In the early 1960s, when the Division of Linguistics had just been formed and had only three full-time faculty members (William Wang, Ilse Lehiste, and Charles Fillmore), the Dean of Arts and Sciences convened a Linguistics Advisory Committee to develop a proposal to establish a PhD program in linguistics. Upon a resoundingly positive recommendation from an external review committee (C. F. Hockett, F. W. Householder, and W. P. Lehmann), the program went into effect at the beginning of the 1965-1966 academic year, just in time for Mantaro Hashimoto to defend and file his dissertation in the autumn quarter and Anne Yue-Hashimoto to defend and file her dissertation in the winter quarter. In the fifty years since then, the number of linguistics graduate faculty has increased to more than five times the original size and the number of doctorates per year has grown apace, so that we can now celebrate more than 170 Ohio State dissertations in linguistics.
To celebrate these first 50 years of the linguistics graduate program at Ohio State, we are holding an anniversary event on June 29th and 30th: two days of intellectual sharing, marking the growth and progress of the department and its members over the years, making new connections and renewing established ties.
We will begin with an afternoon of short talks, including presentations on the history of the department and our alumni (promised by Brian Joseph and Mary Beckman), and of current research by active faculty/alum/grad student groups. Later in the afternoon, tours of newer Ohio State sites (Thompson Library, the Ohio Union, Ohio Stadium) will be available,concluding with an evening social event to share conversation, food and drink.
On the second day, a morning poster session will facilitate additional sharing of ongoing research as well as information from alumni who are engaged outside of the university in language-related careers. Posters and talks will be pulished in a uncoming volume of the OSU Working Papers in Linguistics.
For more information, click here.
