History of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies*
- The
Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies was officially founded on
July 1, 1960 as the Department of German and Russian. In 1960, the
Faculty of Arts admitted its first students into three-year general and
four-year honours programs in History, English, French, German,
Russian, Spanish, Economics, Political Science, Psychology and
Sociology. Students were able to take German and Russian in combination
with each other or with English or French.
- It
was the eastern European Mennonite connections of our department’s
first two professors, founding chair J. William Dyck and Edmund Heier,
both Germanists and Slavists, that combined the studies of German and
Russian within the department as it is still continued today. Including
J.W. Dyck (1960-73, 1978-83) we have had a total of five departmental
chairs Manfred Richter (1973-78, 1992-95), David John (1983-86,
1995-2002), Sigfried Hoefert (1986-1992), Michael Boehringer
(2002-2008) and James Skidmore (2008 - Present).
- As previously mentioned, the departmen
t was
founded under the name of German and Russian, but during the 1965-1966
academic year Ukrainian courses were added and in 1969 the name was
changed to the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and
Literatures. To further strengthen this dual focus, courses in Polish
(1976-1977), Dutch (1979-1980) and Croatian (1989-1990) were added to
the department’s undergraduate calendar offerings. Our name was changed
again in 2001, to become the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies,
re-confirming the historical association between our two founding
disciplines, but re-defining the concept of what our discipline should
be. This broader designation encompassed more courses in cultural and
film studies, in both Germanic and Slavic languages and in English.
- The department’s tradition of a dual focus in both the Germanic and Slavic areas is also evident in the departmental journal, Germano-Slavica: A Canadian Journal of Germanic and Slavic Comparative and Interdisciplinary Studies. Founded in 1973, Germano-Slavica
reflects the productive synthesis of our principal disciplines in a
refereed periodical with a comparative/interdisciplinary profile. The
journal in many ways symbolizes the department’s history and nature by
combining Germanic and Slavic studies and scholarship, and is unique in
Canada.
- The department’s ongoing exchange with the
University of Mannheim is the oldest of its kind in Canada. Jointly
founded in 1972, by Professors Dyck and Dietrich Jöns of the University
of Mannheim, it involves the exchange of both students and faculty from
each side. At the same time as the Waterloo in Germany exchange program
was in
troduced,
the department initiated one of the earliest Canadian study abroad
programs in Russia.. From 1971 until 1989 we offered an opportunity for
students to travel abroad to Russia through the Russian Summer
Workshop. The workshop allowed students to participate in language
acquisition and cultural comprehension programs during six weeks of
classroom instruction and three further weeks (later extended to four)
abroad in the former Soviet Union.
-
The 1990s saw the passing of our founders and original faculty members
into retirement. While mindful of our history and the strengths that
remain because of it, we have entered a new phase and look forward to
the impact of innovative programming at both undergraduate and graduate
levels, a process that began with a series of new appointments of young
and energetic faculty. We continue to value the spirit of innovation
and enterprise in which this university and department were founded and
hope to carry on its unique legacy for many years to come.
_______________________
*This summary is based on J.W. Dyck’s The Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures: A Retrospection (Waterloo, 1994), David G. John’s History of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies at the University of Waterloo (CAUTG/APAUC Bulletin, 2004) and departmental records.
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