenzel in addition to Crane) were drawn to issues involving the relationship of law and literature, including human rights. Ecocriticism, claiming growing attention in the profession as environmental issues prompted new ways of looking at literary texts, became an interest for faculty including Knott, Parrish, Wenzel, and Yaeger. Knott chaired faculty committees appointed by the dean that planned and implemented an interdisciplinary Program in the Environment for undergraduates, administered jointly by LS&A and the School of Natural Resources and Environment, and served as interim director for its first eary and a half. One of the most significant developments of the first decade of the twenty-first century was the growing impact of digitization on departmental and professional life. Bailey and Ingram had pioneered work in digital humanities, and Rabkin would teach a course in the humanities and technology and become the faculty in-house expert on digital technologies and resources, including the University library’s rapidly expanding collection of data bases and digitized texts. A regularly updated departmental website became the primary means of communicating with students and the public. Faculty used the web to circulate course materials and to extend class discussion and interactions with students online. The Sweetland Writing Center struck out into new territory by offering courses in digital media, including one in the rhetoric of blogging, English Language and Literature (2015) 47 responding to a fundamental shift in modes of communication that English faculty were beginning to respond to as well in their teaching and their professional lives. In 2011 the department would take a first step toward engaging with the new field of digital humanities by appointing Tung-Hui Hu, who came with an undergraduate degree in computer science as well as a Ph.D. in rhetoric (and an MFA in creative writing). Near the beginning of Smith’s time as chair, lecturers formed the Lecturers’ Employee Organization (LEO). Graduate students had unionized in the mid-1970s, creating the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO). Smith, along with Curzan as director of First and Second Year Studies, took the lead in working through issues associated with signing the first contract with LEO and developed a systematized review process that served as a model for the college. This period also saw the completion of a planning process begun under Faller that produced a departmental Strategic Plan in 2003 and a comprehensive internal review document in 2006. A revision of the requirements for the concentration introduced subconcentrations and substituted a new prerequisite, Introduction to Literary Studies, for one introduced in the late 1980s (What is Literature?). In a subsequent revision the second prerequisite, Introduction to Poetry, would be abandoned in favor of an upper-level requirement of a course in poetry. The number of concentrators remained relatively high, at 800 in 2003 still the third largest among LS&A departments, although this number would begin to decline. Meanwhile, the demand for writing courses had grown to the point where the department was unable to meet it at the advanced level. About one in three applicants to the subconcentration in creative writing were accepted. The department’s First and Second Year Studies Program (which would become the English Department Writing Program) and the Sweetland Writing Center were actively cooperating, jointly hiring and interviewing lecturers. Sweetland would offer courses in writing at the 200 level as well as a course designed to prepare students for introductory composition, subsequently introducing a writing minor in collaboration with English. The department began to hold a popular commencement ceremony for undergraduate 48 English Language and Literature

