The story of the english curriculum in the united States during the twentieth century is broadly familiar. Philology, central in 1900 at least at the graduate level, has lost its dominance and now occupies a marginal position—even though organizations and journals with anachronistic names and titles still preserve the memory of a time when philology ruled. Courses in the history of the English language have been dropped as requirements or have vanished entirely. The requirement that students in undergraduate and graduate programs know languages, both ancient and modern, other than English has eroded. Germanic philology now seems little more than a fossilized remnant for the occasional, intrepid specialist. Even Anglo-Saxon has been pushed to the edges.