Word: matthiessen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...spring of 1936, during the preparation for the Tercentenary Celebration, an attempted repeal of the oath failed in the House of Representatives. Mather, along with other members of the Faculty such as Max Lerner and F. O. Matthiessen, formed the Harvard University chapter of the American Federation of Teachers...
...faculty and the administration are interested in maintaining History and Lit as more than an amorphous sidelight for several departments, some system of permanent appointments would seem to be in order. Since F. O. Matthiessen's death in 1950, there has been no Professor of History and Literature, and senior professors concerned with the field--like Perry Miller--are too pressed by departmental commitments to pay more than nominal attention to History...
...there were dissidents even in the Thirties, and the personalities of Matthiessen ("History and Literature incarnate," according to Prof. Robert Wolff, a concentrator of the period) and of the rest of the tutors were the main cohesive force. "It was, more than anything, a meeting of a few minds," says Professor Reuben A. Brower, "and who knows how something like that happens...
...extraordinary tutorial group of the Thirties did not stick together long. Only two--Matthiessen and Miller--were promoted by Harvard, and the rest drifted away to other schools. The "synthesis" became more and more difficult, and some even questioned its value. Now it is mentioned more as an idealistic goal than as something normally and readily achieved...
Gilmore, Brower and Perry Miller feel that another important reason for History and Lit's present difficulties lies back in the Thirties themselves. The brilliant tutorial group of that period broke up rapidly because only Matthiessen and Miller were given tenure by the University; of these two, Matthiessen was a Professor of History and Literature, but Miller went into the English department and is now able to give very little time to History and Lit, his "first love." Work by senior faculty members in History and Lit is, incidently, unpaid ("purely a labor of love," says Professor Bate...