Seven professors retire at year-end

Seven professors with more than 250 years of teaching experience among them will retire at the end of this year.

A trio of loved English professors — Robert Hollander '55, T. P. Roche GS '58 and Elaine Showalter — all delivered their final lectures last week. History professor John Murrin, French professor Léon-François Hoffman GS '59, psychology professor Ronald Kinchla and mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Barrie Royce will also become emeritus professors in July.

"I know I will miss teaching, working out ideas with bright people who need to be convinced," Hollander wrote in an email. "But right now I am looking forward to not grading papers and examinations, to not doing any sort of administrative labor at all, to not paying attention to the concerns of the university of which I am so fond."

Hollander, professor of medieval Italian literature at the University since 1961, said he hopes to continue teaching in some capacity. A leading scholar of Dante and Boccaccio, he plans to finish his translation of Dante's "Paradiso" with his wife and his notes to that part of "The Divine Comedy." He said he would then undertake several more book and article projects.

Roche, a fixture in the English department since 1960, taught popular courses on Shakespeare and Spenser. At 72, he decided "it was time for someone else" to take over.

Roche said he is proudest of his students, who have gone on to become respected scholars and professors at universities including Harvard and Oxford. He said he will spend his days finishing three books he is currently writing.

Showalter will also be writing full-time next year, dividing her time between London and Washington, D.C. She is working on a literary history of American women writers up to 2000, which she hopes to complete by 2005.

"There wasn't enough time to do everything," Showalter said, adding, "I'm certainly going to miss the students the most."

Showalter's courses in the short story and contemporary fiction were perennial favorites, earning her glowing reviews and high ratings in the Student Course Guide. One student reviewer wrote, "Professor Showalter is a true star of the English department, and her charged multimedia lectures could make learning the history of mud enjoyable."

Murrin, a renowned scholar of colonial and revolutionary America, taught at the University for 30 years. Most recently, he led a freshman seminar on the rise of antiwar sentiment and co-taught a course in war and society with history professor James McPherson.

"He clearly has a great love and understanding of the material," one SCG reviewer wrote. "The lectures were almost never boring, and they often left me with a desire to hear more."

But Murrin said he preferred leading seminars over giving lectures. "I get tired of hearing myself talk," he said. "Seminars are much less predictable — I always look forward to what students have to say."

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For Murrin, the best part of teaching was supervising senior theses. He and his family are staying in the area, so next year he will "be around the history department and stay active in research."

Hoffman, Kinchla and Royce could not be reached for comment this weekend.