1960s Students

1.  1960s PhD Graduates (and dissertation titles)

Theodora L. Pitts (PhD 1960; diss: “Conflicting Points of View in Byron Biography”). Theodora Pitts West taught at Ohio State and then, for the rest of her career, at West Chester State University, where she founded the literary magazine. 

William Francis Cunningham (PhD 1961; diss: “The Satire of Charles Churchill”). Cunningham taught at Duquesne University and then at Le Moyne College, Syracuse, NY, where he served as department Chair.

Ralph G. Johnson (PhD 1961; diss: "A Criticial Third Edition of Edmund Tilney’s The Flour of Friendshippe”). Johnson taught at Le Moyne College, Dillard University, Rust College and he retired as a Professor of English from the University of Memphis.

Eben Edward Bass (PhD 1962; diss: “Ethical Form in the Fiction of Henry James”). Bass was Chair of the English department at Slippery Rock University, where there is a memorial scholarship in his name. He published articles on a variety of topics and a book, Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Poet and Painter (Lang, 1990).

Ida Mary Collura (PhD 1962; diss: “The Development of Theme and Style in Elinor Wylie’s Prose”). Collura was the editor of Pittsburgh Festival published by Overture, the Duquesne University literary magazine, to celebrate Pittsburgh’s bicentennial. It contains poems, stories and reflections, many of them from former students in the English department at the University of Pittsburgh.  

William John Dregan (PhD 1962; diss: "A Study of the Poetic Craftsmanship of Thomas Gray as Shown by his English Poems”).

Marion Baker Fairman (PhD 1962; diss: “The Neo-Medieval Plays of Dorothy L. Sayers”). Fairman taught at Westminster College and Miami University of Ohio.  She wrote materials for Christian education and the Christian liturgical calendar. 

Ruth Lina Marie Kuschmierz (PhD 1962; diss: “The Instruction of a Christen Woman: A Critical Edition of the Tudor Translation”). Kuschmierz was a Professor of English and German at the University of Pittsburgh’s Greensburg Campus.

Robert Cutter Laing (PhD 1962; diss: “Humor in George Eliot’s Novels”). Laing joined the faculty of the English department at the University of Pittsburgh. You can follow his career on the faculty page. 

Dorothy Schuchman McCoy (PhD 1962; diss: “Tradition and Convention: A Study of Periphrasis in English Pastoral Poetry, 1557-1713”). McCoy taught at Point Park and was active in the Medieval and Renaissance Society. She published her dissertation with Walter De Gruyter (1965), and she was among the authors of Human Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (University of Pittsburgh Publications on the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Vol. IV, 1978).

Fred Bates McEwen (PhD 1962; diss: “Techniques of Description in Eight Selected Novels of Sir Walter Scott”). McEwen was Professor of English at Waynesburg College.

Harry J. Mooney, Jr. (PhD 1962; diss: “James Gould Cozzen, Novelist of Intellect”). Mooney joined the faculty of the English department at the University of Pittsburgh. You can follow his career on the faculty page. 

Max Andrew Nemmer (PhD 1962; diss: “The Dramatic Significance of Physical Distinction in Characters of English Renaissance Drama”). Nemmer joined the faculty at Clarion University. 

Thomas Francis Smith (PhD 1962; diss: “Contemporary Criticism of the Novel: An Analysis of Basic Approaches”).

Elizabeth Wiley (PhD 1962; diss: “Prose Sources of Imagery in the Poetry of Edward Taylor”). Wiley had a long career at Susquehanna University.   She is the author of Concordance to the Poetry of Edgar Allen Poe (Susquehanna UP, 1989)

Williams Hickman (PhD 1963; diss: “The Influence of Attitudes toward Religion Upon the Writings of H.L. Menken”).

Daniel Marder (PhD 1963; diss: “The Best of Brackenridge”). Marder joined the faculty of the English department at the University of Pittsburgh. You can follow his career on the faculty page.

Mercedes Cunningham Monjian (PhD 1963; diss: “Matthew Arnold’s Crticism: The Mythic Strain”). Monjian published Robinson Jeffers: A Study in Inhumanism with the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1958. She taught at Westminster College.

Edwin H. Nierenberg (PhD 1963; diss: “Two Essayists on Man: Alexander Pope and E.M. Forster”). Nierenberg had a long career at San Francisco State University. He published essays on Forster and Pope.

Ronald Burt Ribman (PhD 1963; diss: “John Keats: The Woman and the Vision”). Ribman taught at Otterbein College for a year and then left the academy to return to a career as a dramatist. He is the author of a long list of plays, many published on and off Broadway. Journey of the Fifth Horse won an Obie Award in 1967. Other plays include The Ceremony of Innocence (1952), The Final War of Olly Winter (1967), Passing Through Exotic Places (1969), A Break in the Skin (1972), and Sweet Table at the Richelieu (1987). He also wrote for television. The Final War of Olly Winter (1967) won an Emmy nomination. Ribman was a Guggenheim Fellow. He won the Straw Hat Award for The Poison Tree (1973) and both a Dramatists Guild and Hull-Warriner Award for Cold Storage (1976).

Albert Edward Schmittlein (PhD 1963; “Willa Cather’s Novels: An Evolving Art”). Schmittlein had a long career at Slippery Rock University, where he served as English department chair and Dean of Arts and Sciences. He was also the Slippery Rock golf coach. 

Thomas F. Staley (PhD 1963; diss: “F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Study of His Development as a Novelist”). Staley was Professor of English, Director of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, and the Harry Huntt Ransom Chair in Liberal Arts at the University of Texas, Austin. He retired in 2011. Staley made many contributions to the study of Modernism, the work of James Joyce, and the building of library collections. His early publications were connected to Pittsburgh: The Shapeless God:  Essay on Modern Fiction, edited with Harry Mooney (U of Pittsburgh P, 1968); Approaches to Ulysses: Ten Essays, edited with Bernard Benstock (U of Pittsburgh P, 1970); and Approaches to Joyce’s Portrait, edited with Bernard Benstock (U of Pittsburgh P, 1976). He also edited the work of the University of Pittsburgh graduate, Stanley Burnshaw: The Collected Poems and Selected Prose (U of Texas P, 2002).   Staley was the editor of the “Studies in Modernism” book series, and the founding editor of Joyce Studies: An Annual and the James Joyce Quarterly. Recent publications include: Writing the Lives of Writers (St. Martins P, 1998), Reflections on James Joyce: Stuart Gilbert's Paris Journal (U of Texas P, 1993), and An Annotated Critical Bibliography of James Joyce (St. Martins P, 1989).

Robert Howard Sykes (PhD 1963; diss: “Ernest Hemingway’s Style: A Descriptive Analysis”). Sykes taught at Bethany College until 1967, when he joined the faculty at West Liberty College in West Virginia, where he served as Chair of the School of Humanities and founded the Poetry Lecture Series.   He taught at West Liberty until his retirement in 1995. In 1964, Sykes was a Fulbright Exchange Professor at the University of Kita Kyushu, Japan.

