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Susan Irene Rotroff, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Classics in Arts and Sciences, has been named the first Jarvis Thurston and Mona Van Duyn Professor in the Humanities. A formal installation ceremony will take place at 4:30 p.m. May 19 in Holmes Lounge.
"Susan is a wonderfully talented and interactive faculty member," said Edward S. Macias, Ph.D., executive vice chancellor and dean of Arts and Sciences. "She brings great depth and breadth to our excellent faculty work in classics and archaeology, and her teaching is much sought after by our students. I am very pleased that Arts and Sciences at Washington University can honor her in this way."
George M. Pepe, associate professor and chair of the classics department, said: "Susan richly deserves this honor. Despite her many accomplishments and awards, she has always been unassuming, amiable and generous with both her time and her energy in the interest of the students and the department."
The Jarvis Thurston and Mona Van Duyn Professorship honors teacher/scholar Jarvis Thurston, Ph.D., professor emeritus and former chair of the Department of English in Arts and Sciences, and his wife, Mona Van Duyn, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former Poet Laureate of the United States. The professorship was created as a result of a 1997 gift from the Danforth Foundation to support professorships in the humanities. It is the first of four such professorships that will be named in honor of distinguished persons who have served on the University's humanities faculty.
Rotroff earned a bachelor's degree in Greek and in classical and Near Eastern archaeology from Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pa., in 1968. She received a master's degree in 1972 and a doctorate in classical archaeology in 1976, both from Princeton University. She came to Washington University in 1995, following a 12-year career at Hunter College. While at Hunter, she was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship.
Rotroff has written and lectured extensively on Greek art and archaeology, ancient ceramics and ancient Athens. She is the author of two volumes on the Athenian Agora -- "The Athenian Agora XXII, Hellenisic Pottery: Athenian and Imported Moldmade Bowls" (1982) and "Hellenistic Pottery: Athenian and Imported Wheelmade Tableware from the Athenian Agora" (1997) -- work that has been the central focus of her research throughout her career. She is nearing completion of a third volume and will be on leave for the 1999-2000 academic year in order to complete it, working in Jerusalem and Athens.
In her relatively short time at Washington University, Rotroff already has assumed numerous leadership responsibilities, serving as a member of the Arts and Sciences Academic Planning Committee and the Arts and Sciences Advisory Committee on Tenure, Promotion and Personnel. She teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses, serves as an undergraduate and graduate adviser and also serves on three doctoral committees.
Rotroff is active in numerous professional organizations, serving as a member of the Governing Board of the Archaeological Institute of America from 1992 to 1997 and as vice chairman of the Managing Committee of the American School of Classical Studies from 1990 to 1998. She also has served as a referee for the Princeton University Press, the University of Oklahoma Press, the Getty Trust, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Hesperia, American Journal of Archaeology, Bulletin of the Schools of Oriental Research and Journal of Roman Archaeology supplements.
Jarvis Thurston helped bring to the University such distinguished faculty as the late novelist Stanley Elkin, poet John Morris, former Poet Laureate Howard Nemerov, philosopher and novelist William H. Gass, poet Donald Finkel and scholars Wayne Fields, Steven N. Zwicker and Naomi Lebowitz. Van Duyn taught English in University College, later serving as poetry consultant for the Olin Library Modern Literature Collection and teaching several graduate poetry workshops for the Writing Program in Arts and Sciences. Together, Thurston and Van Duyn helped the Department of English establish a distinctive atmosphere that combines the academic and the literary in a single community -- a model that is still in place.
