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 (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 (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 (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 (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 (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 (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 (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
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 (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 (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.
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 (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.