Bernard Schroder Adams (PhD 1964; diss: “Milton and Metaphor: The Artis Logicae and the Imagery of the Shorter English Poems”). Bernard S. Adams became the ninth President of Ripon College (Wisconsin) in 1966. He held that post until 1985. He is the author of An Old Institution of the Highest Order: The Story of Ripon College (Ripon College, 1977).

Raj Kumar Gupta (PhD 1964; diss: “Form and Style in Herman Melville’s Pierre: Of the Ambiguities”). Gupta’s dissertation was one of the first written by an Indian on a topic in American literature. Gupta may have taught in India, although we have not been able to confirm this.

John Paul Mellon (PhD 1964; diss: “Byron’s Manfred and the Critics: A Review of Sources and Ideas”). Mellon taught at Clarion State College, where he also served as Dean of Liberal Arts. In 1973 he was named President of Western State College in Gunniston, Colorado, a post he held until his retirement in 1987.

Elinora Smith (PhD 1964; diss: “William Cowper: A Literary Study”).

John Pierce Watkins (PhD 1964; diss: “The Hero in Sir Thomas Malory”). Watkins had a long and distinguished career at California University of Pennsylvania. He served as English department chair, Vice President for Academic Affairs, and, from 1977 to 1992, the university’s president. Watkins Hall is named in his honor.

Eugene Robert August (PhD 1965; diss; “Work Inscapes: A Study of the Poetic Vocabulary of Gerard Manley Hopkins”). August joined the English department at the University of Dayton, where he was instrumental in developing the university’s Study Abroad Program. He was the author of John Stuart Mill: A Mind at Large (Scribner, 1976) and Men's Studies: A Selected and Annotated Interdisciplinary Bibliography (Libraries Unlimited, 1985). In 1992, he was awarded the Alumni Chair in Humanities.

Ralph Armando Ciancio (PhD 1965; diss: “The Grotesque in Modern American Fiction: An Existential Theory”). Ciancio taught at Carnegie Tech and then had a long and distinguished career at Skidmore, where there is now a Ciancio Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Ciancio taught writing and American literature and published several essays and book chapters on American fiction. He served as department chair at Skidmore from 1980 -1985. 

Betty Smith Cox (PhD 1965; diss: “Cruces of Beowulf”). From 1968 until her retirement, Cox taught at Gardner-Webb University (North Carolina), where she also served as Chair of the department of English language and literature. 

Pasquale Di Pasquale (PhD 1965; diss: “The Form of Piers Plowman and the Liturgy”). Pasquale became President of Loras College, a Catholic college in Dubuque, Iowa. 

John Joseph Kelleher (PhD 1965; diss: “The Theme of Freedom in the Novels of Joyce Cary”). Kelleher taught for many years at East Illinois University. 

Clare Marie Murphy (PhD 1965; diss: “The English Renaissance as an Age Conscious of Itself”). Murphy taught at the University of Rhode Island from 1964 until 1990, when she retired to join the Moreanum Center in Angers, France, where she edited the journal, Moreana from 1992 to 2002. Murphy was co-editor of Miscellanea Moreana: Essays for Germain Marc’hadour (SUNY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1989). She published widely on Thomas More and early Tudor humanism and was a reviewer for Renaissance Quarterly. She helped to organize international conferences on More in Ireland (1998), France (2001), Argentina (2004) and the U.S. (2007).

Michael Anthony Murphy (PhD 1965; diss: “Religious Polemic in Old English Scholarship in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries”). Murphy is Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn College, where he taught medieval literature and directed the composition program. He produced a “reader-friendly” edition (with modern spelling) of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Norman Rosenfeld (PhD 1965; diss: “Definitions of Poetry in the Essays and Poems of Wallace Stevens”). Rosenfeld was a member of the English department at East Carolina University from 1965-1995.

Mary Martin Rountree (PhD 1965; diss: “The Fiction of Conrad Aiken”). M.M. Rountree was the author of “Paul Bowles: Translations from the Moghrebi,” Twentieth Century Literature: A Scholarly and Critical Journal (1986).

Charles Thomas Waller (PhD 1965; diss: “The Political Poetry of Jonathan Swift: A Critical Study”). Waller taught at the University of Georgia. With Ronald G. Killion, he was the author of Georgia and the Revolution (Cherokee Publishing Co., 1975) and the editor of Slavery Time: When I was Chillun Down on Marster’s Plantation (Bee Hive Press, 1973), and A Treasury of Georgia Folklore (Cherokee Publishing Co, 1972).

Roy S. Wolper (PhD 1965; diss: “Samuel Johnson and The Drama”). Wolper was Professor of English at Temple University and co-editor of the Scriblerian. He wrote on Augustan satirists, on attitudes towards the Jews in eighteenth-century England, and on Voltairean tales (Candide, Zadig, Le Monde comme il va, Jeannot et Colin).   

Peggy A. Knapp (PhD 1966; diss: “The Style of John Wyclif’s English Sermons”). Peggy A. Knapp taught at the University of Connecticut and then, in 1970, joined the faculty in the English Department at Carnegie Mellon University, where she has had a long and distinguished career, and where she continues to serve as Professor of English. In her website, she says: 

I am especially interested in what can be discovered about imaginative and argumentative texts from medieval and early modern England through the use of literary and aesthetic theory. I founded and for many years edited an annual book series called Assays: Critical Approaches to Medieval and Renaissance Texts, an international forum for the discussion of those questions. My book-length studies are: The Style of John Wyclif's English Sermons (Mouton, 1977), Chaucer and the Social Contest (Routledge, 1990), Time-Bound Words: Semantic and Social Economies from Chaucer's England to Shakespeare's (St Martin's Press, 2000), and Chaucerian Aesthetics (Palgrave, 2008). I have also written about Shakespeare, Jonson, Wycherley, and many contemporary authors, critics, and filmmakers. I am currently working on Medieval Romance: The Aesthetics of Possibility with James F. Knapp.

Bernhard Frank (PhD 1966; “The Wiles of Words: Ambiguity in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry”). Frank taught comparative literature and creative writing at SUNY Buffalo. His poems and translations have appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies. He was translator/editor of Modern Hebrew Poetry (Iowa UP, 1980), Offering: Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke and Paul Verlaine (Goldengove Press, 1986), and translator of Rilke's Duino Elegies (Goldengrove Press, 1989). A collection of his poems, American Gothic, was published by Goldengrove Press (1982). Frank edited the poetry journals, Buckle” (1977-1982) and Buckle& (1998-2006). 

Elton Dale Higgs (PhD 1966; diss: “The Drama of A Literary Framework in the Works of Chaucer, Langland, and the Pearl Poet”). Higgs joined the English department at the University of Michigan-Dearborn in 1965. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1970, and to Professor in 1974. His primary area of teaching was the literature and culture of the medieval period. In 1979, he won an NEH grant to develop courses related to “The Humanities in the World of Decision-Making.” He wrote a history of the university, A Gift Renewed: The First Twenty-Five Years of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, 1959-1984, for the UMD’s twenty-fifth anniversary. After his retirement, he self-published his Collected Poems (2011). 

