In the 1940s the department was radically redefined. Rhetoric, debate, theater, performance, the new media of film, radio and TV—the faculty and students with interests in these areas went to a newly formed Speech department (where, in a short period of time, theater, performance and the new media would become an afterthought). And English created a new undergraduate Writing Major, formalizing a long standing interest in student writing, but insisting for the first time on a division between “creative writing” and the forms of writing gathered under the older designations of “composition” and “literature.” In the 1950s, then, the faculty in English was left to make sense of the new structures created in the 40s. While much was going on, there is not much to report.
The decade of the 1950s was also a time of significant faculty turn-over. The department had grown dramatically in the 1920s and 1930s, and that older generation was moving quickly toward retirement. In the period 1947 to 1959, in the tenure track faculty, there were 7 retirements, 4 deaths and 5 resignations, a total of 16; and this in a department of 28 (26 in the 1940s). Eleven assistant professors were hired in the 1950s, and some of them were promoted quite rapidly to Associate rank.
The Humanities
In July 1956, Edward Litchfield became the university’s 12th Chancellor. One of his early concerns was to reorganize the undergraduate curriculum in the College of Arts and Sciences to re-focus general education, an education (he said) that must prepare students for advanced study and the professional schools. Courses in the “humanities,” a term promoted nationally in the 50s by the major foundations, were seen as essential to the proper development of intellect and character. Litchfield’s inauguration included a series of 17 Inaugural Seminars. One was titled, “The Humanities in a Free Society: The Role of the Universities.”
The seminar was led by George Crouch, chair of the English department. The invited participants were John W. Dodds, professor of English and director of Special Programs in the Humanities at Stanford; James L. Clifford, Professor of English, Columbia; Glenn Olds, Director of Religion, Cornell; Andrew C. Ritchie, head of the Department of Painting and Sculpture, Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Reverend William G. Ryan, President, Seton Hill College; and Roger Sessions, Professor of Music, Princeton. The seminar was a day-long event, with talks in the morning and an afternoon discussion with the audience--prominent citizens, university faculty and students. According to Crouch, who reported on the event for the alumni magazine,
There was general agreement that one of the dangers to the humanities in our time is mass vulgarization, especially through shoddy television programs and third-rate movies. The universities must use these media to raise the level of taste among people.
Litchfield was promoting the humanities, a new curricular concept that would produce thematic courses (“The Devil, Hero, and God” or “Literature and Human Values”), courses that would focus on issues rather than close readings or literary history, courses with Big Ideas and Eternal Questions that could draw faculty and students from across departments and reinvigorate general education.
There is not much evidence that the push in this direction had much effect in the department or on the Pittsburgh campus. One response, however, was the formation of an interdisciplinary Poetry Reading Group, organized in 1956 by the newly formed Humanities Society and led by Jack Kolbert, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern Languages, and Ruth Haun, an Assistant Professor of Speech. The aim of the group was to offer students the “extracurricular opportunity to hear the great works of literature interpreted, presented, and discussed by members of the faculty and distinguished visitors." Faculty members were encouraged to present bilingual programs.
The English department and its faculty and students were much involved with the Poetry Reading Group, which seems to have lasted until the end of the decade. In the first year, for example, Lawrence Lee read from his own work, Prometheus in Pittsburgh. William Bliss, from History, read from Kipling and Blake; Erle Fairfield, a Professor of Modern Languages, read from Heine; George Crouch read from Dickens; and George Fowler, a Professor of History, read from the poetry of China and Japan.
The Western Pennsylvania Conference for Writers
Edwin Peterson began the annual Western Pennsylvania Conference for Writers in 1946. Each summer a panel of writers, teachers, critics and editors would come to campus to meet with an audience of students and teachers, as many as 500, who were interested in careers in writing and in the teaching of writing. The conference began with an opening set of presentations, followed by informal meetings, including meetings where the panelists would meet with students to their manuscripts. The speakers would comment on the state of American letters, on careers in writing in publishing, and they would offer “if I were you” advice to young writers--or as one reviewer put it, “direct advice from experience to innocence.” In 1953, Peterson renamed the conference, calling it a Conference for Readers and Writers, recognizing that the participants had an interest in contemporary literature, in reading as well as writing. In 1951, the alumni magazine provided a five year summary of the conference and declared it a major success.
The conference drew national attention throughout the decade of the 50s. Here, for example, are two reviews of the 1952 Writers’ Conference:
Among the other things I carried away from both conferences—Smith College and the University of Pittsburgh—was the conviction that concern for the things of the mind and interest in cultural values, far from having perished in America, are being vigorously fostered and stimulated in an increasing number of our colleges.
Donald Adams, The New York Times Book Review
Certainly Pittsburgh’s interest in writing is more intense than ever. For the first time in its eight years of existence the University of Pittsburgh’s Writers’ Conference has had to hang out the SRO sign. Hopeful young writers from surrounding high schools and colleges filled the Foster Memorial and asked questions worthy of the Forum members who answered them.
Professor Edwin L. Peterson, better known to Pittsburgh writers and would-be writers as “Pete”, can take a bow, for the conference is his “baby” and it is doing quite well, thank you!
Dorothy Kantner, Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph
The following is a list of some of more noteworthy panelists in the 1950s:
Allen Tate: Professor of English, Princeton
Walter Bradbury: managing editor of Doubleday and Co.
Martha Foley: former editor of Story magazine, Columbia University
Frank Luther Mott: Dean of the School of Journalism, Missouri
Henry Volkening: Volkening and Russell, literary agents
Caroline Gordon: Aleck Maury, Sportsman; None Shall Look Back
A.B. Guthrie, Jr.: The Big Sky and The Way West (Pulitzer Prize winner)
John Crowe Ransom: Kenyon College, editor Kenyon Review
Saul Bellow: novelist
I.A. Richards: critic, rhetorician, theorist
Loren Eiseley: The Immense Journey, Darwin’s Century
Donald Adams: Book Editor, New York Times
George Joel: editor, the Dial Press
Walter Havighurst: Pier 17, Annie Oakely of the Wild West
Warren Beck: Bread Loaf School of English
John Selby: former editor in chief, Rinehart Publishing
Robert Shaw: writer for radio and TV
Jesse Stuart: Taps for Private Tussie, Tales from the Plum Grove Hills
Malcolm Cowley: critic, editor, author
Manuel Kromroff: playwright, screenwriter, novelist
Margarita Smith: fiction editor, Mademoiselle
Diggory Venn: director of Chautauqua Writer’s Workshop
Louis Untermeyer: poet, editor, critic
Elliott Schryver: editor, G.P. Putnam
J. Saunders Redding: To Make a Poet Black, No Day of Triumph
Sara Henderson Hay: poet and critic
[photo of conference brochure]
1950s Courses
[The Bookstore] There isn’t much to report from the decade of the 1950s. The 1940s produced pronounced changes in the curriculum—the loss of courses in speech, theater, debate and media studies; the addition of a new Writing Major. In the 1950s, a period with substantial turnover in personnel, the challenge to the faculty was to settle into the new curriculum.
