Notes on English Before the War (Course catalogues)

Summary (11/21/14)

Up until 1936 or so, the department was a mix of interests:

• English Education (Lucinda Smith)
• Composition (including advanced composition, newswriting, argument and an expository writing service courses for agriculture, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering)
• Drama and Stage (Hennessey)
• Public Speaking/Debate/Oral Reading (Cortez)
• Literature (the others)

This is still the case (the mix of interests) as of 1945. As of that year, the number of required literature courses held to just four. But that was a development in and of itself, which occurred in 1935. So the first step was to define the work of the department in part as the work of reading literature…by making four such courses the requirements for all students. As of 1945, though, it’s just the four courses:

• Survey of English Literature
• Survey of American Literature
• Shakespeare’s Plays
• Early English and Chaucer

In other words, the ENTIRE major had not yet been defined as the study of literature.

As of 1945, after they had finished these first four courses, above, students could then take whatever they wanted. This quote signals the commitment of the department to a broad range of interests: 

"Professor Scudder may assign the student, when his field of major interest is determined, to another member of the Department responsible for that area of concentration selected by the student, such as Drama, Writing, Speech, or Teaching, who will be his Supervisor throughout the duration of the course” (p. 95, Bulletin: 1945-46).

In sum, prior to the start of the second world war, they had begun to define the work of the department as the study of literature but this was by no means the monolithic vision of English at UNH as we headed into WWII. Faculty members with long-term interests in other areas of English studies remained on the faculty and many of these folks were on the faculty from 1920s/1930s-1940s:

• Hennessey: Drama
• Cortez: Debate, Oral Reading, Public Speaking
• Smith: English education, remedial work, composition
• Scudder: Newswriting
• Towle: Advanced Writing/Non-fiction writing
• Grant: English Education

The final catalogue I looked at this morning was the year 1945-46.