PAULSEN, Gerard Celal Bayar Üniversitesi - Fen Edebiyat Fakültesi - İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı Bölümü, Turkey

THE MODERN AMERICAN UNIVERSITY AND EARLY ENGLISH DEPARTMENTS: GERMAN MODELS AND AMERICAN PRACTICE, 1870-19201

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The English department first came into existence in the modern American university; its theoretical apparatus, research methodology and pedagogic practices were directly derived from nineteenth-century German philology. Whereas the post- Civil War educational reformers who constructed the modern American academic system adapted the German university model to fit it to the social and cultural patterns of America, professors in early English departments simply borrowed German philology and method and, without substantially adding to it or altering it, used it over the next five or six decades as the basis intense research publication. This paper aims to show why American professors of English were so enamored of German philology and, more importantly, what kind of research it enabled them to produce. In addition, it will attempt to examine the consequences of the philological orientation of early English departments and to explain why, when the New Critics finally supplanted philologists and their literary historian descendants, philology almost completely disappeared from English departments.

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American higher education , the modern American university , philology , German philology , American philology , nineteenth , century linguistics , transnationalism , English departments , English literature , English major

Celal Bayar University Journal Of Social Sciences

49