In the bulletin for the 1957-58 academic year, the English department represented itself as follows:
The undergraduate program of the English department has the following objectives: (a) to train all University students in clear, correct, and effective writing; (b) to guide the general student toward an understanding and appreciation of literature, with emphasis upon the insight which literature gives into the nature and condition of man; (c) to provide literature majors with a perspective of the main trends on English and American literature, acquaintance with the lives and works of the more important writers, familiarity with the major literary types, and sufficient knowledge of literary techniques and critical principles to permit independent judgment of literary productions; (d) to give writing majors, in addition to the kinds of knowledge mentioned above, instruction and practice in original, creative composition; and (e) to supply special courses of professional value to students in the School of Business Administration, the School of Education, and the Schools of Engineering and Mines.
In 1951, the department participated in a cross-disciplinary program of study called “Anglo-American Civilization.” Students involved took courses in English, Geography, History, Philosophy, Political Science and Sociology. But subsequent bulletins make no mention of this program, suggesting that it was unsuccessful and short-lived.
In 1953, the department offered an honor major to students who maintained a B average and who would, then, complete two Honors Seminars, choosing from “English Literature of the Renaissance,” “English Literature of the Age of Enlightenment,” “English Literature of the 19th Century,” “American Literature,” or “Seminar in Criticism.” The honors degree was available to both literature or writing majors.
Literature: The department now offered two courses on European literature (in translation): “Modern European Fiction” (Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Mann, Proust) and “European Backgrounds for English Literature” (a “masterpieces” course). Frederick Mayer created and regularly taught a course in the “Literature of the Bible” (the Bible as literature as well as the Bible as a source for English and American writers). Richard Snyder, after a year as a Ford Fellow studying the new “humanities” curricula at major universities, created a course titled “Literature and Human Values.” The department continued to offer a literature course directed toward students from the Schools of Engineering and Mining.
The PhD program provided advanced study in literature and criticism. There were 26 PhDs granted in the 1950s (and 21 in the 1940s). Many PhD graduates went on to substantial and productive careers. Two students, we believe, were African American—Sophia Phillips Nelson went on to teach at West Virginia State University and Naomi Johnson Townsend taught at Tougaloo College.
Composition: There is little change. The department offered a “Fundamentals Course” (2 hrs, no credit) for students unprepared for Freshman Composition. And the required composition course offered advanced sections requiring a placement exam. The department continued to offer courses in business and technical writing and a dedicated writing course for students in the Schools of Engineering and Mining. George Crouch regularly taught an advanced course in “Engineering and Managerial Report Writing.” The advanced courses in nonfiction are the courses Percival Hunt taught in the 20s: “Description and Narration,” “Advanced Writing,” and “Writing the Essay.”
Creative Writing: And there is little change here. You can see Lawrence Lee working to establish his niche in the curriculum. Edwin Peterson continued to offer advanced “conference” courses. Lawrence Lee created two new courses: “Special Projects in Writing” (for students working on a novel or a collection of short stories or any extended project) and “Principles and Practices in Writing.”
Journalism: Journalism stood apart from Composition and Creative Writing as an independent “division” of the English department, but with separate course listings in the College catalog. This was how “Speech” was represented in the 30s and 40s. The tenure track English faculty members teaching journalism in the 1950s are Robert Graham, Marjorie Avery Bernhard, and Donald Swarts. There are several additions to the usual courses in newspaper journalism, and these show the curriculum responding to the new media and the new professional venues for writers. New courses include “Reporting Public Affairs,” “Newscast Writing,” “Public Relations,” “Book Publishing Practice,” “Television Production.” With speech and psychology, the department supported a course in “The Role of Communication in Human Relations.” And the curriculum included a special “Seminar in Journalism” for honors students.
1950s Faculty
[Putnam Fennell Jones]
Putnam Fennell Jones: Jones continued to serve as Chair of the departmental committee until 1954, when he became Association Dean of the College (and later Acting Dean and then Dean of the Graduate School). In 1954-55, he headed a college-wide self-study which led to a $175,000 grant from the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust to create a new core curriculum. Jones’ scholarship spanned subjects as diverse as Beowulf, Milton, and “The Gregorian Mission and English Education.” He wrote several reviews for Modern Language Notes and The American Journal of Philology. He edited the collection, The Constitution of the United States, 1787-1962: Papers Delivered at a Symposium Commemorating the 175th Anniversary of the United States Constitution and the University of Pittsburgh, which was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1962.
[W. George Crouch] W. George Crouch was promoted to the rank of Professor in 1950. In 1955, when Putnam Jones was made Associate Dean of the College, Crouch became the English department chair. The position is no longer listed as “Chair of the departmental committee,” so the role of the chair is again more conventionally defined. In 1958, Crouch was elected Secretary of the Faculty Senate. In 1951, with Robert Zetler, a long-time Instructor in the English department, he published Advanced Writing. In the 1950s, Crouch regularly taught “Engineering and Managerial Report Writing” and a variety of courses in English literature, including “The English Novel” and “The Romantics.”
Walter Lawrence Myers: Professor. Myers retired in 1956. Myers was the author of The Later Realism: A Study of Character in the British Novel (Chicago, 1927) and of several essays and reviews published in the Virginia Quarterly. Myers taught an upper level course in “The History of Criticism,” but he is seldom listed in the course catalog, which suggests that he taught primarily in the lower division.
Harold William Schoenberger: Professor. Schoenberger retired in June 1959 and died a few months later. With his colleague, Ralph Ware, Schoenberger edited the volume, The Sentinels & Other Plays, Volume 13 in the series, America’s Lost Plays (Princeton, 1941). As a teacher in the 1950s, Shoenberger covered the range of survey and genre courses in American literature.
Frederick Philip Mayer: Professor. Mayer began to teach a new course in the 1950s, “The Literature of the Bible,” a study of the “literary qualities of the Old and New Testaments,” but also of the influence of the Bible on the “substance and style of later English literature.” He also taught courses on 18th century British literature and modern British and American fiction.
Mayer was part of a project funded by the Ford Foundation (led by Putnam Jones) to test the effectiveness of filmed lectures. The goal was greater efficiency—a professor, it was hoped, could reach more classes with less effort through the new media. Mayer’s lectures (for a sophomore level Introduction to Literature) were among the first to be filmed. Students met to view the lectures and the viewing was followed by a discussion led by Instructors or Graduate Assistants. Four “control sections” were compared with four “experimental” sections. The committee and the instructors all agreed that Mayer’s lectures were of the “highest excellence”—although perhaps a little over the heads of the sophomores. The students reported “a strong preference for having the lecturer present in the flesh and available for questions.” The report to the Dean concluded that, in the final analysis, neither the teachers nor the students felt the experiment to be a success.
Ford Elmore Curtis. Curtis was promoted to the rank of Professor in 1949-50. He continued to teach introductory courses on English and American drama and advanced courses on British drama from the 16th and 17th centuries.
Ralph Hartman Ware: Ware was promoted to the rank of Professor in 1948. He retired in 1960. With his colleague, Harold Schoenberger, Ware edited the volume, The Sentinels & Other Plays, Volume 13 in the series, America’s Lost Plays (Princeton, 1941). As a teacher in the 1950s, Ware covered the range of survey and genre courses in American literature.
Lawrence Lee was promoted to the rank of Professor in 1954. In 1952, he published his dramatic poem, Prometheus in Pittsburgh, with Boxwood Press, a local small press edited by Ralph Buchsbaum, Professor of Zoology at the university. In 1954, Pitt students participated in a WQED television production of Prometheus.
To provide a hint of the sense and sound of Prometheus in Pittsburgh, here is the opening speech. It is accompanied by a musical score prepared by Colin Sterne, Professor of Music at Pitt and founder of what is now the Renaissance and Baroque Society. The scene is Mt. Washington with a view down to the steel mills. Prometheus is speaking.
