The prospect of a year at the Sorbonne is often enough to lure many language students into concentration in Romance Languages and Literatures. The Faculty decided several years ago that students in this field could spend their junior year abroad with a language study group. The prospective traveler must meet only three requirements: he must be a candidate for honors, he must at least be in Group III, and he must scrape together the necessary cash.

But there is more attraction in the department than a year of travel. Chairman of Romance Languages, Herbert Dieckmann, is famed for his study in Eighteenth Century French literature, and his teaching staff is expert and specialized.

Requirements

Requirements in the field are quite stiff. The non-honors men must take 6 full courses. Two of these can be in the wide range of related areas, English, comparative literature, or history. The same requirements are expected of honors concentrators, with the addition of two years in a second Romance language and a 10,000 word thesis.

Though no sophomore tutorial is given, there is individual honors tutorial for the juniors remaining in Cambridge and for seniors. This allows a greater freedom and individual choice for the students, the department feels, than would a more uniform program. The elementary oral language courses, "B" and "D" were recently eliminated by Faculty vote. This action does not mean that the department is abandoning the oral program. The courses will soon be replaced with more intensive elementary courses and there are many oral courses on the advanced level.

Sanskrit and Indian Studies

Number of Concentrators: 1.

1952 Commencement Honors: None.

Working with one of the oldest languages in existence, the Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies is trying to modernize its curricula. Department Chairman Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls admits, however, that this aim has not yet been effectively reached.

The Department's main objective is still to give prospective concentrators a knowledge of Sanskrit, a difficult language which is the basis for many modern tongues.

Concentrators must take at least three courses in Sanskrit, one in Indian Studies, and two in related fields. Candidates for honors have only one additional task, an oral examination on the field, taken in the second half of the senior year.

Semitic Languages

Number of Concentrators: 0.

1952 Honors: None.

Semitic Languages is a department limited in appeal and manpower. But its men rank "as high as any in the field," Robert H. Pfeiffer, head of the department, says describing the men who with him.