James Edmund Magner (PhD 1966; diss: “The Literary Principles and Preoccupations of John Crowe Ransom”). Magner joined the faculty at John Carroll University where he taught until his retirement. He was the author of John Crow Ransom: Critical Principles and Preoccupations (Mouton, 1971).   He published eight books of poetry and two novels, all with small local presses.

Robert Edward Mossman (PhD 1966; diss: “An Analytical Index of the Literary and Art Criticism of Henry James”). In 1985, Mossman completed a Masters in Divinity at the Denver Seminar. He served as Assistant Pastor at the Cornerstone Community Church in Aurora, Colorado. 

Nalini V. Shetty (PhD 1966; diss: “The Fiction of Wright Morris”). Shetty published an essay, “Melville's use of the Gothic Tradition” in Studies in American literature: Essays in Honour of William Mulder, Jagdish Chander, Narindar S. Pradhan, eds (Delhi: Oxford UP, 1976). Shetty may have taught in India, although we have not been able to confirm this.

Barbara June Burge (PhD 1967; diss: “Nature Erring from Itself: Identity in Shakespeare’s Tragedies”). Burge served as Assistant Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences during the academic year 68/69. She left to work with the Office of Higher Education, PA Department of Education, in Harrisburg. In 1977, she went to work as a writer for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. She became the Executive Director of the Western PA Higher Education Council in 1983 and joined the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center as a writer and editor in 1987. In this 15-year period, Burge assisted Lauren Resnick, then LRDC Director, in the production of more than 80 articles, books, book chapters, and edited volumes, including: Children’s Early Text Construction (Erlbaum, 1996); Discourse, Tools, and Reasoning: Essays on Situated Cognition (Springer-Verlag, 1997); and Joining Society: Social Interaction and Learning in Adolescence and Youth (Cambridge UP, 2004).

Francis Christopher Cronin (PhD 1967; diss: “T.S. Eliot’s Theory of Literary Creation”). Cronin taught in the English department at Ohio University from 1966 to 2000. He was an ordained priest before entering graduate study. At Ohio U, he served as a counselor in the campus ministry, as a parish priest assigned to Christ the King University Parish, and as the director of the Catholic Student Center. Late in his career, he was involved in research on cognitive processes in writing. After his retirement, he became a priest in the Catholic diocese of Steubenville. 

Brian William Connolly (PhD 1967; diss: “Knowledge and Love:  Steps Toward Felicity in Thomas Traherne”). Connolly, like Cronin (above) was a Catholic priest. He taught at Xavier University until his retirement in 2003.  

Joan Raphael Huber (PhD 1967; diss: “Chaucer’s Concept of Death in the Canterbury Tales”). Huber taught for many years as a non-tenure-track instructor in the English department at the University of Pittsburgh. She joined the English department at Clarion University in 1991 and taught there until her retirement in 2009. She also worked with the community poetry/writers group at the Oil City Library.

Lois Shoop Josephs (PhD 1967; diss: “A Historical and Critical Study of Diana of the Crossways by George Meredith”). Lois Josephs Fowler became a Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, where she also served as Director of the Writing Program. She published widely on literature, writing, English education and women’s studies. With Virginia Elliott, who served as the Director of Composition in our department in the 1960s, she prepared and edited an NCTE report on English for the Academically Talented Student in the Secondary School (1969).

Alex Newell (PhD 1967; diss: “Fate In Shakespeare’s Tragic Art: A Critical Study of the Early Development”). Newell joined the English department at Concordia College, Canada. During his time in our department, he studied with the Visiting Mellon Professors L.C. Knights, Kenneth Muir, and Allardyce Nicoll. His seminar paper for Muir, “The Dramatic Context and Meaning of Hamlet’s ‘To Be or Not to Be’ Soliloquy,” was published in PMLA and often reprinted. Newell was the author of The Soliloquies in Hamlet:  The Structural Design (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1991). He was active in theater in Canada and was the author of the play White Clouds, Black Dreams.

Eric Van Tine Ottervik (PhD 1967; diss: “The Multiple Novel in Contemporary British Fiction”). Ottervick taught at Lehigh University, where he eventually served as Vice Provost and Vice President for Planning. As a junior faculty member, he won the Alfred Noble Robinson Faculty Award for his service to the university. 

Irving Nathan Rothman (PhD 1967; diss: “Verse Satire in the Port Folio, an Early American Magazine edited by Joseph Dennie, 1801-1812”).  Rothman has had a long and distinguished career at the University of Houston, where he continues to teach. His research concerns English and American literature, but also “stylometrics” (the use of statistical analysis to determine authorship). He has published articles on Defoe in Bibliotheck, Modern Language Review, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, and Studies in the Novel. He has written on Chatterton, Pope, Swift and Fielding. He is Textual Editor and Co-General Editor of the Stoke Newington Edition of the Writing of Daniel Defoe Edition (AMS Press). In 2003, he published an edition of The Political History of the Devil (1726), co-edited with his former student R. Michael Bowerman. His two-volume edition of Defoe’s The Family Instructor was published in 2012. He has written on the poetry of an early American Federalist Magazine, The Port Folio, with essays in American Literature, Early American Literature, the Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, Revue de Litérature Comparée, and the Yale University Library Gazette. Rothman is also a member of the Jewish Studies faculty and the author of The Barber in Modern Jewish Culture: A Genre of People, Places, and Things (Mellen Press, 2008).

Kenneth Allen Seib (PhD 1967; diss: “Promise and Fulfillment: A Study of James Agee”). Seib published his dissertation, James Agee: Promise and Fulfillment, with the University of Pittsburgh Press (1968). After receiving his degree, he joined the English department at California State University, Fresno. He was the author of the controversial book, The Slow Death of Fresno State: A California Campus under Reagan and Brown (Ramparts Press, California State University, 1979). The book was originally a pamphlet published to raise awareness and to raise money in support of Fresno State English department faculty member Robert Mezey, who was fired in 1968 for his remarks on the marijuana laws.   

Ford Harris Swigart (PhD 1967; diss: “A Study of the Imagery in the Gothic Romances of Ann Radcliffe”). Swigart taught until his retirement as a member of the English department at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Sister Mary Josephine Beattie (PhD 1968; diss: “The Humane Medievalist: A Study of C.S. Lewis”).

Harry Edward Craig (PhD 1968; diss: "The Affirmation of the Heroes in the Novels of Saul Bellow”). Craig taught until his retirement as a member of the English department at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

John Bruce DeLoche, Jr. (PhD 1968; diss: “Judgment Here: The Homiletic Art of Cyril Tourneur”). DeLoche began his career at the University of Indiana, South Bend. He left in 1970 to accept a position as Associate Professor at Monmouth College, New Jersey.

