In the decade of the 1930s, the English department added a course in descriptive linguistics, “The English Language,” taught by Putnam Fennel Jones, and a course in children’s literature, “Child Literature,” designed for students in Elementary Education and taught by Emily Gertrude Irvine. The graduate program grew substantially. Graduate students were primarily taking upper division undergraduate courses. The graduate-only curriculum was small and included “Introduction to Graduate Work” (Myers), “Graduate Problems” (Hunt and Staff), “Problems of College English” (Hunt), and a substantial series of courses in Old and Middle English (taught by Putnam Fennel Jones and John Kemerer Miller).
Literature: There was a required sophomore survey course, “from Chaucer to Hardy,” with the stipulation that “The work of the student is commonly presented in writing” and “No student succeeds in this course who cannot express his ideas clearly and correctly.” In the upper division, the English department curriculum provided a full list of survey, period, and genre courses in English and American Literature, including Old English and Contemporary American. There were, in addition, several courses in Literary Criticism, including “Literary Criticism,” “Survey of Criticism,” and a course in “Problems in Criticism and Literary History” open to a focus chosen by individual members of the faculty—for example, “Late Nineteenth Century Novel” (Walter Lawrence Myers) and “The Eighteenth Century” (Frederick Philip Mayer). George Carver introduced a course in “English Biography.”
The department added two courses for “seniors in the technical schools.” Both were called “English for Technical Students”—one was designated for students who “wish to improve their acquaintance with English literature”; the other (directed to students in Engineering) offered “practice in writing” along with “readings in contemporary prose.”
Composition and Writing: The required first year course, “English Composition,” was a four credit course, with three classroom hours and an hour of conference. This was supplemented by “Composition Review,” a 2 or 4 credit course for students who needed “additional training.” There were advanced courses in “Special English Composition (“for teachers or English majors who wish additional practice”) and “Expository Writing.” Percival Hunt (and others, including Ed Peterson) offered advanced composition courses titled “Essay and Narrative,” “Description and Narrative,” and “Special English,” the latter most likely small workshop courses. Hunt’s interest in the literary essay defied any strict division of Composition and Creative Writing.
In the 1930s, the department continued to offer a course in writing the Short Story, and in 1939 one of Edwin Peterson’s students won 6th prize in the Story Magazine student writing contest. There appear to have been no courses in the writing of poetry. Hunt and Peterson and others (like George Gerwig, for example) sponsored writing workshops where students gathered to present and discuss their work. There was not now, nor had there yet been, a Creative Writing faculty or an independent listing of courses in Creative Writing. There were, rather, faculty who were interested in student writing across genres, and they tended to teach the advanced courses. In the 30s, the upper division in English included advanced, elective courses called “English Writing,” advertised for students who “like to write.” Genre is not indicated in the course titles. By the end of the decade, once Journalism was established as a Division of the department, courses were offered in reporting and in feature and editorial writing.
Public Speaking: Courses in public speaking, debate and oral interpretation are now supplemented by courses in acting, voice training, and theater production. Several members of the faculty are engaged with theater on campus and in the city. Buell Whitehill, a Yale Theater MFA, joined the department in 1939 and soon became closely involved with the Pitt Players, the student theater group. He would later teach courses in Film History.
In the decade of the 1930s, there was substantial turnover among the faculty teaching in this division, faculty with commitments to rhetoric, theater, debate, and oral interpretation, surely a sign of conflict and dissention. By the end of the 1930s, the division of Public Speaking was preparing to break away from English to become a separate, free-standing Speech Department. Hunt and those most closely affiliated with him were clearly interested in text rather than performance. This was also a period of political unrest on campus, most of it directed toward charges that Chancellor Bowman was unduly restricting the academic freedom of the faculty in discussions of politics and the economy. Whatever the causes, faculty in this area were leaving the university or, when they stayed, looking for a new academic home.