Percival Hunt: Professor and Chair. Hunt stepped down as department chair in 1941 to become “Professor at Large,” and he retired in 1948, although he maintained his office on the 33rd floor of the Cathedral and continued to meet with students and colleagues. His contributions to the department and to the university were celebrated at his retirement and the celebration included a tribute volume, a collection of essays by colleagues and students, If By Your Art: Testament to Percival Hunt, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1948. Chancellor Bowman also presented him with a silver medallion and in the presentation he said:
Percival Hunt, for twenty-six years you have taught young men and women at the University of Pittsburgh. You have taught them many things—to see with their eyes, to feel with their hearts, to think clearly and justly; and you have shown them the beauty and the strength that words have when they speak honestly of such things. Scholar and poet as well as teacher, you have made literature a vital influence on this campus. In your classes students have felt the power of Shakespeare, the humanity of Chaucer, the warmth of Keats; you have led students to appreciate the permanent values in literature. And many of these young people, under your guidance, have begun successful writing careers of their own.
There is an account of this occasion in the alumni magazine and it includes editorials written in Hunt’s honor for the Pittsburgh Press and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Hunt published very little during his career. He took pride in saying that his teaching did not allow him the time to write books. After he retired, he published four: Samuel Pepys in the Diary (Pittsburgh UP, 1958), Fifteenth Century England (Pittsburgh UP, 1962), The Gift of the Unicorn: Essays on Writing (Pittsburgh UP, 1965) and To What Green Altar (privately published, 1969). Hunt died in 1968.
Frederick Philip Mayer was promoted to the rank of Professor in 1945. After Hunt stepped down, the senior members of the department petitioned the Dean to run the department by an executive committee who would choose its own chair with short rotation. From the documents, it appears that the department was concerned to find its leadership from the current faculty rather than invite the administration to search outside. This plan lasted through the end of the decade. Frederick Mayer was the first Chair of the departmental committee. He served until 1948, when he was replaced by Putnam Fennell Jones.
Mayer prepared two long reports, one in 1941 on “The Department of English in the College: An Interpretation of Its Aims and Work,” and the other, in 1944, on “What the Department of English has Learned from its War Program.” Both were reproduced in the alumni magazine and include many interesting photographs. Both strike a very different tone than was present in Hunt’s accounts of the English department and its mission.
In his report, Mayer said:
That the elegant belles-lettres education of the nineties is gone is merely to say just that. We cannot kick against the pricks; we are fools to try. This world is our world. Those who scorn the English teacher as an elegant, outmoded curio should make us think. If we are right, we dare not fret, fume, sulk, swoon. It is our work to make others find in English what we have found. We must be practical; if they need it we must show them.
Later, in a section subtitled “Vocational English Versus Poetry,” he says, “Much of the work of the English department must be practical, tool material, service to the University in many ways, like English for pharmacy students, for engineers, for teachers.” He notes that Speech is “expanding to near program size under the impetus given from outside as well as from inside.” And he concludes by saying,
Today, everybody studies English, one kind or another. This may be for our good, or it may be that subdividing everything for the instruction of everybody has made it harder for us to preserve that quality of clear thinking, precise expression of the judicious which used to be a sign of the gentleman.
Margaret Storm Jameson was hired as a Visiting Professor for the 1947-48 academic year. Born in England in 1897, Jameson was a well-known novelist, journalist, dramatist, critic, essayist, and activist. She had published 45 books when she joined our faculty as a visiting professor. The best known, perhaps, was Women Against Men (1933). Her hiring was part of a move to bring established writers to campus and to the English department faculty. Although she taught only briefly at Pitt, she created strong ties with the department. In her memoir, Journey from the North, she describes the pleasure she took in being in Pittsburgh. Jameson was President of the English Centre of International PEN from 1938-1944, during which time she assisted intellectuals in their flight from Nazi-occupied countries. For her efforts, her name was placed on a Nazi arrest list. Her political advocacy and writing, particularly pertaining to exiled writers and thinkers, continued throughout her career. She died in 1986.