Constance Ayers Denne (PhD 1968; diss: “Setting as Meaning in Cooper’s European Trilogy”). Denne was Professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY. She edited three volumes of works by James Fennimore Cooper, all with SUNY Press: Gleanings in Europe: Italy (1981); Gleanings in Europe: France (with and introduction and notes by Thomas Philbrick, 1983); and Satanstoe, or the Littlepage Manuscripts: A Tale of the Colony (1990). With Helen A. Harrison, she is the author of Hamptons Bohemia: Two Centuries of Artists and Writers on the Beach (Chronicle Books, 2002, with a Preface by Edward Albee).

William Wirt French (PhD 1968; diss: “Some Elements of Dramatic Structure in Shakespearean and other English Renaissance Tragic Dramas”).  French served as a member of the English department at West Virginia University, where he retired in 1999 as a full professor after 35 years of service.   He taught Shakespeare and modern drama. He was active in the Shakespeare and Renaissance Association of West Virginia. He published essays on Shakespeare, Pound and contemporary theater. He was chosen as Maryat Lee’s literary executor, and he was the author of Maryat Lee’s EcoTheater: A Theater for the Twenty-First Century (West Virginia UP, 1998).  

Donald Hobar (PhD 1968; diss: “The Oral Tradition in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur”). Hobar began his career at Waynesburg College but then joined the English department at Indiana State University.  He was a co-editor of Papers on Lexicography in Honor of Warren N. Cordell (Indiana State UP, 1979).

Robert Graham Lambert (PhD 1968; diss: “The Prose of a Poet:  A Critical Study of Emily Dickinson’s Letters”). Lambert taught at Western Michigan University. He published essays on the teaching of composition and journalism.  He was the author of  Emily Dickinson's Use of Anglo-American Legal Concepts and Vocabulary in her Poetry: Muse at the Bar (Edwin Mellen Press, 1997).

Lois Simons Lewin (PhD 1968; diss: “The Theme of Suffering in the Work of Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow”). Lewin taught at Carnegie Mellon University.

Norman N. McWhinney (PhD 1968; diss: “Sex, Time, and Laughter: A New Theory of Comedy”). McWhinney had a long career at the University of Pittsburgh, Greensburg, which now awards Norman N. McWhinney Scholarships in English Literature.

James Gray Watson (PhD 1968; diss: “’The Snopes Dilemma’: Morality and Amorality in Faulkner’s Snopes Trilogy”). Watson taught English for over forty years at the University of Tulsa, where he was the Frances W. O'Hornett Professor of Literature, and a leading Faulkner scholar. At the end of his career, he was also writing on the work of Peter Mathiessen. At the University of Tulsa, he was recognized as Outstanding University Professor (1982); he earned the Certificate of Honor from the Multicultural Affairs Committee (1991) and the Arts and Sciences Excellence in Teaching Award (2002); and he was Undergraduate Research Challenge Mentor of the Year (2007). In his honor, the university has established the James G. Watson Endowed Professorship of English. He was the author of The Snopes Dilemma: Faulkner's Trilogy (U of Miami P, 1970); William Faulkner, Letters & Fictions (U of Texas P, 1987); and William Faulkner: Self-presentation and Performance (U of Texas P, 2000). He edited Thinking of Home: William Faulkner's Letters to His Mother and Father, 1918-1925 (W.W. Norton, 2000). At his death, he was working on an essay, “American Geezers.”

Paul Geyer Zolbrod (PhD 1968; diss: “The Poet’s Golden World: Classical Bases for Philip Sidney’s Literary Theory”). Zolbrod taught for many years at Allegheny College, where he served as department chair and the Frederick F. Seeley Professor of English. Zolbrod was known as an influential and unforgettable teacher. In 1994, Zolbrod retired early to move to New Mexico to teach composition and the Navajo language at the Crownpoint Campus of the Diné College, an institution of higher education chartered by the Navajo nation.  

In the 1970s, Zolbrod became increasingly interested in the oral poetry of the native American tradition. He spent a sabbatical year at the University of New Mexico, where he made contacts within the Navajo community and began to learn the language. Zolbrod’s most important publication was his translation of the Navajo creation myth, Diné Bahane (U of New Mexico P, 1984). His research was supported by NEH research grants in 1978-79 and 1994-96. From 1964 to 1996, Zolbrod worked as a curator with the New Mexico Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.  

Between his dissertation and his work with Navajo language and culture, Zolbrod’s writing ranged over a variety of topics and genres. In the 60s, he published (with Christopher Katope) Beyond Berkeley:  A Sourcebook in Student Values (World Publishing, 1966), a collection of documents from the student revolt at Berkeley set in the context of classic essays on civil disobedience. This was reworked and republished as The Rhetoric of Revolution (Macmillan, 1970). In the late 70s, he wrote a play for local production, “The Early Years: The Story of the First Fifty Years of Crawford Country,” and worked on an “oral history” of television for WQLN in Erie, PA. From the 1980s on, Zolbrod turned his attention to the Navajo and to oral traditions in poetry. Along with his translation of the Navajo creation myth, he published Sacred Texts (Newberry Library, D’Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian, 1992); Reading the Voice: Native American Oral Poetry on the Page (U of Utah P, 1995); and Weaving a World: Textiles and the Navajo Way of Seeing (with Roseann Sandoval Willink and photography by John Vavruska, U of New Mexico P, 1996). In the 1960s, Zolbrod also wrote a novel, Battle Songs:  A Story of the Korean War in Four Movements. The novel was scheduled for publication by World Publishing in Cleveland but the company folder before the book could go into production. It is now available as an ebook through Amazon. Zolbrod speaks about this book and his experience in the armed services in an interview with the Veteran Voices of Pittsburgh Oral History Initiative.

Richard Francis Allen (PhD 1969; diss: “Critical Approaches to the Njals Saga”). Allen’s dissertation was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Fire and Iron: Critical Approaches to the Njals Saga (1971). Allen taught at the University of Oregon and the University of California, Berkeley. He is the son of the novelist Hervey Allen, who received his BA in our department in 1915.

A. Carl Bredahl (PhD 1969; diss: “Melville’s Angles of Vision: The Function of Shifting Perspective in the Novels of Herman Melville”). Brehdahl was a member of the University of Florida English department from 1970 to 2003. He was twice a visiting professor at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands, and once a Fulbright Lecturer in India. He is the author of four books: Melville’s Angles of Vision (U of Florida P, 1972); New Ground: Western American Narrative and the Literary Canon (U of North Carolina P, 1989); Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa: Helix and Scimitar (with Susan Drake; Edwin Mellen P, 1990); and Ivan Doig (Boise State UP Western Writers Series, 1999). (Photograph courtesy of the University of Florida Archives.)

Thomas Cooke (PhD 1969; diss: “The Comic Climax in the Old French and Chaucerian Fabliaux”).

