Issue 21 Fall/Winter 2020

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Tribute Issue

The Hard Year Brings a Large Number of Faculty Retirements

A COVID year, an election year, a year of upheaval. In the midst of it, the Department of English faculty has seen a large number of retirements: Jonathan Arac, Don Bialostosky, Laura Dice, Jean Carr, Nick Coles, Beth Matway, and Cindy Skrzycki—all who have been such vital parts of Pitt English—have decided to step away from their roles in the department. With the pandemic continuing to keep us apart, we can't even shake their hands. But T5F, with the help of generous alumni and faculty, offers this issue's tributes to six of our seven retirees. We plan on honoring Jean Ferguson Carr in Issue 22 this coming spring. Best wishes to all of you. And thank you.

On Jonathan Arac

When I heard that Jonathan Arac was retiring, my first reaction was to feel sad for all the students who would not be able to take courses and work with him in the future. Not that he doesn’t deserve the break, of course, but Jonathan has always been such a marvelous teacher and mentor, in the classroom, in office hours, in casual conversation, and certainly through his scholarship and criticism. Anyone who has studied under his tutelage knows the incalculable value of the experience. I published an article a few years ago titled “An American Bakhtin: Jonathan Arac, or, the Vocation of the Critic in the Age of the Novel,” in which I focused my attention almost entirely on Jonathan’s writings, but I ended by noting that Jonathan is best understood as a teacher. More>

Don Bialostosky: Professor, Critic, Department Chair, and Mentor

When I was asked to write a retirement tribute for Don Bialostosky, I immediately thought of an informal gathering last December: I had visited Pittsburgh as Don and his wife, Sue, were preparing to leave for sabbatical in Portugal. While I hoped to catch up with Don about my recent work with graduate writing programs at North Carolina State University, it was a hectic time for both of us—travelling from family Christmas visits in other states, late planes and traffic on I-79, shopping on the Strip. Despite the last-minute nature of my visit, Don insisted that I stay for coffee even as he and Sue were getting ready to welcome the visiting scholars who would be staying in their home during their sabbatical. This story encapsulates Don’s generosity as a professor, advisor, and friend. More>

Nick Coles: Four Decades of Working-Class Studies at Pitt

Professor Nicholas Coles is retiring after a 40-year run as a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh. To those that know him well, cognitive dissonance surely sets in at this number—Nick can’t have been here that long; he’s much too fresh and energetic, too unlike the stodgy image of an Emeritus Professor of English whose education began in British private schools and later at Oxford. He dresses like a lumberjack, for heaven’s sake, and he plays guitar in a band. He has an earring, and he has at least considered getting a tattoo. Nick Coles is cool. More>

Alumna, Teacher, Dean, and Community-Builder Laura Dice Retirese

My first memory of Laura Dice: Many years ago, in the early 1990s, when Pitt English administered composition placement essays for incoming Pitt students, we were a group of faculty and grad students gathered in the old 501CL to read stacks of handwritten responses to the prompt given. These readings happened in the summer months, so we tended go a little overboard in catching up and enjoying one another's company. And, okay, sometimes being silly, as when my colleague Jeff joked that he wanted to ask all the young writers who used “as a human being” as an introductory phrase what they felt about the issue “as a camel.” More>

Writing in the Disciplines Director Beth Matway Retires

In 2003, when I was department chair, we were looking to create a full-time, permanent director for the cross-curricular Writing in the Disciplines Program, a program developed by the English department and sponsored by the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. Beth was the ideal candidate. We were pleased to hire her as a Visiting Lecturer (2003–2007), a Lecturer (2007–2010), and a Senior Lecturer (2010–2020). She took on a particularly fraught and demanding job, one that required not only regular diplomatic negotiation with tenured and tenure-track faculty from across the departments in Arts and Sciences, but also the ability to serve that privileged group as both critic and mentor. More>

Deepening Pitt’s Media Footprint: A Tribute to Cindy Skrzycki

In 2020, Cindy Skrzycki retired as a Senior Lecturer. She joined the English department in 2004 and, in a very short period of time (and in a time of crisis), gave new life, vision, and direction to our undergraduate program in journalism. More>