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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 117 751 CS 202 506 ^a7 AUTHOR Parker, Will - IIa aTT-Dona1A-I:-; T . ITLE The Department of English. at. Indiana University, c e;. INSTITUTION Indiana Univ. Bloomington, Dept of English. -SPOINIS=IVGYNC-1-e-ni.-- . PUB DATE .72 NOTE 271p. EDRS PRICE MF-$0.83 HC-$14.05 Plus Postage DESCRIPTORS Doctoral Theses; *English Departments; English Instruction; Higher Education; *History; liniversities IDENTIFIERS *Indiana. University ABSTRACT The collection of articles 'in this book, covering some of the significant events and topics in thehistory of the Indiana University English Department, brings together some of the material assembled by William Riley Parker,especially the reminiscences of faculty members and former students. An introductory chapter by Parker is titled "Where Do English Departments Come From?? Other material consists of chapters by several authprs concerning the following periods in the department's history: 1860-1893, 1893-1920, 1920-1945, and 1945-1970. Additional material includes the Annals of the Department 1968-1972, compiled by Parker; a list of doctoral dissertations, 1914-1972; and a list of the directors' of doctoral dissertations. (JM) 0 \ **************************************************************** Documents acquired by ERIC include many informal'unpubl' * materials not available from other, sources. ERIC makes ever fort * * to obtain the best copy available. Nevertheless, items of marginal * * reproducibility are often encountered and this affects the quality * * of the microfiche and hardcopy reproductions ERIC makes available * *. via the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS). EDRS is not * responsible for the quality of the original document. Reproductionq * * supplied by ELMS are the best that can be made from the original. -* *********************************************************************** U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION I WELFARE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRO- DUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIOIN ATING IT POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRE SENT nc-FiriAL NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY The Departmeht of 'Eng4sh at Indiana University Bloomington 1868-1970 2 Advertisement in The Indiana Journal, March 6, 1827: State-Semirrary-No dee- A GENTLEMAN of good moral character, and one who is well qualified to teach English sto Grammer, Geography- " IL . IMill Globes, Natural Philosophy, Tregsnometry with its application to Surveying and-Navigation; and who can also instruct students in Book-keeping, is wanted to take charge of the English department in the State Seminary at Bloomington by the 15th day of May next. The compensation to a teacher at the present time, cannot lie very great; but the Trustees of the Institution, hope to have it in their power in a few years, to make the superintendance of this department in the Seminary, an objea_w_Lorthy the attention ofscientific gentlemen. By order of the Board of Trustees D.H. Maxwell Secretary of Board a TABLE OF CONTEIJTS Preface 5 Where Do English Departments Come From? ...... 7 William Riley Parker I. The Department of English, 1860-1893 The Department of English, 1860-1893'*, 28 Frank Davidson II. The Department of English, 1893-1920 -; The Department of English, 1893-1920 55 Donald J. Gray III. The DepartmentnI English, 1920-1945 The Department of English, 1920-1945 86 Donald J. Gray The Department of English in the 1920's 102 Stith Thompson The Department of English in 1922 105 John Robert Moore The Depattment of English in 1922 - 108 Laurens J. Mills The Department of English in the 1920's 111 Josephine Piercy The Department of English in the 1920's and 1930's 114 Mary Elizabeth Campbell . The Department of English, 1929-1939 Samuel Yellen The Department of English in the 1940's 141 David Dickason IV. The Department of English, 1945-1970 The Department of English, 1945-1970 144 The Department of English, 1928-1968 148 Russell Noyes The Chairmanship af James A. Work, 1951-1961 159 Philip B. Daghlian 4 The Depail_ "n the 1960's 169 Dona Ws.. ay The Annals of tiedepartment of English,1868-1972 201 William RileyPar4er Tinetryal DisertAirSrik. 