David Ellsworth Eskey (PhD 1969; diss: A Preface to the Study of Literary Style”). After receiving his PhD, Eskey spent ten years living and teaching in Baghdad, Beirut and Bankok. Eskey became Professor and Director of the TESOL program in the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California, where he also directed the USC American Language Institute. He was the author of many articles and chapters, and he served as the co-editor of three books on second language reading: Interactive Approaches to Second Language Reading (Cambridge UP, 1988); Research in Reading in English as a Second Language (TESOL, 1987); and Second Language Reading for Academic Purposes (Prentice Hall, 1986). 

Edward S. Grejda (PhD 1969; diss: “The Common Continent of Men: The Non-White Characters in the Fiction of Herman Melville”). Grejda taught at Clarion State College, where he also served as English department Chair. He published his dissertation as The Common Continent of Men: Racial Equality in the Writings of Herman Melville (Port Washington, NY; Kennikat, 1974). 

Granville Hicks Jones (PhD 1969; diss: “The Jamesian Psychology of Experience: Innocent, Responsibility, and Renunciation in the Fiction of Henry James”). Jones was professor of English and American literature at Carnegie Mellon University, where he won the Ryan Award for teaching. Early in his career, he directed an experimental, student-directed, freshman English course on “the literary imagination.” Later he was involved in the MA in Professional Writing. Jones published his dissertation as Henry James’s Psychology of Experience: Innocent, Responsibility, and Renunciation (Mouton, 1975). He was also co-author, with Erwin Steinberg, of the technical report, The Evolution of a Graduate Writing Program: The Master of Arts in Professional Writing at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU Communications Design Center, 1987). 

Dorothy Kish (PhD 1969; diss: “Setting In Ellen Glasgow’s Novels”). Kish taught literature for thirty years at Point Park College. From 1975-1988, she served as English department chair, revising the program in composition and developing courses in Business Writing.

Lothar Paul Krause (PhD 1969; diss: “The Conflict Between Social Communities and Individuals in the Novels of Henry Fielding”). Krause taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Bradford.

Gabriel A. Menkin (PhD 1969; diss: “Structure in Sherwood Anderson’s Fiction”). Menkin taught at West Chester State College. 

Robert Bernard Meyers (PhD 1969; diss: The Logic of Explication”). Meyers taught for 39 years at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, primarily undergraduate courses in literature, theory and criticism. He was assistant chair of the English department from 1990-97 and undergraduate coordinator for the department from 1990-96.

Leticia S. Ramirez Molter (PhD 1969; diss: “A Study of the Social Criticism in the Essays of Mark Twain”). Molter taught at Delta College, Michigan.

Joseph Charles Nucci (PhD 1969; diss; “The Poetry of Time and Place in the Fiction of Ernest Hemingway”). Nucci taught at Clarion University, part of the Pennsylvania State College system.

Elayne Antler Rapping (PhD 1969; diss: “Harmonic Patchwork: The Art of Hector St. John de Crevecoeur”). Rapping was Professor of English and Director of Women’s Studies at Robert Morris College from 1970 to 1990, Professor of Communications at Adelphi University from 1991-1998, and Professor of American Studies at SUNY Buffalo (until 2009). Rapping was a scholar of media, gender, and popular culture. She wrote for The Nation, The Village Voice, Cineaste, Jump Cut, and The Progressive, where she was a regular columnist for many years. She is the author of several books, including Processed Ideas and Packaged Dreams: The Manufacturing and Marketing of American Reality (New American Movement, 1976); The Looking Glass World of Nonfiction TV (South End Press, 1987); The Movie of the Week: Private Stories, Public Events (U of Minnesota P, 1992); Media-tions: Forays into the Culture and Gender Wars (South End Press, 1994); The Culture of Recovery: Making Sense of the Self-help Movement in Women’s Lives (Beacon, 1997); and Law and Justice as Seen on TV (NYU, 2003).

Donald T. Reilly (PhD 1970; diss: “The Interplay of the Natural and the Unnatural: A Definition of the Gothic Romance”). Reilly taught for almost 40 years at the University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown, where he served as Chair of the Humanities division, and where he was a popular teacher and much admired colleague. In 1999 he won the UPG Teaching Award. Reilly joined UPJ in its second year and played an important role in developing the English department and its majors in literature and writing. He developed the campus’s courses in pre-20th century American literature and in the European narrative. He was awarded tenure in 1971, achieving the rank of full professor in 1977.

Norman Bryan Rosenblood (PhD 1969; diss: “Some Aspects of Fielding’s Heroes”). We think Rosenblood may be the Rosenblood who taught at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. If so, he became active in psychoanalytic circles as both a Freudian therapist and a scholar of literature. We have not been able to confirm the connection.

Judith Ann Rosenthal (PhD 1969; diss: "The Persona in Andrew Marvell’s Lyric Poetry”). Rosenthal was involved in the early days of Women’s Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She had a long and successful career at California State University, Fresno, where she taught courses in literature, popular culture and women’s studies.

Emanuel Leo Rubin (PhD 1969; diss: “The English Glee from William Hayes to William Hrosley”). Although Rubin lists his PhD as a degree in musicology, we have him listed in the English department. While a student at Pitt, Rubin directed the Pitt Glee Club and played French horn with the Pittsburgh symphony. Rubin taught at Ball State (where he was Dean of the College of Fine Arts, 1983-84), the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee, and Bowling Green State University in Ohio before joining the faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1986, where he was Professor of Music History and Judaic Studies and active as a composer and performer until his death in 2008. Rubin was the author of The English Glee in the Reign of George III: Participatory Art Music for an Urban Society (Harmonie Park Press, 2003) and, with John Baron, Music in Jewish History and Culture (Harmonie Park Press, 2006). 

Donald Aubrey Short (PhD 1969; diss: “The Concrete is Her Medium: The Fiction of Flannery O’Connor”).

Barbara Hochster Solomon (PhD 1969; diss: “Conrad’s First Person Narrators:  A Study in Point of View”). Solomon served as professor of English and Women's Studies and Director of Writing at Iona College. Her major academic interests were twentieth century American and world literature. She edited and wrote introductions to a long list of classroom anthologies, including The Awakening and Selected Stories of Kate Chopin (Signet, 1976); The Experience of the American Woman: 30 Stories (Signet, 1978); Ain't We Got Fun?: Essays, Lyrics, and Stories of the Twenties (Signet, 1980); American Wives: 30 Short Stories by Women (Signet, 1986); Rediscoveries: American Short Stories by Women, 1832-1916 (Mentor, 1994); Critical Essays on Toni Morrison's Beloved (G.K. Hall, 1998); and, with W. Reginald Rampone, An African Quilt: 24 Modern African Stories (Signet, 2013).

Barbara Wilkie Tedford (PhD 1969; diss: “Henry James and Ivan Turgenev”). Tedfrod taught at Glenville State College (in West Virginia) for 23 years before her retirement in 1999. She published essays on American authors, including James and O’Connor. 