concentrators and their parents, with an outstanding graduate of the department returning as speaker. The English Ph.D. program had stabilized at twelve to fifteen new students a year, including two in the joint program in English and Women’s Studies. Faculty gave more attention to preparing graduate students for the job market by placing greater emphasis on pedagogy, offering more active mentoring in developing dissertation prospectuses, and providing greater support for job seekers. The English and Education program continued to enroll five to six students annually. The faculty groups initiated by Faller had metamorphosed into thriving interest groups run by graduate students with participation by faculty, some from other departments, and had become a fixture of departmental life. They had sufficient funding to invite visiting as well as local speakers and to organize occasional conferences. Doctoral students were assured of six years of combined fellowship and GSI support, with summer research funding and travel grants available. Two of the subareas of the doctoral program, History of the English Language and Gender and Literature, were ranked in the top five nationally. The department was producing well-trained, professionalized Ph.D. students, although a relatively small number in relation to the size of the faculty and its capacity to offer graduate courses. By 2010 the MFA Program would be attracting more than 1000 applicants for 22 places and getting acceptances from four out of five of its top choices, thanks in part to a generous gift of $5,000,000 from Sam and Helen Zell that enabled the department to increase fellowship support, solving a funding problem that had become acute because of a decrease in University resources. The Zells gave an additional $500,000 to establish post-MFA fellowships that offered selected graduates a year of support in which to concentrate on their writing. They would later increase their funding to make these fellowships available to all graduates of the program. The expansion of the faculty and of course offerings, including new courses in non- fiction, enhanced the attraction of the Michigan MFA program, which by 2010 would be characterized by the MFA Handbook for prospective students as one of the three best in the country English Language and Literature (2015) 49 and arguably the best for poetry. Two faculty members, Delbanco and Gregerson, were named Distinguished University Professors, and Gregerson ‘s Magnetic North would be a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry (her previous book had won the largest monetary prize for poetry, the Kingsley Tufts Award). Other MFA faculty were winning national awards (including Davies the PEN/Malamud Award for his short fiction and Goodison the British Columbia Prize for her memoir, From Harvey River). Graduates of the program were becoming increasingly visible. Elizabeth Kostova’s first novel, The Historian, made it to the top of The New York Times bestseller list; Patrick O’Keefe’s novella, The Hill Road, won the Story Prize; and Uwem Akwan’s widely acclaimed collection, Say You’re One of Them, was represented in the debut fiction edition of The New Yorker and also selected by Oprah’s Book Club. The events surrounding the 75th anniversary of the Hopwood Awards in 2006, including readings by recent Hopwood winners and a production of Avery Hopwood’s The Gold Diggers at the Mendelssohn Theatre, celebrated Michigan’s longstanding tradition of recognizing talented student writers. Visiting writers and lecturers were coming to campus with great frequency, some for the annual Heberle lecture and, beginning in 2007, for the Sarah Marwil Lamstein Children’s Literature Lecture. Conferences involving former students and faculty colleagues from other institutions marked a series of retirements: “Responding to the Natural World” (Knott), “Modernism Unbound” (Bornstein), “The Future of Victorian Studies” (Vicinus), “Perspectives on English Language Studies“ (Bailey), “Sacred and Canonical Texts” (Williams). The thirtieth anniversary of NELP, which merited an article on the program in The New York Times, brought many former students back to campus. Their contributions created an endowment fund of $200,000. In 2007 the new Arthur Miller Theatre, named for Michigan’s most distinguished Hopwood winner with his approval, opened with a student production of Miller’s “Playing for Time” and an accompanying symposium on “Global Miller.” English faculty had played critical roles in founding and developing interdisciplinary programs and had contributed 50 English Language and Literature

more directors than any other humanities department.to Women’s Studies (Vicinus, Smith, Traub, Herrmann), Comparative Literature (Stuart McDougal, Siebers, Gikandi, Prins), and American Culture (McIntosh, Wald, Howard ), a program originated by professors Marvin Felheim and Joe Lee Davis. One effect of the involvement of English faculty in interdisciplinary programs and initiatives, in teaching as well as administrative roles, was to accelerate the spread of emerging theoretical developments to faculty of other humanities departments and some social science ones. Departmental faculty also played important roles in college and university administration as associate deans and acting deans of LS&A (Knott, Rabkin, Faller, Schoenfeldt) and the Rackham School of Graduate Studies (Weisbuch, Larson, Howard, Blair). The scholarly and creative accomplishments of English faculty were increasingly recognized by University and LS&A collegiate professorships. Vicinus, Delbanco, Gregerson, and Halperin held Distinguished University professorships. Collegiate professorships had been awarded or soon would be to Bailey, Bornstein, Brater, Carson, Fraser, Freedman, Gikandi, Levinson, Patrides, Schoenfeldt, Siebers, S. Smith,Wald, and Yaeger. Traub would be awarded a Huetwell professorship by the college. When Schoenfeldt succeeded Smith as chair in January of 2010, after a semester in which Porter served as interim chair, the department faced significant challenges. The University had entered a prolonged period of retrenchment brought on by recession and a sluggish economy, necessitating budget tightening at the departmental level. Enrollments were declining once more, a reflection of a national trend that favored fields perceived as more directly related to job opportunities than the humanities. Yet the department had reached a level of intellectual vitality and prominence that would have been hard to imagine in the mid-1960s. Faculty were editing journals and heading professional societies, regularly winning external as well as internal fellowships and honors, and becoming recognized for their impact on a broad range of fields. Yaeger had become the editor of the profession’s flagship journal, PMLA, and Smith herself had assumed the presidency of the Modern Language Association, the first from English Language and Literature (2015) 51

Michigan to do so since Fred Newton Scott in 1907. The Michigan English Department continued to be known for its commitment to excellence and innovation in teaching and for its community outreach activities. Teaching writing remained a central concern, now reinforced by a mutually beneficial relationship with the Sweetland Writing Center. The department’s fundraising had grown dramatically, with major gifts from graduates that supported the department’s Strategic Fund, the MFA program, and student awards and enrichment activities. The quality and number of applicants to graduate programs had soared. The last three decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st had seen radical transformations, as the department became strikingly more diverse in its composition and more pluralistic in its intellectual concerns. It was well positioned to continue to play a strong role in the intellectual life of the University and the profession.