1914-1972 24R Directors of Doctoral Dissertations 264 Preface During his term as Chairman of the Department of English at Indiana University, from 1966 until his death in 1968, Wil- liam Riley Parker began collecting material concerning the his- tory of the Department. His intention was to compile its his- tory as part of and a prelude to the writing of a larger history of English studies in America. This collection is neither of the works Professor Parker would have written. It offers only to suggest some of the significant events and topi6s in the Depart- ment's history and Co bring together and preserve some of the material Professor Parker had assembled, especially the remi- niscences of faculty members and former students which he in- vited and published in the English Department Newsletter and thc Annals he compiled of the Department's first century. Perhaps the publication of these materials will realize an- other of Professor Parkees intentions as well. Writing in the spring of 1968, he noted: ,NEXT FALL, when we celebrate our centennial as a Department, exactly half . of our full-time faculty (Le., thirty-nine persons) will have no memory of the Department earlier than the fall of 1960. Out of seventy-eight, only forty of us will have known James A. Work, who did more than anyone else to give the De- partment national prestige. M we inaugurate a two-course "load," only thirty- four of us will remember the four-course loadand the old English Building, and the birth of Victorian Studies, and the last of the Visiting Critics, and starting salaries as high as $5,200 for those with the Ph.D., $4,800 for those without. We shall begin our second century with half of the Departrotnt born since Fcbruary 1929when two of our present colleagues were already teaching here, when our full-time English faculty totalled twenty-eight, when the salary range was from $1,800 to $5,200, and when Agnes Elms had bccn on the job as departmental secretary for two and a half years. M George Herbert said, "Youth lives on hope, old age on remembrance "; and next fall will be a time for remembering, so that hopes can be more solidly based. We are now what we arc, in part, liccause of what we have bccn. Now that the Department has begun its second century and 5 has entered a period when the condition of growthanddevelop- ment will be constraint and consolidationrather than the extra- ordinary expansion. of the past quarter century, it isall the more important that we look towhat we have been and should 11 C y-wha-t-we-ean-tuid should-become: I wish to thank the faculty membersand former students- who have written portions of the chroniclewhich follows for their recollections and their permission to includethem in this collection. I wish also to thank Roy Battenhouse,Philip Dagh- lian, Mary Gaither, Rudolf Gottfried,'WilliamWilson,and Samuel Yellen for their suggestions of what toii-iclude and their counsel about flow to organize the material.Mag Parker first suggested that her husband's research into thehistory of the Department could be consolidated and extended, andshe was generous in making his papersavailable'. Agnes Elpers knew much of the information we all needed in order toedit this collection, and she knew where we might find most of the rest. Warren Shirey and the staff of the Office of theUniversity Registrai and Mary Craig of the University Archives werealso helpful in providing data about enrollments and Universitybul- 4 letins and,tatalogues. The publication of this workhas been made possible by a grant from the IndianaUniversity Founda- tion. Finally, I wish especially to remark gratefully on the con- tribution of Frank Davidson to the planning and writingof this material. He came to the Department and theUniversity as an undergraduate in 1907 and remained serving them bothwell past his retirement from the facultyin 1956 until his death in 1971. I cannot presume to decide the dedication of acollection in which so .many people have had a part. But two menhave been much on my mind as I have prepared thiscollection for the press: Frank Davidson, who lived and helped tofashion so much of the Department's history; and WilliamRiley Parker, Whose essay on the beginnings of departments ofEnglish ie America begins this collection of materials and suggestshow much was lost when he did not live to complete thework he had so carefully prepared. Donald J. Gray 6 oa. Where Do English Departments Come From? William Riley Parker First printed in College English, 28 (1966-67), 339-51. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. My Topic-QuestionWheredo English departments come from?is not intended to be funny, but my answer may strike you as at least ironic.Ishall try to answer with,something clearer and more illuminating than "Out of the everywhere into the here." I shall try, in fact, to be very definite, and I want you to know at the outset my purpose. If this were a sermon instead of a history-lesson, I would take my text from Cicero, who said, you will remember, "Not to know what happened before one was born is always to be a child." He said this, of course, in Latin, which is the language in which English studies began and, to some extent, long continued, and, which isstill a language that all serious students of English literature had better know, despite the fact that we arc now allowing it to disappear from our public schoofs. But that is a sermon for another occasion. Cicero's dictum points up my purpose on this one. Even if his- tory does not truly repeat itself, knowledge of it may, at least sometimes, giVe current problems a familiar, less formidable look.