Andrew Welsh (PhD 1969; diss: “Melos and Opsis”). Welsh is Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University, where he taught courses in Medieval literature and folklore for the English department and the Comparative Literature program. He has published essays on Middle Welsh, Old English and Middle English literature. His 1978 book, Roots of Lyric: Primitive Poetry and Modern Poetics (Princeton UP, 1978) won the 1978 MLA James Russell Lowell Prize and the 1978/79 Melville Cane Award of The Poetry Society of America. Work on the book was aided by a Mellon post-doctoral fellowship at Pitt in 1974/75.

Jerome Paul Whalen (PhD 1969; diss: “Some Structural Similarities in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress and Selected Narrative and Dramatic Works of George Bernard Shaw.) Whalen was a former Provost and the Dana Professor of English Literature at Elmira College.

Eleanor Buntag Wymard (PhD 1969; diss: “J.F. Powers:  His Christian Comic Vision”). Wymard is the director of Carlow University’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. During her tenure at Carlow, Wymard developed the Madwomen in the Attic poetry workshops, the Women’s Studies program, the Marie Torre Lecture, The Honors Program, and the Focus on Women lecture series. She has published essays on Kate Chopin, Barbara Pym, J.F. Powers, Annie Dillard, John Irving, John Fowles and Mary Gordon. Wymard is the author of four books: Talking Steel Towns: The Women and Men of America's Steel Valley (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2007); Conversations With Uncommon Women: Insights from women who've risen above life's challenges to achieve extraordinary success (AMACOM, 1999); Men On Divorce (Hay House, 1994); and Divorced Women, New Lives (Ballantine, 1990).

Francis Thomas Zbonzy (PhD 1969; diss; “The Structure of Chaucer’s ABC”).  

Bert Balducci (PhD 1970) taught at American University. He is currently President of Balducci Associates.

Arthur T. Broes (PhD 1970; diss: Jonathan Swift in Finnegan’s Wake). Broes served as Professor of English and department chair at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.  

Diana Childress (PhD 1970). Childress is the author of the children’s book, Chaucer’s England (Shoe String Press/Linnet Books, 2000). Childress taught at the university level, wrote for textbook publishers and children’s magazines, and served as a children’s librarian.

Thomas D. Cooke  (PhD 1970; diss: “The Comic Climax in the Old French and Chaucerian Fabliaux”). Cooke taught at the University of Missouri. He is the author  of The Old French and Chaucerian Fabliaux: A Study of Their Comic Climax (U of Missouri P, 1978) and the editor of The Humor of the Fabliaux: A Collection of Critical Essay (with B.L. Honeycutt, U of Missouri P, 1974) and The Present State of Scholarship in Fourteenth-Century Literature (U of Missouri P, 1982).

Gregory Frank Goekjian (PhD 1970; diss: “The Function and Effect of Rhyme”). Goekjian is Professor Emeritus at Portland State University, where he also served as Director of Graduate Studies in the English department. He has been a Visiting Professor at Yerevan State University in Armenia and at the West Sussex Institute of Higher Education in Britain. He is the author of articles on Milton, on Derrida, and on genocide.

John H. Miller (PhD 1970; diss: “Rhetoric, Theme, and Persona in the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold”). Miller was a founding faculty member of the Academy for Lifelong Learning at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum where he was Vice President of Advancement and Fellow of the Kerr Center for Chesapeake Studies. He taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University (where he was Development Director for the College of Humanities & Social Sciences), and as adjunct professor at American University and Washington College. Miller taught as faculty member for Semester At Sea.  

Robert F. Pack (PhD 1970; diss: “Shelley and History: The Poet as Historian”). Pack started his career in the English department at Rutgers University, where he moved from teaching to administration, serving finally as Associate Dean of the Mason Gross School of the Arts (1979-1985) and Associate Provost for Administration and Personnel (1985-1993). In 1993, he returned to the University of Pittsburgh to join then Acting Provost Mark Nordenberg in the newly created position of Vice Provost for Academic Planning and Resources Management. Pack's responsibilities in the Provost’s Office at Pitt have included university-wide budgeting and capital planning for both academic and student life facilities and acting as liaison between Pitt's four regional campuses and the provost. In addition, Pack was responsible for implementing Pitt's new enterprise Student Information System, which won national recognition through a Computerworld award. He retired from the university in 2010.  

Silvia Ruffo-Fiore (PhD 1970; diss: “Love, Fame, and Death: Three Petrarchan Themes in Donne). Ruffo-Fiore had a long and distinguished career at the University of South Florida, where she won several state and local teaching awards and the State of Florida Professional Excellence Program award in recognition of her scholarship. She specialized in classical, medieval, and early modern comparative literature and interdisciplinary literary studies, with particular emphasis on Homer, Virgil, Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Machiavelli. Ruffo-Fiore’s books include Donne’s Petrarchism: A Comparative View (Grafica Toscana, 1976) and Niccolo Machiavelli (Twayne, 1982). She was awarded a $65,000 grant from the NEH for the Annotated Bibliography of Modern Scholarship on Niccolo Machiavelli (Greenwood Press, 1990).

Mary Strauss-Noll (PhD 1970) taught at Mt. Mercy College (now Carlow) and then for many years in the English department at the Penn State New Kensington Campus. Carlow College now has an endowed scholarship in her name. 

Barbara Wilkie Tedford (PhD 1970; diss: “Henry James’s admiration of Ivan Turgenev: An Early Influence "ineradicably established"). Tedford  retired from Glenville State College in West Virginia in 1999, where she had taught for 23 years. Prior to Glenville, she taught at Robert Morris College in Pittsburgh and Davis & Elkins College in West Virginia.

2. 1960s BAs

Charles Aston (’67) is the curator of rare books and prints for the University of Pittsburgh Library System.

Sylvia Joyce Barksdale (’67) is Associate professor of Social Work at California University of Pennsylvania.

Vincent J. Bartolotta, Jr. (’67) is a founding partner of Thorsnes Bartolotta McGuire, a San Diego personal injury law firm.   

Mary G. Bernath (BA ’68; PhD 74) taught American literature and journalism at Bloomsburg State College.

Carol Coviello Malzone (’65) is a food writer, travel consultant, and the author of Foods of Rome.

James Crawford (’64) is Professor emeritus of Theater and Speech at Lakeland College, Wisconsin. 

Don DeCesare (’67) is a former CBS Vice President of Operations and the current president/general manager of Crossroad Communications.  

Francine G. Feinerman (’69) is President & CEO of Citizens for the Arts in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania's only statewide nonprofit, multi-disciplinary arts advocacy organization.

James J. Gallagher (’60) was an expert in special and gifted education. He published over 200 journal articles and 39 books, including two seminal books -- Teaching the Gifted Child and Educating Exceptional Children.  

