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 Modern foreign languages were among the first subjects taught at the University of North Carolina. As John and Ebenezer Pettigrew wrote to their father in 1795, "All of our class study french (sic) one half of the day, and lattin (sic) the other half" (Pettigrew Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, UNC). Thereafter, the record is spotty. We know that French and German had a place in the curriculum, and that the teacher of French or German was expected to teach Spanish. Nicolas Marcellus Hentz, who had the impressive title of Professor of Modern Languages (1826), was the first UNC professor supposed to teach French and Spanish regularly. This early inclusion of modern languages in the university curriculum was bolstered by Harvard's appointment of George Ticknor to the Smith Professorship of French and Spanish and belles lettres (1819) and Princeton's (or the College of New Jersey as it was then known) appointment of Louis Hargouis (1830) as instructor of French and Spanish.
 Thereafter, the fate of modern languages at UNC mirrored that of other early colleges and universities: taught when the position was filled, not taught when it was not. This irregularity continued until the Department of Modern Languages was constituted in 1885 under William Dallam Toy, who taught German and French. The first Professor of Romance Languages per se was James D. Brunner who was named Associate Professor of French and Spanish in 1901. Toy then taught German. In 1909, Modern Languages split into the Department of Germanic Languages and the Department of Romance Languages.
For the next forty years, the Department of Romance Languages was guided by a single chairman, Prof. William Morton Dey, who saw it through the upheavals of both World Wars and supervised its steady growth, with the addition of specialized faculty members. An exponential increase in the library resources paralleled that trend. See library holdings in French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish & Spanish-American, and Latin-American Studies.Graduate work was available from the outset of the Department's existence.
 The
pioneering achievements of early professors such as William Dey, Sturgis
Leavitt, Howard Huse, N. B. Adams, Urban Tigner Holmes, Jr., and W. L.
Wiley are recognized for the generations of scholars they trained and
for their inspirational teaching. Among their disciples were some members
of Department. Now gone, but never forgotten, are: Professors G. Daniel,
F. Duffey, A. Ebersole, A. Engstrom, E. Falk, J. Hardré, A. Maissen,
W. McKnight, E. Morot-Sir, L. Sharpe, and S. Stoudemire. Among former
members of the Department,
now
retired or moved to other positions, are Professors Avalle-Arce, J. Cortés,
and Aldo Scaglione. Currently, seventeen tenure/tenure
track faculty and thirty-two fixed term faculty devote their time to
the formation of
the
next generation
of teachers and researchers.
Their
areas
of research
and samples
of
their publications are available for inspection.
(See
Faculty)
The Department was housed in Murphey Hall in the 1920s. However, with the great increase in University enrollment after World War II--and with the greater importance given modern foreign language instruction as the Space Age began in the 1950s--it became clear that not only more space but advanced audiovisual equipment for that purpose should be provided by the State of North Carolina. Under the direction of the Department's second chairman, Prof. Sterling A. Stoudemire (1949-64), plans were drawn up and approved for a new building to be devoted exclusively to modern foreign language instruction. This four-story edifice (the first on campus to be built with central air conditioning) was named in memory of Prof. Dey. It was completed in 1962 and became the home of three departments (Romance Languages, Germanic Languages, and Linguistics) and the Curriculum in Comparative Literature. All shared language laboratory facilities.
 It soon became apparent that the rapid growth of the University and increasing demand for language training required considerably more space and equipment. A major expansion of the building was completed in the summer of 1969, during the tenure of the Department's third chairman, Prof. Jacques Hardré (1964-1975).
During the early years of Prof. Hardré's chairmanship, the Department
lost many of its French and Spanish professors. This situation required
the opening and filling of a large number of faculty positions in a short
period of time, with an almost immediate expansion of the Department's
philological tradition to include literary criticism and theory. These
major curricular changes were in place by the early 1970s. With increased
resources, it was possible to develop Ph.D. programs in Italian and Portuguese.
Undergraduate enrollments in those language fields, along with French
and Spanish, increased significantly, and continued to do so under the
Department's fourth and fifth chairmen, Profs. Frank M. Duffey (1975-80)
and Edward D. Montgomery (1980-85). The sixth chair, Prof. Cesáreo
Bandera (1985-1990), the first chair brought from the outside, was invited
to come to Chapel Hill from the University of Buffalo to enhance offerings
in theory. Prof. Stirling Haig, who had first joined the Department in
1967, continued that trend (1990-95). Prof. Frank A. Domínguez,
a faculty member since 1973, served as the Department's eighth chair
from 1995-2003. Prof. Erika Lindemann, Professor of English was
Interim Chair 2003-2006, and Prof. Larry King currently is Interim
Chair for 2006-2007
while a nationwide search is conducted for a permanent chair for the
Department.
In the past few years, the faculty has instituted new course offerings at the undergraduate and graduate levels that deal with business language and practice, culture, theory, and film. They have simplified exams at the graduate level to allow a higher degree of concentration toward the end of the Ph.D.; and sponsored the nationally renowned Carolina Conference, run by graduate students.
 The
faculty also continues to garner awards, honors, and grants; add to
its distinguished record of publications; and manage an endowment that
funds undergraduate prizes and awards, and graduate fellowships and
research. They also run an unusually large number of graduate exchange fellowships with
the Universities of Montpellier, Navarra, and Seville.
At the present time, the Department maintains three internationally
recognized publications.
The oldest of these is the monograph series, Studies in the Romance
Languages and Literatures, founded in 1940 with Professor Sturgis
E. Leavitt as its first editor-in-chief and now headed by Prof. Frank
Domínguez. Over the years it has published more than 250 titles.
 The
second-oldest departmental publication is the journal Romance
Notes, founded in 1959 by Professor U. T. Holmes, Jr., and now
led by Prof. Monica Rector. It has forty-six annual volumes published
to date.
The third publication is the journal Hispanófila,
founded by Prof. Alva V. Ebersole and brought by him to the Department
in 1968. Prof. Fred Clark is the current editor and to date it
has published 116 issues. In addition, it is home to Annali d'Italianistica,
an Italian journal on monographic subjects brought to the Department
by Prof. Dino Cervigni in 1989. It is now in its fifteenth volume.
The faculty have provided study-abroad programs for undergraduates at UNC-CH and elsewhere who seek language immersion in French or Spanish. The UNC at Montpellier program in France was first established at the University of Lyon in 1964. It then moved to the University of Orleans in 1974 and to the University of Montpellier in 1976. The program in Montpellier currently offers a year-long and spring semester course of study. The UNC program in Sevilla, Spain (established there in 1973), offers single-semester and summer options in addition to the original year-long program. Other semester, summer, and year-long programs in France, Italy, Spanish America, and Brazil are available through the University's Study-Abroad Office.
The Department enters the 21st century with extensive faculty and
student talent at its disposal. The faculty is committed to maintaining
the Department's scholarly publishing reputation while embracing new
trends in
critical and cultural theory and endeavoring to provide a thorough educational
experience in the Romance languages and literatures. They have revised
course offerings at the undergraduate and graduate level, and enhanced
teacher-training with a technological component. Over-all enrollments
are very strong.
In the
future, they plan to enable undergraduate students in our year-abroad
programs to work on research projects with students who remain on-campus,
and embrace
other new opportunities for teaching, research, and service as they arise.
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