Department was officially established as Slavic Languages and Literatures in 1952 but dates back to 1910.
From the description of Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures (University of Michigan) records, 1960-2007. (University of Michigan). WorldCat record id: 739977677
The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures sprang from the Department of Russian Languages and Literatures. This department was established in 1910 in response to a University Bulletin describing the need for such a department because of the growth of Russia as a global influence. Courses in Polish languages and literatures were soon added to the department in 1920, and in 1947 an official masters program in Russian was developed. By 1952 the department became officially known by its current name under the chairmanship of James O. Ferrell, and a masters program for all of the Slavic languages offered was created.
In 1957, Deming Brown took over as chairman of the department, and the following year a PhD program was officially adopted. The decade from 1961 to 1971 was a period of intense growth for the department, in response to the "post-Sputnik" era. It was shortly before this period that the National Defense Education Act was passed in 1958, which established the Slavic languages and literatures department as a Slavic and East European Languages Center in the early 1960s. This designation provided the department with federal funding and support for its language programs in Russian and Polish, as well as Czech, Serbo-Croatian and Ukrainian.
It was also during this time period that chairman John Mersereau and Professor Ladislav Matejka established Michigan Slavic Publications, which fostered academic work concerning Slavic languages and literature. Departmental publications and Russian works published by Ardis publishing, which was created by former professor Carl Proffer and his wife Ellendea, were key in drawing Nobel Laureate-to-be and recent USSR-exile Joseph Brodsky to the University of Michigan. He would later become a tenured professor in the program.
Since the 1960s, the department has maintained a partnership with the Russian and East European Studies (CREES) program, by providing instruction to undergraduates and graduate students, and hosting faculty from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania. The department now focuses on Russian, but still offers broad coverage of non-Russian Slavic languages as well.
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Sources consulted
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures website: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/slavic/about/history/
Shaw, Wilfred B. The Univeristy of Michigan: An Encyclopedia Survey
From the guide to the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures (University of Michigan) records, 1966-1999, (Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan)