Lee Gutkind (’68) joined the faculty in English at the University of Pittsburgh in the 1970s and became a central figure, as a writer and a teacher, in developing the genre of Creative Nonfiction. Through his publications, and particularly his early work with the University medical center, he became a major figure nationally, dubbed the “godfather” of creative non-fiction by James Wolcott in Vanity Fair. In the department, he was tireless in his support of his students, and he played a major role in developing the nonfiction curriculum, but also the reputation and the profile of our MFA program in Creative Writing.  Many students came to Pittsburgh to work with Gutkind, and many of those who did have gone on to very successful careers. With over 50 books, Gutkind himself remains a dauntingly prolific writer and editor. His publications include Many Sleepless Nights (Norton, 1988), Almost Human: Making Robots Think (Norton 2006), and You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: The Complete Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction (DeCapo Press, 2012). His most recent edited volumes include Southern Sin: True Stories of the Sultry South and Women Behaving badly (In Fact Books, 2014, with Beth Ann Fennelly) and True Stories, Well Told: From the First 20 Years of Creative Nonfiction Magazine (Underland Press, 2014). Gutkind’s magazine, Creative Nonfiction, commands the attention of writers inside and outside the academy.  

When he was an undergraduate, Gutkind worked with Monty Culver, about whom he said: “He guided us for years for no reward except for our friendship, our loyalty and our love. He worked with us for hours.” Gutkind also maintained the legacy of Edwin Peterson. Gutkind revived Peterson’s annual Writer’s Conference, and his book, The People of Penn’s Woods West (U of Pittsburgh P, 1984) was an homage to Peterson’s Penn’s Woods West (U of Pittsburgh P, 1958). Although he never worked with Peterson, there were, Gutkind said, “certain things I will always share with him.” And among those things shared was a deep commitment to the region, to good writing, and to students. Gutkind is currently the Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes and professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University.

Joseph Guzzardi (’64) writes a nationally syndicated column for the Lodi News-Sentinel, a daily in California's San Joaquin Valley.

Jonellen Munn Heckler ('65) is the author of several novels, including White Lies (1989) and Circumstances Unknown (1993), which was late made into the 1995 TV movie of the same title.

John Bradley Hildt (’68) served with the Peace Corps in Uganda and worked as a Vice President of Marine Midlands Bank.

Harvey Kopelowitz (’66) has been affiliated with the Florida law firm, Kopelowitz Ostrow, since its inception.

Michael D. London (’64) is Chairman and CEO of Wall&Main, Inc, a San Francisco venture capital firm.

Paul Loukides (’61). After graduation, Loukides studied at the Iowa Writers Workshop, where he received his MA. He taught from 1962-1999 in the English department at Albion College in Michigan. With Linda K. Fuller, Loukides is the editor of a multi-volume series, Beyond the Stars (Bowling Green University P), collections of essay on American film and popular culture. With Parley Ann Boswell, he is the editor of Reel Rituals: Ritual Occasions from Baptisms to Funerals in Hollywood Films (Bowling Green UP, 1995).

Sibyl Masquelier (’67) taught journalism at the University of Miami and worked with the Cuban Refugee Assistance Program during the 1960s and early 1970s. She was the first women hired to be a department head at The Miami Herald. 

Bill Mawhinney (’63). After a variety of jobs in Tucson, Arizona, including 18 years at Raytheon as facilities engineer, technical writer, newsletter editor and corporate trainer, Mawhinney retired to Show Low, Arizona. While there, he led monthly poetry circles at a local library, volunteered as a poet in elementary school classrooms, and offered poetry workshops and readings throughout the Southwest. His poems have appeared in Heron Dance, Hummingbird Review, IS Magazine, Minotaur, and Windfall. Mawhinney now lives in Port Ludlow, Washington, where he organizes and hosts the Northwind Reading Series. 

Martha Hartle Munsch (’70). Following her graduation from the Yale Law School in 1973, Munsch joined the Pittsburgh law firm, Reed Smith, one of only three women attorneys in the firm in the early 1970's. In 1976 she joined the full time faculty of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where she was the first (and only) woman on the full time faculty at that time.  After serving two and one half years as an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh, Munsch returned to Reed Smith in 1978 as a member of the Labor and Employment Law Group. She became a partner of Reed Smith in 1983, the first woman elected to partnership in Reed Smith's Pittsburgh office. Munsch has a long list of awards and honors, including membership in the American Council of Trial Lawyers. In 2011, she was appointed to the University of Pittsburgh’s Board of Trustees.

Lane Nemeth (’68) founded Pet Lane, Inc. in 2004 and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Ms. Nemeth founded Discovery Toys LLC in 1978.

James P. O’Brien (’64) is a prolific and award-winning sportswriter, with many memorable columns and articles, and with over 20 books to his credit, including The Chief: Art Rooney and His Pittsburgh Steelers. In 1964, Myron Cope wrote an essay for the alumni magazine on O’Brien’s work with the Pitt News, “Will the Real Jim O’Brien Please Step Forward.”

Brendan W. O’Malley ('61) became the Assistant Director of the Port Department of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. In 1989, he left to be Director of the Port of Baltimore, a position he held for two years before leaving the government sector to accept a position with Hobelmann Port Services.

Roger Christopher Panella (’60) was a founding partner in Double R Enterprises, a company that manufactured blow-molded plastic containers, including the “little hugs” sold by Daily’s Juices in Western Pennsylvania. 

Regina Rinderer (’64) taught in the English department at Delta College, Michigan.

Ed Roberson (’70). Roberson was born and raised in Pittsburgh. His first book of poetry, When Thy King Is a Boy was published in 1970, the year of his graduation, as a volume in the Pitt Poetry Series edited by Ed Ochester and published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Roberson is the author of nine volumes of verse, including Etai-eken (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975), Voices Cast Out to Talk Us In (University of Iowa Press, 1995, and winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize), Just In: Word of Navigational Change: New and Selected Work (Talisman House, 1998), Atmosphere Conditions (Green Integer, 1999, chosen by Nathanial Mackey for the National Poetry Series Award and a finalist for the Academy of American Poets Lenore Marshall Award), City Eclogue (Atelos, 2006), The New Wing of the Labyrinth (Singing Horse Press, 2009), and To See the Earth Before the End of the World, (Wesleyan University Press, 2010). Roberson’s poetry has also appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 2004 and Primary Trouble: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. His awards include the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, the Stephen Henderson Critics Award for Achievement in Literature, the Poetry Society’s 2008 Shelley Memorial Award, and an LA Times Book Award. Roberson taught for many years at Rutgers University. He now lives in Chicago, where he has taught at the University of Chicago, Columbia College and Northwestern.   

Dolores Schultz (’69) was the Director of Global Training and Education for Underwriters Laboratories Inc.

Andrew Joseph Solomon (’67) completed his MA in our department in 1970 and his PhD in 1974. Solomon is Professor of English at the University of Tampa, where he designed and administered their program in Creative Writing.  Solomon is the author of the novel Partners and the memoir, The Fourth Demand. He has published his fiction and poetry in The Atlantic, Boulevard, Creative Nonfiction and the New Orleans Review. He serves as a book critic for The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe and he can be heard on National Public Radio.

George Sommer (’67) was a Vice President with Citigroup from 1973 to 2005. At the University of Pittsburgh he was a “most valuable player” in soccer and was a member of the NCAA All-American team. 