Man, man, man, man, man…
What god would willingly bear the fate of man
Whose body strains to carry the weight of life,
Of whose heart wish and frustration are the pulse,
Within whose mind the Furies sometimes rage?
Yet of desperation a honey is distilled;
And I, Prometheus, brother to man,
Have come in love—to live with him his life,
And wear this flesh, and taste and be made drunk
Upon this drink of living spiked with death.
What goddess’ undying nakedness is so bright
As woman’s that’s yielded with a love that looks
From the exalted soul through eyes that die;
What god so brave as the feeble child that stands
And grasps and, smiling, fronts the harms of time;
What is the laboring of Hercules
Beside the work of man. Stars, put out your lights;
Not all the patterned splendors of the sky
Burning above great cities and wide hills
So move me as man’s spark lifted in dark.
I have returned, who first gave fire to man,
To learn what good or evil has been done.
There is a chorus; there are furies. There are musical interludes and song and dance. Prometheus comes to see what Man has done with fire and to bring the promise of the atom. In coming to earth, he becomes one more Greek on the streets of the South Side, where he meets Michael and Hal, who work in the mills, and Helena and Mia, their girlfriends. Prometheus falls in love with Mia. The Pittsburgh crowd is suspicious and hostile, convinced Prometheus is a foreign agent or spy here to destroy the city, and he is killed.
In 1950, Lee gave a “scholar’s day” address, “The Morality of Literature.” Below is its opening paragraph. Lee became a favorite of the Litchfield administration. His poem, “The Cathedral,” can be found on the wall of the Cathedral’s common room (near room 123). In “The Morality of Literature,” you can hear something of what Chancellor Litchfield might have expected from the Humanities division of the College:
Once man stared in wonder at the planeted universe and was mute. He did not have language with which to communicate his wonder. Once he waked in cold caves in which there was little to be eaten, where the fire was low and that small flame threatened by the gusty drafts which made sudden invasion of the most remote recesses of his refuge from the storm dominating the fruitless harsh winter earth beyond his bleak burrow. And, thinking somehow most fearful thoughts and feeling in his being a dumb and terrible misery, he must suffer this fear and this misery but partially companioned. He then had no language with which to discipline the animal panic of his formless thinking into the courageous discoveries of reason.
Lee was active in the newly formed Poetry Reading Group, a program of readings and lectures for faculty and students sponsored by the Humanities Society. He regularly taught a course in Modern European Fiction and he taught a range of courses in writing: “Fiction Writing,” “Special Projects in Writing” (for students working on a novel or a collection of poems or short stories), and “Principles and Practices of Writing.”
Charles H. Peake (PhD, Michigan 1941): In 1956 Charles H. Peake was hired by Chancellor Litchfield and appointed to the position of Assistant Chancellor for Student Affairs. Peake, a scholar of 18th century British literature, held tenure in the English department. Prior to his appointment at the University of Pittsburgh, he had served as an Assistant Dean of the College of Literature, Science and the Arts at the University of Michigan and as Dean of Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois.
Donald W. Lee: Associate Professor. Donald Lee left the university in 1955. Lee regularly taught “European Backgrounds for English Literature.” His name seldom appears anywhere else in the course catalog, which suggests that he was teaching in the lower division.
Max Molyneux: Associate Professor. In 1956, Molyneux left the university to join the English department at Alma College. Molyneux taught the introduction to Renaissance Literature and advanced courses in Shakespeare and Milton.
Edwin L. Peterson was promoted to the rank of Professor in 1950. He continued to be the central figure in the writing program, a program that consistently recruited and produced prize winning student writers. In 1958, Peterson’s students took first, third, fourth, and fifth places in the Atlantic Monthly college writing contest. Peterson’s students had been winning awards for many years, but this series of prizes brought special attention to the University of Pittsburgh’s writing program. In 1959, Doubleday and G. P. Putnam’s Sons established programs to publish the novels of University of Pittsburgh students under Peterson’s guidance. And Peterson continued to sponsor the very successful annual Writers Conference.
In 1958, Peterson published his most important book, Penn’s Woods West (University of Pittsburgh Press). Penn’s Woods West is beautifully written and beautifully produced, in large format with color photographs by Thomas M. Jarrett. It is a lyrical account of time spent with friends hiking and travelling through rural Western Pennsylvania, visiting its forests, rivers and lakes. The book was dedicated to Chancellor Bowman and very positively reviewed by the press, including The New York Times and the Atlantic Monthly. Gladys Schmitt, who reviewed the book for The American Scholar, said that Peterson’s style had "an ease and sparseness reminiscent of Chinese brush painting, and rises to a lyricism worthy of Whitman and to a quiet, meditative tone as authentic as Thoreau’s."
In this decade, Peterson also edited Hidden Steams (University of Pittsburgh Press,1952), a collection of essays from the 1949 Writers Conference, including essays by Storm Jameson, Warren Beck, Lawrence Lee, William Hastings and Percival Hunt. Peterson wrote an afterword to Hidden Streams that is itself a striking essay on the teaching of writing. [add essay here]
Peterson, with several of his colleagues, was active in the Poetry Reading Group, an initiative sponsored by the Humanities Society. He taught his usual courses in the 50s: Percival Hunt’s old courses, Description and Narrative and Fiction Writing, as well as his signature “conference course,” Advanced Fiction Writing. In the early 1950s, Peterson hosted a television show about writing for WQED. One local reporter described Peterson as a “TV natural,” who “captivated air audiences with his philosophical approach to simple everyday writing situations just as he did his countless students in his famous short-story writing course.”
You can browse a listing of Peterson’s magazine publications. [add pdf here]
Agnes Lynch Starrett was promoted to the rank of Professor in 1955. In 1954, she became the editor of the University of Pittsburgh Press, one of the first women to edit a university press, and she continued to edit Pitt, the alumni magazine.
Henry Clayton Fisher was promoted to the rank of Professor in 1952. He died in 1956. Fischer taught “History of Criticism,” “Principles of Criticism,” Shakespeare and a new course, “Forms and Ideas in English and American Literature.”
Robert X. Graham was promoted to the rank of Professor in 1952. He died in 1953. Graham taught courses in journalism.
Charles Crow was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 1952 and Professor in 1956. He taught a range of courses: “Milton,” “17th Century British Literature,” “The Essay,” “American Poetry,” “The Major Critics.” An article in The Alumni News Review, one that sounds like it had been written by a student, describes Crow’s teaching:
Students listen to Dr. Crow in rapt—not just polite—silence. There are few clock-watchers in his room.
However, students don’t just sit and listen to Dr. Crow. They get a chance to speak their piece too. With Dr. Crow stimulating thought and directing lines of reasoning, verbal battles rivaling those in the halls of Congress rage. Unlike Congressmen, though, Dr. Crow’s debaters never call each other derogatory names. Also, his students’ reasoning is usually more sound and less prejudiced than the reasoning of our loquacious legislators.
[Emily Gertrude Irvine] Emily Gertrude Irvine was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 1950 and Professor in 1956. She continued to teach the course in “Literature for Children.” She also teaches “Advanced Expository Writing” and “Writing the Essay.”
Maurice Harry Weil was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 1953. He died in 1957. He taught classes in 19th century British literature, with a focus on the Romantic poets.