Putnam Fennell Jones: Jones was promoted to the rank of Full Professor in 1947, the same year he became Chair of the departmental committee, a position he would hold until the end of the decade. In the 1940s, Jones was teaching courses in the English Language, Milton, Spenser, and Chaucer and he was writing regular abstracts for Classical Weekly.
Walter Lawrence Myers: Professor. Myers served as a lieutenant in a machine gun platoon during WW1. In 1943, as the campus was training soldiers for the second world war, Myers wrote an essay for the alumni magazine on “The Arts in Time of War—and Afterwards.” He asked what the arts might come to mean for soldiers now in the “fact-cramming phase of wartime education.” He acknowledged that art can be an expression of the differences between nation and nation and wondered about its power to unify. Surely, he says, “the nations, by arts strongly their own yet mutually appreciated, can be urged through the whole wide world toward life as an art.”
John Kemerer Miller: Professor. Miller retired in 1947 and died in 1949.
Harold William Schoenberger: Professor. Schoenberger was the department’s principle Americanist; he was teaching survey courses, courses in American fiction, poetry and drama, and an advanced seminar in American literature.
George Carver: Professor. Carver died in 1949. He taught composition and courses on the essay and on biography. His last book, Alms for Oblivion: Books, Men and Biography (1945) was a study of 23 British and American biographers and traces the history of the genre.
Charles Arnold: After many years as an Assistant Professor, Arnold was promoted to Associate rank in 1940 and Professor in 1945. He retired in 1949. He spent his career teaching and promoting journalism on our campus.
Ford Elmore Curtis. Curtis was promoted to the rank of Full Professor in 1949-50. In this decade, he was teaching courses in drama—Modern Drama, English Drama, 16th Century British Dramatic Literature.
Ralph Hartman Ware: Ware was promoted to the rank of Full Professor in 1948. Ware was the junior Americanist and listed after Schoenberger on many of the American literature courses. He also taught English Drama and courses in the lower division.
Lawrence Lee (BS, Virginia; MA, Harvard) was hired in 1949 as an Associate Professor. Lee was the second faculty member to be hired on the basis of his credentials as a writer of fiction and poetry. (The first was George Abbe, listed below.) Lee had served as the editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review from 1938-42, and he wrote for a variety of academic journals, including The Sewanee Review, The Georgia Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, The Lyric, The Virginia Spectator, and The Classical World. At the time of his hiring, he was best known for his books of poems: Summer Goes On (Scribners, 1933) and two books on the life of Thomas Jefferson: Monticello and Other Poems (Scribner’s, 1937) and The Tomb of Thomas Jefferson (Scribner’s, 1940).
Donald W. Lee was hired at the rank of Associate Professor in 1948. At the time of his hire, he was on the editorial staff of G&C Merriam, where he worked on Websters Third New International Dictionary of the English Language. Lee had taught at Duke, Penn State, Pennsylvania Military Academy, and the U.S. Naval Academy. He was the author of Functional Changes in Early English (1948), which had been his PhD thesis at Columbia. He was hired to teach courses in English Language, Old English, and Beowulf.
Max Molyneux (BA Oberlin; PhD Cornell) Molyneux was hired in 1947 as an Associate Professor. He was part of a long line of Cornell PhDs to come to Pittsburgh. Molyneux had served as the head of the English departments at Bethany College and at Superior (Wisconsin) State Teachers College. He studied early modern English literature. His edition of James Cleland’s Institution of a Young Noble Man (1607) was published by the Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints Series in 1948. He taught courses in the English renaissance, Milton and “European Backgrounds of English Literature.”
Edwin L. Peterson was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor Prof in 1944. His essay, “The Parmachene Bell,” was published in Esquire in 1940. (A “parmachene bell” is a wet fly used in fly fishing.) The essay was reprinted in Esquire’s Second Sports Reader (1946) and in Fishing’s Best Stories (Paul D. Staudohar, ed; Chicago Review Press, 2000), a collection that also includes stories by Stephen King and E. Annie Proulx. Peterson’s book-length, lyrical account of fishing the rivers of Western Pennsylvania, No Life So Happy, was published by Dodd, Mead in 1940.
