A Brief Survey of Germanic Studies at Canadian Universities from the Beginnings to 1995

This work records the development of the teaching of Germanic languages, primarily German, at Canadian universities over a period of 150 years. The study focusses first on the undergraduate and graduate programmes of study, i.e., what has been and is taught, and on the numbers, sources, and kinds of students enrolled in courses at every level. A detailed analysis is made in particular of the subjects of dissertations for the MA and PhD degrees. A separate chapter is devoted to the programmes of study in Germanic languages and literatures other than German (Danish, Dutch, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Yiddish). A similar survey is then made of the teaching staff, where they come from, where and what they studied, and what contribution they have made to research. The third issue is that of the infrastructure of the discipline, what professional organizations there are to represent germanists and to what extent those engaged in research are supported by public funding agencies. The final chapter records the changes in all areas of the discipline over the five-year period from 1990 to 1995.