Home — 1930 -- 1939 — 1936 – The Division of Public Speaking splits from the English Department

The arts have enjoyed a vital and dynamic presence on the Stanford campus since the University was founded, together with the Stanford Museum, over a century ago. Chronicled here is the history of that presence ─ a compelling story of permanent change and growth. At the same time, the assembled information and documents bring to light an underlying commitment to an education in and through the arts that has guided and informed the institution’s evolution throughout. Tradition and transformation go hand in hand.

Visitors to this site will find answers to a variety of questions:
What kinds of activities developed and increased as the various units and groups connected to the arts came into being and continued to evolve? How have those activities shifted their focus, and sometimes even their departmental affiliation, from one part of the university to another? When were the campus arts facilities constructed and how have they been used? Who have been the key personalities and groups involved?

What have been the landmark achievements? What are the broader themes and tendencies that are common to the myriad pursuits, constituting a Stanford tradition?

The Stanford Arts Initiative, which began in 2006, has energized the arts on campus in transformative ways: new buildings for the arts are being constructed, faculty positions and student stipends added, and curricular reforms enacted.

The Initiative formed part of the five-year campaign called The Stanford Challenge, a cross-disciplinary vision for the 21st century. The Initiative’s momentum is being sustained across campus, in particular through the work of the Stanford Arts Institute. By promoting collaboration and further integrating the arts into the fabric of university life, the university will continue to establish new connections among arts disciplines at the same time as it blurs the boundaries between the curricular and the extracurricular.

Discover here an enduring legacy in higher education: a mix of idealism and pragmatism, theory and practice, knowledge and invention, community service and individual discovery, excellence and innovation.

Denning Family Director of the Stanford Arts Institute

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The Arts Timeline was funded, created, and produced by the Stanford Arts Institute. Additional funding was generously provided by The Ben and A. Jess Shenson Funds at Stanford University.

Timeline team: Kathryn Dickason, Toni Gauthier, Stephen Hinton, Ashley Kennedy, Heidi Lee, Stav Ziv

We are grateful to the Special Collections and University Archives Department of Stanford University Libraries for permission to reproduce images from various collections, in particular the Historical Photograph Collection.

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4 years ago Catergory: 1930 -- 1939, Drama, Milestones

1936 The Division of Public Speaking splits from the English Department

The roots of the Department of Drama, which changed its name to Theater and Performance Studies in 2012, can be traced back to the 1920s. Then it existed as the Division of Public Speaking within the English Department. English itself was housed in the School of Letters (the precursor to the School of Humanities). In 1936 the Division of Public Speaking became the “Division of Public Speaking and Dramatic Arts.” The following year it changed its name to “Division of Speech and Drama,” which it remained through 1941, when it was reorganized into the Department of Speech and Drama, just one year before the School of Letters became the School of Humanities. Thus it remained for thirty years until the Speech part was shed in 1971, leaving just Drama.

In Stanford’s early decades, speaking was taught more as an “applied” rhetorical skill than as a thespian one, just as drawing was at least as much about draftsmanship as it was about creating purely aesthetic objects.

When the university opened in 1891, the English department taught a course called “Elocution: voice culture, gesture, reading and interpretation of classic orations and essays.” Within a few years this had become “Public Speaking. Practice in the preparation and delivery of speeches adapted to various audiences and occasions, with attention to the style of spoken discourse based on a study of masterpieces of oratory.”

The Dance Division, initially housed in Athletics, where it formed (to quote the blurb) “a valuable part of a life lived with amplitude and discipline,” joined the Department in 1996. The new name as of 2012, Theater and Performance Studies (TAPS), reflects intellectual trends and developments of recent times that expand the notion of “performance” to embrace a broad range of artistic and aesthetic performances such as concerts, theatrical events, performance art, as well as sporting events, political and religious rituals, proclamations and public decisions. Performance studies is interdisciplinary, drawing on theories of the performing arts, anthropology, literary theory, and legal studies.

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