Professor Dan Thornton, GSLL’s Dutch specialist since 2001, is teaching DTCH 402 and an advanced independent study this fall. The department recently received grants from the prestigious Queen Wilhelmina Fund and the Nederlandse Taalunie (the Dutch Language Union) which promote the teaching of Dutch language and culture outside of the Netherlands and Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. UNC is one of just 11 colleges and universities in the United States that offer Dutch as part of their regular curriculum.
These grants, amounting to just over $17,000, provide financial support for the instruction of Dutch at UNC for the next two years. This is the second time that GSLL has received funding from the Queen Wilhelmina Fund and the Nederlandse Taalunie, which also provided instructional funding of over $25,000 over the past three years.