Assistant Professors
Eleven Assistant Professors where hired in the 1950s. (For the purposes of comparison, three were hired in the 1940s). The high number was partly in response to post-war enrollments but primarily to the moving on of the large group hired by Percival Hunt in the 1920s and 1930s.
[Abe Laufe]
Abe Laufe was hired in 1954 as an Assistant Professor and promoted to Associate in 1957. Laufe grew up in Pittsburgh and took all of his degrees at the university (BA 1928, MA 1935, PhD 1952). He worked as a high school teacher in nearby Arnold, Pennsylvania, until he joined the United States Army in 1942. Laufe received a Legion of Merit Award for his contributions to the field of military writing. After returning from the war, Laufe was briefly a freelance writer and editor in New York City. He began his PhD at the University of Pittsburgh in 1947.
Laufe published widely on the history of musical theater and censorship, including three books: Anatomy of a Hit (1966), Broadway’s Greatest Musicals (1977), and The Wicked Stage: A History of Theater Censorship and Harassment in the United States (1978). He edited a collection of frontierswoman Emily FitzGerald’s letters, An Army Doctor’s Wife on the Frontier (1962). Four of Laufe’s unpublished, book-length works remain in the University of Pittsburgh archives.
In addition to being a dynamic teacher and scholar, Laufe was a popular public lecturer and performer. He traveled the country with his “cultural recitals,” humorous presentations on the history of theater. He often sang and played piano at conventions and meetings, earning him the titles of “Pitt’s Victor Borge” and “Pitt’s Piano Playing Professor.” In the early 1960s, Laufe hosted a series of radio shows on songwriting for KDKA. After his retirement in 1972, he remained in Pittsburgh and continued to perform and to offer seminars and workshops on theater and songwriting. In the 1950s, Laufe taught courses in Modern American Drama, and he began to teach more broadly in American literature after Shoenberger's retirement. He also taught “Advanced Expository Writing” and “Writing the Essay.”
Marjorie Avery Bernhard (BA Michigan, 1921) was one of the few women journalists to report from overseas during World War II. She wrote under her maiden name, Avery; beginning in 1943, she reported from England (“London Diary”), France, Germany and Norway. Avery got her start covering fashion in Paris for the New York Herald Tribune. She left France for the Detroit Free Press, where she served as a columnist and Sunday editor and, in the mid-40s, special war correspondent. After the war, she wrote freelance and published in the New York Times Magazine, Liberty, and The Toronto Star. Avery came to the English department as an Instructor in Journalism in 1947. In 1950 she was promoted to Assistant Professor and in 1956 to Associate. She taught courses in reporting, feature writing, advanced reporting and magazine writing. She was active in the annual Writers Conference.
[Dorothy Miller] Dorothy Miller received all of her degrees from Pitt’s English department (BA 1936, MA 1937, PhD, 1946). She was hired as an Assistant Professor in 1952 to teach courses in English education. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 1956. In the 1950s, she taught “Literature for Children” and “Problems in the Teaching of English.”
Robert L. Gale: (BA Dartmouth 1942; MA Columbia 1947; PhD Columbia 1952). Gale served as a 2nd Lieutenant in Counter Intelligence during World War II, with action in Great Britain, France, Italy, and North Africa. From 1952 1958, after receiving his degree from Columbia, he taught at the University of Mississippi. He joined the University of Pittsburgh in 1958 as an Assistant Professor. His area of specialty was American literature.
[Richard C. Snyder] Richard C. Snyder (PhD Pittsburgh, 1955) spent the opening years of the 1950s as an Instructor. In 1957 he was appointed to the rank of Assistant Professor. In 1951, he received a fellowship from the Ford Foundation Fund for the Advancement of Education to spend a year visiting campuses (Chicago, Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Wellesley) to study the role of the humanities in general education. He wrote a brief essay on his year as a Ford Fellow for the alumni magazine. In 1954, he introduced a new general education course, “Literature and Human Values.”
[Donald E. Swarts] Donald E. Swarts (PhD Pittsburgh, 1953). Swarts spent the opening years of the 1950s as an Instructor. He was appointed to the rank of Assistant Professor in 1956 and eventually taught George Crouch’s course, “Engineering and Managerial Report Writing.” He also served as the director of Student Publications. Swarts was promoted to the rank of Assistant Professor in 1956. In 1960, he joined the department of English at the University of Pittsburgh’s new Johnstown campus, where he went on to serve as Academic Dean. In 1963, Chancellor Litchfield appointed Swarts as the new President of the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford.
Donald Tritschler (PhD Northwestern) was hired as an Assistant Professor in 1957. Tritscher, like Gale and Laufe, was a specialist in American literature.
Alan Markman (BA Michigan, 1947; PhD Michigan 1955). Markman was hired as an Assistant Professor in 1957. His area of specialty was Old and Middle English. In the 1950s, he taught courses in early literature but also a course in “The English Language.” In his first semester, Markman worked to organize a Graduate Humanities Club.
The new Chancellor, Edward H. Litchfield, had announced that he would organize the College into three areas—Humanities, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences, each with its own Dean. And Litchfield began to promote the idea the humanities by promoting cross-disciplinary humanities initiatives. The purpose of the Graduate Humanities Club was to bring together faculty and students across the Humanities departments to present papers and to share research. In the first year, Charles Crow spoke on “The Later Style of Henry James,” Richard Tobias on Matthew Arnold’s notebooks, Donald Tritschler on Faulkner, and faculty from other departments on Donne, Robinson Jeffers, and Yeats. We could find no mention of the club after its first meeting.
[Daniel Marder] Daniel Marder was a pilot in WWII and a decorated veteran. After the war, he attended the Iowa Writers Workshop where he received his MFA (1950). In early 1950s, Marder was a Time-Life correspondent in Madrid, where he also edited the Spanish American Courier, an English language newspaper. Marder returned to the US and entered the PhD program in our department, where he would receive his PhD in 1963. He was hired as an Assistant Professor in 1957. It is unusual for a graduate student to be hired at this rank. We can only assume that he was hired on the basis of his credentials as a writer.
Richard Tobias (BA Ohio State, 1948; PhD Ohio State, 1957). Tobias, a Victorianist, was one of three in English brought in by Chancellor Litchfield in 1957 in support of the new Humanities Division in the College. The other two were Jean Mele, a journalist, and Herbert Howarth, who came as a Visiting Assistant Professor. Tobias and Mele were hired as Instructors. In 1959 Tobias was promoted to Assistant Professor. In the 1950s, Tobias served as president of the Graduate Humanities Club; Co-Chairman of the humanities section of the Regional Committee on Inter-relationships of Secondary Schools, Colleges, and Professional Schools; and on Victorian Studies bibliography committee.
Montgomery Culver was one of Edwin Peterson’s students. His short story, “Black Water Blues,” won one of the Atlantic Monthly undergraduate student writing awards and, after publication in the Atlantic, an O. Henry Short Story Award. Culver completed his BA and MA in our department and his PhD at the University of Illinois. Culver joined the faculty as an Instructor in 1953 and was promoted to Assistant Professor in 1958.
[Herbert Howarth] Herbert Howarth was one of several visitors brought in by Chancellor Litchfield in support of the new Humanities Division in the College. He had a one year appointment. Howarth, who had studied at Oxford, was a poet and a translator of Arabic poetry. He served with the British diplomatic corps in Palestine. For five years, he was the head of Britain’s National Book League. Howarth became a leading figure in the study of modernism and a visiting professor at many American universities. His most important book was Notes on Some Figures Behind T.S. Eliot (1964).