Marianna E. Specter (’62) completed an MA from our department in 1963 and was admitted to St. Hughes College, Oxford University, to pursue a PhD. She chose to work, however, in the family business, May Stern & Co, until she took a law degree from Duquesne University Law School in 1981. For 25 years, she had a general law practice with her partner Stephen Israel at their firm, Israel & Specter in Pittsburgh.  

George Michael Travalio (’60) is Professor emeritus in the Moritz College of Law at the Ohio State University, where he won the Ohio State University Distinguished Service Award in 2007.

3. 1960s MAs

Gerald William Barrax (’69) is Professor emeritus in the English department at North Carolina State University, where he taught creative writing. Barrax has published poems in a number of magazines and journals. His books include: Another Kind of Rain (University of Pittsburgh P, 1970), An Audience of One (U of Georgia P, 1980), The Deaths of Animals and Lesser Gods (U of Kentucky P, 1984), Leaning Against the Sun (U of Arkansas P, 1992), and From a Person Sitting in Darkness: New and Selected Poems (LSU, 1998). Barrax is a member of the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame.

Bonnie Hoover Braendlin (’65) is Professor emeritus in the English department at Florida State University, where she taught courses in American literature and women’s studies. She has published articles on American women’s fiction, autobiography, and Bakhtin. She served as the editor of Cultural Power/Cultural Literacy: Selected papers from the 14th Florida State University Conference on Literature and Film (University Press of Florida, 1991) and (with Hans Braendlin) Authority and Transgression in Literature and Film: Selected Papers from the Florida State University Conference on Literature and Film (Florida State UP, 1996).

Therese C. Burson (’66) worked as a free-lance writer for public television. With Patricia Barey, she formed the media production company Tellens to produce TV documentaries on health care, culture, and the arts. With Barey, she is the author of Julia’s Cats: Julia Child’s Life in the Company of Cats (Abrams Image, 2012).

Clarence “Jack” Denne (’60) completed his PhD in our department in 1971. He is Professor emeritus at the College of New Rochelle, where he also served as English department Chair and as Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences.

Christine Oliverio Godwin (’69) taught at Orange County Community College, New York.

Arthur Goldstein (’70). After graduation, Goldstein studied jazz with Bill Dobbins at the Eastman School of Music and with Joe Lovano and Ken Werner at the Sandpoint Festival. He currently teaches music history at Penn State University and piano at the Music Academy. As performer, he has appeared in concerts and festivals throughout the east as soloist, chamber musician and leader of his own jazz quartet. He achieved national recognition for his soundtrack to "Magic in the Afternoon," winner of the Golden Cine award for best American documentary film of 1984. In 1998, he performed in the world premiere of Marshall Fine's "Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano" at Penn State.     

Charles Gresh (’63) was a member of the English department at La Salle University, where he also served as Dean of Students. He was president of St. John's College, a preparatory school in Washington, DC, for nine years.

Theodore Harakas (BA ’59; MA ’65) taught at Baldwin Wallace College. 

Eleanore C. Hibbs (’60) taught in the English department at California University of Pennsylvania. The CalU English department offers an annual Eleanore C. Hibbs award for Freshman composition. 

Jane Taylor Hollman (’69) taught English at Upper St. Clair High School.

David Kaufman (’65) was a librarian with the Carnegie Library and, later, with Indiana University of Pennsylvania.  

James B. King (’63) was Professor and Chair of the English department at Belmont University (Tennessee). 

Charles Wayne Kisseberth (’64) is Professor emeritus in the Linguistics department at the University of Illinois. With Michael Kenstowicz, he was the author of Generative Phonology: Description and Theory (Academic Press, 1979) and Topics in Phonological Theory (Academic Press, 1977).

Edward G. Lawry (’67) taught in the Philosophy department at Oklahoma State University for 36 years, where a student fund has been established in his name.   

Sheldon Wayne Liebman (’65) served as Chairman of the Humanities department, Wilbur Wright College of the City Colleges of Chicago.

Charles J. Marr (’69) taught at Edinboro State College.

Bonnie Shannon McMullen (’68) taught English for the colleges at Oxford University for many years. She published articles on Fitzgerald, Poe and George Eliot and contributed to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Robert Allen Papinchak (’65) completed his PhD at Wisconsin in 1972. He taught in the English department at the University of Pittsburgh as an Instructor from 1969 to 1972, when he was promoted to Assistant Professor. He taught courses in composition and creative writing. He left Pittsburgh in 1976 to teach composition and creative writing at Boise State University, where he remained until 1989, when he moved to Seattle. Papinchak was a frequent contributor to the Seattle Times, writing book reviews and covering arts and entertainment. He is the author of Sherwood Anderson: A Study of the Short Fiction (Twayne, 1992).

John A. Parse ( BA ’66, MA ’67) took a law degree and worked for the PA Department of Public Welfare.

Karen R. Schnakenberg (’69) is Emeritus Teaching Professor of Rhetoric & Writing at Carnegie Mellon University, where she taught and developed programs in professional and technical writing.

Joan R. Sherman ('66) is professor emerita of English at Rutgers University. She is author and editor of many books and essays on nineteenth-century African American poets, including Invisible Poets (U of Illinois P, 1974), African-American Poetry of the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology (U of Illinois P, 1992), The Black Bard of North Carolina: George Moses Horton and his poetry (U of North Carolina P, 1997), and the multi-volume Collected Black Women's Poetry (Oxford, 1988).

Shelby Stephenson (’67) taught literature and creative writing at Campbell College (North Carolina) and then at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke until his retirement in 2010. He was the editor of Pembroke Magazine and a poet, with several chapbooks and small press publications, including Family Matters: Homage to July, The Slave Girl (Bellday Books, 2008). Stephenson received the North Carolina Award for Literature, the Bellday Poetry Prize, the Oscar Arnold Young Award, the Brockman-Campbell Award, the Bright Hill Press Chapbook prize and the Playwright’s Fund of North Carolina Chapbook prize. He was interviewed by the Library of Congress for the series “Poet and the Poem.” 

Judith Summerfield (’67) is Professor of English at Queens College, CUNY, where she was also served Dean for Undergraduate Education, and a member of the faculty of PhD program in Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center. Summerfield is the author of a long list of books and articles on composition and general education. Her book, with Geoffrey Summerfield, Texts and Contexts: A Contribution to the Theory and Practice of Teaching Composition (Random House, 1986) won the 1986 MLA Mina Shaughnessy Award. 

Robert Trowbridge (’66) is founder and CEO of Trowbridge and Company, an executive search firm.

James William Wensyel (’65) retired from the army as a colonel. He saw combat in Korea and Vietnam. He is a licensed battlefield guide at Gettysburg Battlefield, and he has written books and articles on the Civil War, including Petersburgh: Out of the Trenches (Burd Street Press, 1998).

Charles G. (Terry) Zug (’65) is professor emeritus of folklore and English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is author of Five North Carolina Folk Artists and The Traditional Pottery of North Carolina and coeditor of Arts in Earnest: North Carolina Folklife.