Peterson was much in the news, both locally and nationally, for the success of his students in national writing competitions and for his initiatives on campus—both the new course, “Conference in Writing,” which brought the workshop to our curriculum, and the annual summer conference that brought writers and editors to campus to talk about the state of American writing and to meet with students to discuss their work. In the 1945 yearbook, the OWL, Peterson had a spot in the “Faculty Hall of Fame.” The students wrote of him:
Ruddy-cheeked and tweedy, “Pete” injects life into his English classes by his tongue-in-cheek flickers of humor. We’d recognize that fine, clear voice anywhere, whether it’s rolling through the slow-cadenced lines of his favorite Christina Rossetti or crackling through the commons room microphone at the traditional Christmas party. That’s the time, incidentally, when, whiskered and padded, Pete becomes our own Pitt Santa Claus. In his spare time Mr. Peterson tries his hand at practicing the same writing principles that he teaches to his students; his short stories have been published in national magazines, while his full length, idyllic No Life So Happy glows about the delights of fishing. We place him in an especially favored nook because we admire his complete honesty and his enthusiasm for life that brims over to lend meaning to his lectures and warmth to his dealing with students.
Buell B. Whitehill, Jr. was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 1949. He was on leave during the war years, and in 1946 he received an Army Commendation Ribbon for his service in the mid-Pacific in the Historical Office of the US Army Medical Department. In his time on campus, Whitehill dramatically expanded the range of courses in the Division of Speech. He continued to lead the Pitt Players and to build an ambitious curriculum in performance and theater arts. In 1948, he introduced the first film course to the English department curriculum, “The Motion Picture,” and this was followed by courses in film analysis, film history and film production. He also introduced courses in radio and writing for the radio. His students worked with the facilities at KDKA and his contacts with WQED prepared the way for students to study television in the 1950s. When, in 1949, the Speech Division of the English department became an independent, free-standing department of Speech, he was chosen as chair. At this point, the new Speech department added additional courses in speech pathology and speech correction. With Peterson, Whitewill was the major shaping presence in the English department in the 1940s. In 1953 Whitehill left the university to become Personnel Director for Rust Engineering Company.
Agnes Lynch Starrett: Starrett was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 1944. In the 1940s, Starrett was very much involved in student and alumni publications, including the OWL and the English department literary magazine, MSS. And she was teaching writing.
W. George Crouch was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 1944. He was leading the efforts to develop courses in business and technical writing, including courses for the evening school. In this sense, he was part of the movement toward practical uses of English that Mayer mentions in his review of the English department. During the war, Crouch was part of the group that developed the War Department’s American University in Shrivenham, England. Crouch, who was born in London, wrote a long essay for Pitt, the alumni magazine, on the experience of the Shrivenham group during the war. Crouch served as faculty adviser to the College Association.
William Don Harrison: Associate Professor. The last mention we can find for Harrison is in the academic year, 1941-42.
Ellen Mary Geyer: Associate Professor. Geyer was the first woman hired to the tenure track in the English department. She taught composition and teacher training courses in conjunction with the School of Education. She retired in 1949, after 25 years of teaching, and she died in 1953. In 1940, she wrote a piece for Pitt the alumni magazine on the Scottish Classroom.
Henry Clayton Fisher (BA, Pittsburgh 1928; MA Pittsburgh 1930; PhD Pittsburgh 1938) was appointed as an Assistant Professor in 1938 and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 1948. He taught courses in Shakespeare, History of Criticism and Principles of Criticism. In 1946, he wrote an essay on “A Scholar’s Library” for the alumni magazine.
Robert X. Graham had been teaching as an Instructor and directing the program in Journalism. He was hired as an Assistant Professor in 1946 and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 1949.
Charles Crow (BA, Pittsburgh 1930; MA Pittsburgh 1931; PhD Pittsburgh 1948). Crow had been teaching in the department as a graduate assistant or Instructor since 1931. He was on military leave from 1942-46, and then, in 1947, he was hired as an Assistant Professor. Crow will have a long and distinguished career in the English department.