Instructors/Lecturers
In 1949, there were 58 faculty members in English outside the tenure track. In 1951, this drops by half to 29 and then, in 1958, to 23. The other notable change is that for the first time the non-tenure-track faculty members are almost all women.
There was substantial turnover among the NTT faculty, so we will only list those who taught for 5 or more years.
Marcus T. Allias
Hannah Bechtel
Flora Bramson
Ruth Cramblet
Mary C. Dittman
Arthur H. Fedel
Dorothea B. Gardner
Ann Shane Jones
Sydney Kneebone
Caroline LaRue
Elizabeth R. McIntosh
Dorothy O’Connor
Mary Cooper Robb
Diantha W. Riddle
Lois C. Schuette (taught courses in business writing)
Helen T. Simons
Clare V. Starrett
Betty Anne Stroup
Mildred Yetter
Robert L. Zetler (taught courses in business and technical writing)
1950s Students
BA and MA students
Konstantinos Lardas (BA 1950) completed his MA at Columbia and his PhD at Michigan (1966). He was Professor of English at the City College of the City University of New York. Lardas published poems and short stories in Harpers and The Atlantic Monthly. His first book was a book of poems, And In Him, Too; In Us (1964). He was the editor and translator for a collection of Mourning Songs by Greek Women. He translated other work in Greek, including poems by C.P. Cavafy.
Alice M. (Amy) Fox was a special student in 1950 when she worked with Edwin Peterson on a novel, Kim Dawson, published by Doubleday. The novel traced life in a northern Pennsylvania oil town in 1865.
[Thaddeus Mosley] Thaddeus Mosley (BA 1950) worked for the U.S. Postal service and as a freelance writer for The Pittsburgh Courier after graduation. But he was soon recognized for his work as a sculptor. In 1968 he had a solo exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art. His work is featured around the city and in major museums. He was a Pittsburgh Artist of the Year; he has won the Governor’s Award and a Service in the Arts Award from the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. With David Lewis, he prepared the University of Pittsburgh Press book, H. Thaddeus Mosley: African-American Sculptor (1997).
Clyde T. Hankey (BA 1949, MA, 1950) taught at Western Michigan University and then at Youngstown State, where he served as English Department chair. He retired in 1997. Hankey was a linguist who published several articles in American Speech, including at least one on Pittsburgh English, "'Tiger', 'Tagger' and [ai] in Western Pennsylvania" (1965).
Nancy Kirk Kountz (BA 1951) is a well-known and highly regarded Pittsburgh painter.
Myron Kopelman (BA 1951) is known to Pittsburgh Steeler fans as Myron Cope. Cope was profiled on the 1940s student page.
[Sylvester (Lester) Goran] Sylvester (Lester) Goran (BA 1951, MA 1961) wrote a series of successful novels and stories, many drawing upon his experience as a child growing up in an Irish-Catholic, working class family in Oakland, the neighborhood connected to the university, and in a housing project in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, the largely African American neighborhood celebrated in August Wilson’s plays. Goran joined the faculty at the University of Miami in 1960, where he helped to create the undergraduate project in creative writing (1965) and an MFA program in writing in the College of Arts and Sciences (1991). His students included Terrence Cheng, Chantel Acevedo, Michelle Richmond, Paul Perry, and Crissa-Jean Chappell. The University of Miami recognized his contributions by creating the Lester Goran Reading Series and the Lester Goran Writing Fellowship.
Goran was the author of eight novels, The Paratrooper of Mechanic Avenue (1960), Maria Light (1962), The Candy Butcher’s Farewell (1964), The Stranger in the Snow (1966), The Demon in the Sun Parlor (1968), The Keeper of Secrets (1971), Mrs. Beautiful (1985), and Bing Crosby’s Last Song (1998); three short story collections, Tales from the Irish Club: A Collection of Short Stories (1996, a New York Times notable book), She Loved Me Once, and Other Stories (1997), and Outlaws of the Purple Cow and Other Stories (1999); and a memoir, The Bright Streets of Surfside: The Memoir of a Friendship with Isaac Bashevis Singer (1994). Goran also translated several of Singer’s stories. In an extended interview with Matthew Asprey (Contrapasso Magazine, 2012), Goran recalls two unpublished novels he wrote when he was an undergraduate in our department: The Streets Are Made of Stone and The Travelers to September.
Bernard J. Daley (BA 1951; MA 1953) served as an editor for U.S. Steel’s Applied Research Department but he also wrote and collected science fiction and fantasy. His stories were published in Infinity, Fantastic Universe, and The Year’s Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy (“The Man Who Liked Lions,” 1957).
[Anne G. Faigen] Anne G. Faigen (BA 1952, MA 1957) taught high school and college English until she left teaching to write full-time. She was the author of three young people's novels--Finding Her Way (1997), Brave Salamander (2005) and New World Waiting (2006)--and two mysteries, Frame Work (2008) and Out of Turns (2009).
[Benjamin Saltman] Benjamin Saltman (BA 1952) completed his MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and his PhD from Claremont Graduate School (1967). He taught poetry and contemporary American literature at California State University, Northridge. He received two NEA fellowships. He published eight books of poetry with small presses: Blue with Blue (1968), The Leaves, The People (1974), Elegies of Place (1976), Deck (1979), Five Poems (1989), The Book of Moss (1992), The Sun Takes Us Away (1996), Sleep and Death, the Dream (1999), and in 1996, an on-line collection, Mysterious Faces Talking Straight Ahead. Red Hen Press offers a book award in Saltman’s name.
Marjorie Malvern, a special student in the English department, won an honorable mention in the 1953 Atlantic Monthly competition for her story, “Half a Holiday.” Malvern completed her PhD at Michigan State and taught at the University of Florida. She published on medieval and early modern literature. Her book, Venus In Sackcloth: The Magdalen’s Origins and Metamorphoses was published in 1975 by Southern Illinois University Press.
[Jack Gilbert] Jack Gilbert (1925-2012) grew up in Pittsburgh. Although he never completed high school, he was admitted to the university (by accident, he said), where he completed his BA in English in 1954. Gilbert was friends with Gerald Stern in the late 40s in Pittsburgh and, in the 50s, in Paris. In an interview with the Paris Review, Gilbert said:
I started writing poetry because I finally got to go to college and I met Gerald Stern. We started hanging out together. I was interested in writing novels, but he was always talking about poetry—usually poetry, sometimes fiction. We were competitive with each other. So I decided I would write poetry for a semester and then go back to writing novels. I never went back.
And of Pittsburgh, he said
I was kind of a strange boy to be in Pittsburgh. I spent so much time reading. Even if I started a book that was boring, it was almost impossible for me not to finish it. I couldn’t get the story out of my head until I knew what happened. I had such curiosity. And you might not think it, but the power of Pittsburgh, the grandeur, those three great rivers, was magnificent. Even working in the steel mills. You can’t work in a steel mill and think small. Giant converters hundreds of feet high. Every night, the sky looked enormous. It was a torrent of flames—of fire. The place that Pittsburgh used to be had such scale. My father never brought home three pounds of potatoes. He always came home with crates of things. Everything was grand, heroic. Everything seemed to be gigantic in Pittsburgh—the people, the history. Sinuousness. Power. Substance. Meaningfulness.
