Information About the Department of
Germanic Languages & Literatures
In
1966, the Department of Modern Foreign
Languages at
Virginia
was broken up and the Department of Germanic and
Slavic Languages and Literatures was formed under the chairmanship of
William
A. Little, who had just been hired away from
Tufts
University
. Mr. Little was still chair
in 1971 when
Slavic Languages was separated and for the first time
Virginia
had a department devoted
exclusively to Germanic Languages and Literatures.
Although this original name remains, and
although both Dutch and Swedish have been taught in the past, it is now
really
a department of German literature and culture with a developing focus
on German
Studies. Its most
illustrious former
members include the late Frank G. Ryder, Walter H. Sokel, and Ruth
Klüger, who
was the first woman to chair an Arts & Sciences department at
Virginia
.
The
Department has always been distinguished by its innovativeness. It was, in the early
1970s, one of the very
first German departments in the country to streamline its doctoral
qualifying
examinations and requirements into the form that is by now more or less
universally accepted. It
established the
first national graduate-student conference devoted exclusively to
German
literature and history. It
organized the
first undergraduate language house at the
University
of
Virginia
. And it was both first in
Virginia
,
and very early nationally, in
having its undergraduate students produce and perform in public, every
year, a
play in German.