George Abbe was hired as an Assistant Professor in 1947, the first faculty colleague to be hired because of his credentials as a writer of fiction and poetry. After taking a BA at the University of New Hampshire, Abbe did graduate work at the University of Iowa where he was either part of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop or part of what would become the Writer’s Workshop. At the time of his hire, Abbe was the author of four novels: Voices in the Square (1938), Dreamer’s Clay (1940), They Also Fight (1944). Mr. Quill’s Crusade was forthcoming. Abbe had also published two volumes of poetry, Wait for These Things (1940) and Letter Home (1944), and poems and short stories in places like the Atlantic Monthly, Yale Review, Southern Review and Rocky Mountain Review. He was clearly a young writer on the rise. In announcing the hire, Putnam Jones (now the Chair of the Department Committee) said that Abbe would “assist Professor Edwin L. Peterson in the department’s creative writing program, specializing in fiction writing courses.”
Abbe lasted only a year. His letters to the local newspapers provoked a feature article in The Pittsburgh Press with the title, “Pitt Faculty Member Preaches Gospel Dear to the Hearts of Commies.” Putnam Jones told Abbe he was concerned that the notoriety he had achieved was not likely to “increase esteem” for the department or the university. He assured Abbe that the institution would honor his three year contract but suggested that he might look elsewhere for work. Abbe left the next Fall (1948) for Poland to gather material for a book. He did not return to Pittsburgh. He continued to publish books of poetry until his death in 1989. He taught at Mount Holyoke, Yale, the University of Connecticut, Wayne State, Columbia, the University of Maine, Springfield College, Central Connecticut State College, Russell Sage College, and the State University of New York at Plattsburgh.
Emily Hall Duffus (BA, Pittsburgh 1927; MA, Pittsburgh 1929). Duffus had been teaching as a graduate assistant or Instructor since the late 1920s. She was hired as an Assistant Professor in 1945. The next year she left for California. Duffus taught composition and a freshman orientation course sponsored by the Dean of Women.
Emily Gertrude Irvine (MA, Pittsburgh 1928) Irvine had been teaching for several years as an Instructor. She was hired as an Assistant Professor in 1944. She taught courses in writing and journalism as well as the course in children’s literature. In the 1940s, she began to review the children’s books of Marie McSwigan, a former Pitt student, for the alumni magazine.
Maurice Harry Weil was hired as Assistant Professor in 1944 after teaching for many years as an Instructor.
Instructors/Lecturers
In the decade of the 1940s, when the University turned its resources to the war effort and then braced to receive GIs on the GI Bill, there were dramatic fluctuations in the size of the non-tenure-track faculty. In 1940, there were 17 faculty members outside the tenure track (Instructors and Lecturers). In 1945, there were 10. Beginning in the Fall of 1947, the numbers began to grow dramatically, with 58 faculty members outside the tenure track in 1949.
There was substantial turnover among the NTT faculty, so we will only list those who taught for 5 or more years. The list is still very long.
Marcus T. Allias
William C. Baker
George Denton Beal
Hannah Bechtel
Flora Bramson
Victoria Corey, teaching courses in radio
Ruth L. Cramblet
Jane E. Ewing
Dorothea B. Gardner
Zeva B. Haible
Kenneth E. Harris
Gladys Price Howe
Carolyn La Rue
Abe Laufe (Laufe will become an Assistant Professor in the 50s.)
Elizabeth R. McIntosh
Thomas McIntosh (47-48 only)
Dorothy Miller (Miller will become an Assistant Professor in the 50s, working in English Education.)
Helen-Jean Moore
Dorothy O’Connor
William B. Pritchard
Vivian M. Rand
Diantha W. Riddle
Julius S. Rosenson
Harry M. Schwalb
Lois C. Shuette
Helen T. Simons
Richard C. Snyder (Snyder will become an Assistant Professor in the 50s.)
Bebe Spanos
Clare V. Starrett
Betty Ann Stroup
George Yost
Robert Zetler