Gerald Stern was in his 50s when he began to have success as a writer. For Gilbert, however, success came more quickly. His first book, Views of Jeopardy (1962), won the Yale Younger Poets Series and was nominated for the Pulitzer. Gilbert was praised by the previous generation of poets: Roethke, Kunitz and Spender. He was profiled in Esquire, Vogue, and Glamour. The success and fame brought a Guggenheim Fellowship and two decades living and travelling in Europe.
It took twenty two years before he published his second book, Monolithos: Poems 1962 and 1982 (Graywolf, 1984), the title referring to the Greek island, Santorini, where Gilbert had lived. Monolithos won the Stanley Kunitz Prize and an award from the American Poetry Review. This book was followed by The Great Fires: Poems 1982-1992 (Knopf, 1994); Refusing Heaven (Knopf, 2005); Tough Heaven: Poems of Pittsburgh (Pond Road Press, 2006); Transgressions: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, 2006), The Dance Most of All (Knopf, 2010) and Collected Poems (Knopf, 2012).
Gilbert was never as prolific as Stern—nor, in the end, as much of a public figure. He had little interest in teaching or in joining a university faculty; he gave few readings and he was not a member of literary circles. He wrote throughout his life, however, and almost all of his work received substantial critical acclaim. In 1994, after the publication of The Great Fires, Gilbert won the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry; his book Refusing Heaven (2005) won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Lannan Foundation prepared a video of Gilbert reading at the awards ceremony, and the foundation prepared a video of an extended interview with Jody Allen Randolph.
Louis J. Bosco (BA 1954) was among the first to receive a BA in writing from the English department. His short story, “Again Be the Son,” won 3rd place in the 1953 Atlantic Monthly national student writing competition. He later completed an MA in library science at the university and had a long career as the corporate librarian for the Neville Chemical Company.
Harry Mooney (MA 54) published The Fiction and Criticism of Katherine Ann Porter with the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1957, the same year he joined the faculty as a Lecturer. Mooney had a long career in English at Pitt.
[Lloyd Edward Kropp] Lloyd Edward Kropp (BA 1957, MA 1962) was the author of four novels, The Drift (1969), Who is Mary Stark (1974), One Hundred Times to China (1979), and Greencastle (1987), which was nominated for a Penn/Faulkner Award and named as one of the ALA’s “Best Books of the Year.” Both Greencastle and One Hundred Times to China mix fantasy and science fiction and had success as novels for young adult readers. Kropp taught literature and writing in the English departments at Otterbein College, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Kropp was also a composer and musician, and he composed the music for Lawrence Lee’s dramatic poem, The American as Faust (1960).
Elias Abdou (BA 1958, MA 1962) was appointed as an Assistant Professor at Duquesne University. He later taught at Allegheny Community College.
[Arthur P. Ziegler] Arthur P. Ziegler (BA 1958). In 1964, with James Van Trump, Ziegler founded the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, an organization whose goal was to protect and preserve significant Pittsburgh buildings and neighborhoods threatened by urban renewal. Ziegler has written ten books on historic preservation, including Landmark Architecture of Allegheny Country (1967, with James Van Trump); Birmingham, Pittsburgh’s South Side: An Area with a Past that Has a Future (1968); Cora Street: A Rehabilitation Case Study (1969); Historic Preservation in Inner City Areas: A Manual of Practice (1971); Allegheny (1975); and Historic Preservation for Small Towns (co-editor with Walter C. Kidney). Ziegler won the Presidential Private Sector Achievement Award, the Louise Du Pont Crowninshield Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a special award from the Society of Architectural Historians, and he was named Pittsburgher of the Year by WQED.
[Peter S. Beagle] Peter S. Beagle
(BA 1959) is a celebrated author of fantasy fiction. As a high school student in the Bronx, he won a Scholastic Magazine writing award which carried with it a scholarship to study writing at the University of Pittsburgh. His first
novel, A Fine and Private Place, was written while he was a student in the department and it is dedicated to Edwin Peterson. His best known novel is The Last Unicorn (1968). Beagle wrote the screenplay for animated The Lord of the Rings (1978) and an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He has a long list of novels, story collections, screen plays, and essays. Beagle has won a Hugo award, a Nebula award and an Inkpot award. He was given the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2011.
PhD Graduates (with dissertation titles)
[Vera Lillian Mowry] Vera Lillian Mowry (PhD 1950; diss: “Satire in American Drama”). Vera Mowry became a professor of theater history at Hunter College, City University of New York. After receiving her degree, she was active in theater in the Washington D.C. area, including the Arena Stage, where she met and later married Pernell Roberts (Adam Cartwright on the TV series Bonanza). In 1955, Roberts joined the faculty at Hunter as an Instructor. She rose through the ranks and was promoted to Professor in 1969. She was central to the creation of the City University’s PhD program in theater. In 1984, she was awarded a Presidential Medal by Hunter President, Donna Shalala. In 1989, she created and served as editor for the Journal of American Drama and Theater. At her retirement, the CUNY Graduate Center endowed a Vera Mowry Roberts Chair in American Theater. She received career achievement awards from the American Theater Association and the American Society for Theater Research. Roberts published widely in academic journals and she was the author of On Stage: A History of Theater (1962) and The Nature of Theater (1972).
Sydney Horovitz (PhD 1951; diss: “Theodore Dreiser: Basic Patterns of His Work English”). Horovitz taught at the University of Miami.
Blaine Kern McKee (PhD 1951; diss: Dr. John Moore: Novelist and Genial Philosopher). McKee taught technical communication at Colorado State University.
[Sophia Phillips Nelson] Sophia Phillips Nelson (PhD 1951; diss: “Shelleyana, 1935-1949”). Sophia Phillips Nelson was the first black valedictorian of Pittsburgh’s Westinghouse High School (1934). She had a long career at West Virginia State University, where she served as Chair of the English department. With Lewis Henry Fenderson (Pitt PhD 1948) and Lettie J. Austin, she was the editor of The Black Man and the Promise of America (1970).
George Bleasby (PhD 1952; diss: “The Frontier in Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales”). Bleasby taught at Westminster College, where he chaired the English department from 1954-1975. To honor his contributions to the College, Westminster created the George Bleasby Colloquia, an annual program of lectures, readings and presentations.
John H. Forry (PhD 1952; diss: “A Study of the Novels of Mrs. Mary Robinson, 1758-1800”). Forry also taught at Westminster College, where there is now a John H. Forry Scholarship.
Abe Laufe (PhD 1952; diss: “The Long-Running Plays on the New York Stage, 1918-1950: A Literary Evaluation.) Laufe joined the department as an Assistant Professor in 1954.
Helen-Jean Moore (PhD 1952; diss: “The American Criticism of Hawthorne, 1938-1948). Moore became the Director of Libraries and Chair of the Liberal Arts faculty at Point Park College, where the library now bears her name. Moore and her colleagues in Pittsburgh led the nation in developing cooperative efforts among academic libraries. (See her article, “Library Co-operation in an Urban Setting: The Pittsburgh Story,” Library Trends, April 1962.) During her career, she taught at Tulane, Chatham College, CMU, and Point Park.
Edward Francis Carr (PhD 1953; diss: “Satiric Fantasy in English Fiction, 1700-1900”).
