The Low Countries. Jaargang 5

A Decade of Dutch Studies in Leiden

After other foreign students in Leiden had tried in vain, about 1980 Mjong Soek Djie from South Korea succeeded in obtaining her Master's in Dutch. She was to go on to make a name for herself with her translation into her mother-tongue of Multatuli's Max Havelaar. The poor success rate of foreign students in the Dutch Department gave the Faculty of Arts food for thought. This brought them, in the eighties, to the idea of developing a completely separate four-year programme for foreigners, which led to the establishment of the independent



Department of Dutch Studies, which began work in September 1986.

The new course, which the university was prepared to finance for a few years until it could stand on its own feet, was open only to foreign students. From existing contacts with Chinese and Indonesian universities, it was expected that this new line of study could be a viable proposition. In 1986 ten or so students registered, mainly Indonesians and Chinese, the latter at that time still in pre-capitalist Mao-style dress.

The aim was to give students an education which would equip them to function in their country of origin as university lecturers in Dutch language and culture. To this end the curriculum was developed roughly as follows.

In the first year of preliminary study considerable attention is paid to all aspects of language skills. In addition, there are lectures in the art history of the Low Countries (the only lectures that are given in English), and in Dutch culture and society, supplemented by a programme of excursions. This first year is also followed on occasion by students who are studying in Leiden for one year only, often in conjunction with a Dutch course in their own foreign university.

In the second year of study, attention is still paid to language acquisition, but there are also introductory courses in modern and historical Dutch linguistics, in Dutch literature, and the history of the Netherlands. Students are familiarised with the bibliographical apparatus of the various subjects, and they are required to do a lot of reading. Students also take a course in linguistics outside their own department.

In the third and fourth years students diversify. In two years they must specialise in one of the subject areas of linguistics, literature, history of the Low Countries and art history. During this time, in most cases, courses are followed outside the Dutch Studies

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Department, but within the Leiden University Faculty of Arts. Within the Dutch Studies Department there are classes in composition, reading earlier Dutch, especially seventeenth-century Dutch, and the didactics of what may be broadly termed Dutch Studies. A final piece of work in the area of specialisation completes the study, and this must be written in Dutch.

In addition, the Department also provides language courses for students who have come to Leiden with a specific aim, for example, students from the European Union on exchange programmes within the Erasmus or Socrates frameworks. There are also close contacts with foreign universities; after all, this is where most of the students must be recruited. The Department helps as well in developing Dutch programmes in foreign universities, such as the universities of Jakarta (Indonesia), Wroclaw (Poland) and Debrecen (Hungary). Finally, doctoral studies of university lecturers abroad are supervised - often at long range.

The growth of the group has been explosive: in 1996 more than seventy students were registered. Their motives for choosing Dutch Studies vary. Apart from those students sent by their home universities as part of a course in Dutch, some are the children of emigrants in search of their roots, others have friends in the Netherlands, or are drawn by curiosity about social or cultural phenomena: and finally there is the occasional individual who has the same scholarly interest in Dutch language and culture as impels the Dutch to study Greek or Chinese. In the last decade forty or so students have obtained their ma. In the course of those ten years students have come from an increasing number of countries, from Australia to the United States, from Russia to Ireland. If the emphasis originally lay on teaching, research has come to play an ever greater role, and three former students of the Department have gone on to gain their Doctorates from the University of Leiden: a Chinese on the historical relations between Taiwan and the Republic in the time of the United East India Company, another Chinese on a generative linguistics topic, and an Indonesian on a comparative lexicological study of Indonesian and Dutch. Graduates have mostly found posts in a foreign university, or a position in business or in the service of their own government, for instance in the diplomatic service.

The Department was also given a permanent establishment, appropriate to its growth, of one professor, three university lecturers with research responsibilities, and a number of language lecturers. What began as an emergency programme for foreign students who had tried unsuccessfully before 1986 to get a degree in Dutch Studies has resulted in a fully-fledged, flourishing department.

jan w. de vries

Translated by Sheila M. Dale.

Address

Dutch Studies Department

Leiden University / P.O. Box 9515 / 2300 ra Leiden / The Netherlands

tel. [phone] / fax [phone]