Robert Charles Slack (PhD 1953; diss: “A Variorum Edition of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure”). Slack became head of the Department of Humanities at Carnegie Tech and, later, head of the CMU Curriculum Center. He was the director of the CMU Project English site. Slack prepared the Victorian Studies bibliography for several years, and he was the author of Writing: A Preparation for College Composition (1978), revised and reissued (with Beekman Cottrell) as Write On! A Preparation for College Composition.
Donald Eugene Swarts (PhD 1953; diss: “D.H. Lawrence’s Literary Criticism: A Catalog”). Swarts joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor in 1956. In 1960, he joined the department of English at the University of Pittsburgh’s new Johnstown campus, where he served as Academic Dean. In 1963, Chancellor Litchfield appointed Swarts as the new President of the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, where an academic building, Swarts Hall, bears his name.
Michael Angelo Accetta (PhD 1954; diss: “Gothic Elements in the Early American Novel, 1775-1825”). Accetta taught in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, Mt. Lebanon School District, Duquesne University, and retired in 1981 as Superintendent of Chartiers Valley School District. He served on the Board of the Community College of Allegheny County.
Matthew Joseph Maikoski (PhD 1954; diss: “Gamaliel Bradford, Psychographer”).
Thomas Saunders (PhD 54; diss: “Moral Values in the Novels of Edith Wharton”).
Brother F. Joseph Paulits (PhD 1955; diss: Emerson’s Concept of Good and Evil”). In the 1960s, Brother Paulits joined the faculty at La Salle College, where he taught and served as the Dean of the Evening division. He withdrew from the Christian Brothers in 1971 to enter the priesthood. He was the founding pastor of Our Lady of Chesapeake Catholic church in Baltimore.
Richard Clement Snyder (PhD 1955; diss: “A Complete Edition of the Poetry of William Shenstone”). Snyder joined the English department as an Assistant Professor in 1957.
Naomi Johnson Townsend (PhD 1955; diss: “Edmund Burke: Reputation and Bibliography, 1850-1954”). Townsend became the Chair of English, Chair of the Humanities Division and, in 1973, the Academic Dean of Tougaloo College.
Ralph D. Lindeman (PhD 1956; diss: “Norman Douglas: A Critical Study.” Lindemann was Professor of English at Gettysburg College, where he also served as Department Chair.
[Samual John Hazo] Samuel John Hazo (PhD 1957; diss: “An Analysis of the Aesthetic of Jacques Maritain”). Sam Hazo taught for 43 years at Duquesne University, where he served as Professor of English and, from 1961-66, Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences. Hazo has been much honored as a poet, essayist, and teacher. He holds 12 honorary doctorates; he was appointed the first State Poet of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a position he held from 1993-2003; he was given the Griffin Award for Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame, his undergraduate alma mater. He served as the President and Director of the International Poetry Forum, bringing poetry and poets to Pittsburgh’s cultural calendar.
In 1958, Hazo published his first book of poetry, Discovery and Other Poems. Since then, he has published over 20 books of poetry, including Once for the Last Bandit (1972, National Book Award Finalist) and, more recently, The Holy Surprise of Right Now, Selected Poems (1996), Just Once: New and Previous Poems (2002, winner of the Maurice English Poetry Prize), A Flight to Elsewhere (2005), The Song of the Horse (2008), and Like a Man Gone Mad: Poems in a New Century (2010). Hazo has also published memoir, fiction, and collections of essays, including The Stroke of a Pen (2011, essays), The Power of Less: Poetry and Public Speech (2005, Essays), The Pittsburgh That Stays Within You (2004, memoir), Stills, (1989, fiction), and The Wanton Summer Air (1982, Fiction). Hazo also published several volumes of translations, including three volumes of poems by the Arabic poet, Adonis (Ali Ahmen Said). In 2014, Hazo was awarded the University of Pittsburgh’s 225th Anniversary Medallion.
[Lawrence Francis McNamee] Lawrence Francis McNamee (PhD 1957; diss: “Julius Caesar on the German Stage in the 19th Century”). McNamee had a distinguished 37 year career as a Professor of Literature and Languages at Texas A&M University, where he was widely admired and known for his trademark Pirates baseball cap. During World War II he worked for the Office of Strategic Service, a forerunner of the CIA, and he served as an interpreter during the interrogations of Nazis at the Nuremberg War Crime Trials. He organized the first classes in German at A&M. McNamee was an avid boxing fan and wrote about boxing, including several books and a long list of articles for sports magazines, including Boxing Magazine and Sports Illustrated. McNamee knew George Foreman and Max Schmeling, whom he defended against charges that he had been a Nazi sympathizer. For 20 years, McNamee wrote a weekly column on English usage, "A Few Words," for the Sunday Dallas Morning News.
Charles Joseph Mollenhauer (PhD 57; diss: “The Literary Criticism of Augustine Birrell”). As a Christian Brother, Mollenhauer was known as Brother Emery. After receiving his PhD, Mollenhauer spent a year in Rome and then joined the faculty at LaSalle University in Philadelphia. In 1969, he was appointed Academic Vice-President, a position he held until 1990, when he returned to the English department to teach full time.
Mary Cooper Robb (PhD 1957; “Light against Light: The Literary Biography of William Law”). 1957, Robb published William Faulkner, An Estimate of His Contributions to the American Novel for a new series with the University of Pittsburgh Press. She served as an Instructor in the department until 1963, when she became head of the English department at Sewickley Academy, a position she held until her retirement in 1972.
George Paul Grant (PhD 1958; diss: “The Poetic Development of John G. Neihardt”). Grant joined the English department at Whitewater State University in Wisconsin, where he also served as department chair.
George Bertram Kiley (PhD 1958; diss: “Robinson Jeffers: The Short Poems”). Kiley taught at Lock Haven State Teachers College.
Dorothea Breitwieser Gardner (PhD 1959; diss: “A History of the Nixon Theater, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania”). Gardner taught for several years as an Instructor in our department and then moved to Shippensburg University, where she had a 25 year career and achieved the rank of Professor of English.
Mary Carol Culver (PhD 1959; diss: “A Study of the Imagery in Shakespeare’s As You Like It”). Culver taught for many years as an Instructor in our department. She also worked as a technical writer for Westinghouse.
1950s Footnotes
Creative Writing: Who’s on First, Pitt or Iowa?
From Iowa to Pittsburgh and Back Again
The University of Iowa English department is a natural reference point for the English department at Pitt, since the ties between the two have been both frequent and deep.
The formal connection began with Percival Hunt, who chaired the Iowa department and who was part of a group teaching courses in fiction writing, courses cited as precursors to the Iowa Writers Workshop. John G. Bowman, a former President at the University of Iowa, brought Hunt to Chair the Pittsburgh English department when he came as the University of Pittsburgh’s 10th Chancellor in 1921. Once in Pittsburgh, Hunt continued to teach and to promote courses in fiction writing, while also guiding the Composition program and its interests in the literary essay. Hunt’s Pittsburgh student, John Gerber, who received his BA and MA from our department, went on to chair the English department at Iowa (1961-1976) and to write a history of English at Iowa (The Teaching of English at the University of Iowa: Volume 1, The First One Hundred Years, 1861-1961, Maecenas Press, 1995).
[Gerald Stern and Jack Gilbert in Paris in the 1950s]
Iowa was the first to have a course in creative writing, if by “creative writing” we mean a course in the writing of fiction or poetry. According to Gerber, the first Iowa creative writing course was a “verse-making” class taught by George Cram Cook in 1896. The course was later titled “Versification” and taught by Cook until he left Iowa in 1899. In the Fall of 1899, Clarke Fisher Ansley taught a two semester advanced composition course at Iowa which included assignments in the short story.
In 1902, Percival Hunt, who was directing the Iowa composition program, first taught Iowa’s short story course, a course he would elect to teach when he arrived in Pittsburgh in 1921, just as, in Pittsburgh, he would bring the techniques of fiction into his advanced composition courses. At Iowa, as at Pittsburgh, the line between composition and creative writing was not rigidly drawn. Hunt’s composition courses drew upon literary values in promoting description and narration in expository essays. As Gerber says, “Almost as though he were teaching poetry writing, Hunt insisted on careful attention in narrative writing to structure and to the color and connotations of individual words.” Gerber lists Hunt as one of the “true fathers” of Iowa’s creative writing program.
In Pitt’s English department, the first course in the short story, “The Art of the Short Story,” was taught by George Gerwig in 1910, a decade before Hunt’s arrival. Gerwig pursued a career in Pittsburgh outside the university but continued to teach evening and extension courses, including courses in short fiction. In 1912 his course was titled “Materials and Methods of Fiction.” In 1910, Lincoln Robinson Gibbs joined the University of Pittsburgh English department as Professor and Chair. He taught a course in the short story in 1914 as part of the regular college curriculum, where it remained a standard offering. Gibbs’ students include the novelist Hervey Allen (who said, “I owe much to the good Dr. Gibbs”) and the children’s writer, Marie McSwigan. Percival Hunt began to teach the short story course and to promote writing in the Pittsburgh curriculum, both fiction and nonfiction, when he arrived in 1921 to replace Gibbs as chair.
The Writing Major and The Writer’s Workshop
The next step, however, is not so clear—that is, the step beyond individual courses to a defined area of study. Our department was the first of the two to offer an undergraduate Writing Major (in 1946). Iowa does not have an undergraduate major in writing, although there is a creative writing “track” within the English major. Iowa, however, was the first to offer a graduate program in creative writing. In the early 1930s, Paul Engle received the first Iowa MA based on a book of poems rather than a thesis. In 1941 Engle would be appointed as Director of the Iowa Writers Workshop, an MFA program in creative writing. Pitt’s MFA program was created in the 1970s.
But what about the designation, “Writer’s Workshop”? This term refers to both a method of teaching and a gathering of established writers in support of those who would aspire to a writing career. According to Gerber, the workshop as a way of teaching came to Iowa in 1905 when Edwin Ford Piper had students discussing and evaluating their own work. Pittsburgh had advanced writing courses in the 1920s and these were taught by Hunt and his colleagues. It is hard to know, however, if they could be called “workshops.”
We do know that in Pittsburgh in 1939, Edwin Peterson (who learned from Hunt to teach writing) developed a new course, “Conference in Writing,” where 15 students met regularly in the Early American Nationality Room to share work in progress—poetry, fiction, and fiction. In this course, Peterson said, “students are really writing, not just talking about it.” This is the first direct reference at Pitt to a work-shop like course. Although Piper’s Iowa writing seminar was informally referred to as a workshop, that name was never in the Iowa catalog until 1939, when the course listing said, “Writer’s Workshop, credit arranged.” It is certainly possible that Hunt and Peterson and others, like Emily Irvine, were teaching workshop-like courses at Pitt before 1939.
In 1936, Iowa began to bring writers to campus as visitors to give readings and to meet with students, this under the direction of Wilbur Schramm. And in 1939 Peterson created the first of what would be an annual Writer’s Conference at Pitt, where leading figures in writing and publishing would come to campus in the summer for a program of discussions on writing, publishing and editing. The program also included seminars where the participants would meet with student writers to talk with them about their manuscripts. In 1945, Paul Engle was an invited participant in the Pittsburgh Writer’s Conference. And in the 1940s, Pittsburgh began to bring published writers to campus as visiting (and then as regular) members of the faculty.
Iowa was the first to develop a graduate program in Creative Writing. Pittsburgh was the first to develop an undergraduate major. In the 1930s, both developed a faculty, a course structure, and a program to bring student writers into contact with publishers, editors, agents and authors. These programs were carefully conceived, well supported and fully developed. That Pittsburgh would conceive and develop a program for undergraduates is part of the legacy of Percival Hunt, who had always argued that the study of English was, most properly, the study of reading and writing, a preparation for life rather than the beginning of a career.
The Writing Major at the University of Pittsburgh
For readers who have not read through the “Courses” page for the 1940s, it might be useful to return to the original document (1946) announcing the Writing Major at the University of Pittsburgh.
Percival Hunt had stepped down as Chair in 1941 and he retired in 1948, but he remained on campus and was an active presence in the department. Edwin (Pete) Peterson was his protégé and his successor. We’ve already written a good bit about Peterson, but he had Hunt’s ability to engage generations of students and teachers with writing as a course of study. The new writing major was, most surely, a joint effort, and one that engaged others in the department, but of the two at the center, Hunt and Peterson, it was Peterson who most valued writing for the professional opportunities it might provide.
The original announcement described the major in these terms:
The English department offers, in addition to its usual major in English, a special major in writing. This is an integrated program of courses in composition (journalism, fiction, advertising, radio, verse, and article) and in literature and criticism that trains students to take advantage of the opportunities in writing now open to young men and young women.
From the core courses (still referred to as composition courses), students would learn the “special skills of writing”:
how to get a character from one room to another, how to edit a news story for accuracy of statement, how in a magazine article to make a fresh and true approach—how, in short, to put down in words whatever emphasis and interest an experience has for the writer.
Central to the major, however, was the belief that,
to be successful, a writer must know more than the skills and techniques of his craft. It is equally important that he have something to say, that he be informed in as many fields of human interest as possible.
[Gerald Stern and Jack Gilbert at NYU in 2009] And so the program relied on faculty advisers who would direct students not only toward courses in literature but to courses in other department, “in fine arts or history or biology—in any of the social and the natural sciences.” This was one of program’s most distinctive features, the gesture to send students away from literature and toward other methods for engaging the world.
In establishing a Writing Major, the department was also making a commitment to bringing distinguished writers to campus to give lectures, to meet with small group of students, and to discuss student manuscripts. One way this was accomplished was through annual conference (begun in the 1930s by Peterson) bringing writers, critics and editors to campus to discuss contemporary writing, publishing, editing, and the teaching of writing. The department would also sponsor a magazine of student writing, MSS (Manuscripts: Writing at the University of Pittsburgh),” and, following the success of Peterson’s students in national competitions, the Atlantic Monthly promised a four year scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh for the winner of their annual writing contest for high school students.
Student Writing
In the 1950s, Edwin Peterson continued to edit and publish an annual collection of student writing: MSS: Manuscripts--Writing at the University of Pittsburgh. Below are some sample entries from this decade, including prize-winners from the Atlantic student writing competition. The first was written by Montgomery Culver, who would later become director of the English department’s program in Creative Writing.
"Black Water Blues" by Montgomery Culver
"One Happy Family" by Donald E. Baker
"The Success of Scott Fitzgerald" by James T. Steen
"A Crown for the King" by Martin S. Madancy
"Restoration Samson" by Robert H. Wilcox
"A Pair of Shoes for Maria" by Meredith Carpenter
"The Trouper" by Diane Dimon
"The Peasant's Son" by Irene Powlenok
"Heritage" by Irene K. Davis