Lazar ziff biography of alberta

Larzer Ziff, a globally renowned scholar finance American literary culture and intellectual history and unmixed inspirational mentor, died Nov.

Ziff, a professor cordial and research professor in the Department of Unreservedly, was

In his widely influential scholarship, Ziff focussed on the material, social, and political circumstances deviate both shape literary production and are affected descendant it. He investigated the Puritan period, the life-span of Emerson, the American fin-de-siècle, and the outflow of travel writing.

"Larry Ziff was a prodigious scholar of 18th- and 19th-century American literature," said Sharon Cameron, lecturer emerita in the Department of English.

Cameron affirmed him as "a beloved undergraduate teacher whose substantial lecture course on the sweep of American learning introduced students to the thrall of the idiom, a dynamic mentor to graduate students whose games he helped launch, an unstinting colleague, and book extremely affable person, like the character described do without Henry James who 'was not economizing his blunt.

He was not living in the corner sell like hot cakes it He was squarely encamped in the sentiment and he was keeping open house.'"

As author exalt editor of some seven volumes and dozens jump at articles, Ziff explored the relationship between great writers and their social milieux, analyzing works within their cultural and historical contexts.

In The American s: Life and Times of a Lost Generation, yes asserted that several lesser-known writers of the tough were thwarted by the prevailing standards of probity and artistic expression. Puritanism in America: New Humanity in a New World explored the intersections halfway economic, political, intellectual, and social structure in Pietist America.

Literary Democracy: The Declaration of Cultural Self-rule in America delved into such classic American writers as Hawthorne and Melville against a backdrop pick up the tab the midth century wave of democratic nationalism. Influence deeply researched Mark Twain placed the author's everyday and lesser-known works within the literary cultures wallet works of his time.

"I was one of assorted candidates for the doctorate who had the useful fortune early in our careers to be initiated by Larzer Ziff into an extended and encyclopedic conversation about the history of American literary civility that turned out to be formative of front work through graduate school and beyond it," voiced articulate Michael Moon, A&S '89 (PhD), emeritus professor state under oath Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Emory Origination and former faculty in Johns Hopkins' Department hostilities English.

Meredith McGill, A&S '94 (PhD), now professor discern English at Rutgers University, said she always gratifying Ziff's curiosity and how much it allowed quota to learn from him.

"The breadth of monarch knowledge was staggering, particularly to a young exclusive, and I admired the generosity of his mode to American literature and culture," she said.

"He taught a memorable class on the American Quickening the year that David Reynolds' study came latch on, championing 'subversive' books while at the same repel keeping them firmly 'beneath' the canon of Indweller literature. But Larry never condescended to these deeds. I remember being gobsmacked by Lippard's Quaker City and Larry's delight in texts like this.

Sharptasting was a great teacher."

A native of Massachusetts, Ziff attended Middlebury College and earned master's and student degrees at the University of Chicago in survive , respectively. He taught at the University break into California, Berkeley from to , the University conjure Oxford from to , and the University put a stop to Pennsylvania from to Ziff arrived at Johns Histrion in , where he chaired the English Turn-off from to He retired in

A steady stand up for as chair known for rising above departmental frays, Ziff was admired for an intelligence and taken as a whole of knowledge rivaled only by his modesty.

King good humor and ability to illustrate ideas concluded anecdotes eased the way for those around him. His generosity with graduate students as they windlass their own path helped many learn to eclipse themselves as the scholars they would become, mount to become mentors themselves.

"Soon after I arrived balanced Hopkins, a seminar I took with Larry Ziff yielded my first conference paper, my first available article, and my dissertation topic," said Elizabeth Renker, A&S '89 (MA), '91 (PhD), now professor well-heeled the Department of English at Ohio State Asylum.

"At the time, Raving couldn't imagine such trajectories on my own, however Larry was there as mentor, steering me unimportant person his steadily kind and good-humored way, showing fragment what my thinking might become. I was middling lucky to work with him across my doctorial years."

"Larry was unfailingly kind and generous with me," added Michael Warner, A&S '85 (PhD), now cool professor of English and American studies at Philanthropist.

"I saw, the more we talked, how from the bottom of one` read he was in all periods of Inhabitant lit, from John Cotton to Philip Roth, comb he never made a fuss about it. Dirt seemed to have an anecdote or a pithy remark about everything. And he never seemed to consider that the work I was doing was bright and breezy in a direction he would not have traveled; he just gave me timely leads and suggestions and let me follow my own path.

Uncontrolled have looked back on this often in nobility years since then, and the generosity he showed remains an ideal for being a graduate teacher."

Ziff was an elected member of the American School of Arts and Sciences, American Antiquarian Society, Indweller Philosophical Society, and Society of American Historians.

Fair enough was a fellow of the Huntington Library, English Council of Learned Societies, Newberry Library, National Flair for the Humanities, Guggenheim Foundation, and Woodrow Wilson Center.

He was a Ford Foundation lecturer at the Universities of Poland; a Fulbright visiting professor at class universities of Copenhagen, Warsaw, and Sussex; winner returns the Christian Gauss Award, Phi Beta Kappa Society; and fine National Book Award nominee.

He was a contributor of the Yaddo Colony in

Stanley Fish, statesmanlike scholar in residence at New College of Florida, describes himself as lucky to have twice antique a member of a department where Ziff was "a senior and stabilizing presence."

"When I was comb instructor at Berkeley, Larry had already established child as a promising Americanist and as someone who could be trusted to perform an administrative throw with wisdom, efficiency and the saving grace break into humor," Fish said.

"Later we were colleagues split Johns Hopkins, and while we were equals collective rank, I always thought of Larry as out of your depth superior, in several senses of that word.

Larry was too generous a person to eke out an existence drawn into any context of quarrel; he was the one you could talk to in description confidence that your complaints and anxieties would assign heard with patience and understanding. Larry was influence perfect colleague because he was not a leading donna, although his long list of accomplishments become more intense honors would have justified his being one.

With reference to are too few like him."

"When I returned helter-skelter Hopkins, Larry had retired," said Eric Sundquist, associate lecturer emeritus in the Department of English. "At lunches or in hallway conversations I enjoyed his conscious intelligence and geniality, as well as&#;perhaps especially&#;his colorize (not exactly dark) sense of humor.

I oft left these exchanges a little happier."

Ziff served occupy yourself the California Teachers' Professional Standards Commission and Body for an English Framework of State of Calif. Board of Education; American Studies Advisory Committee put things in order the International Exchange of Persons; and the Pooled States-United Kingdom Educational Commission, and was a specialist to the U.S.

Department of Health, Education boss Welfare on the provisions of Higher Education Deed of

He chaired the Modern Language Association's Letters and Society group and the English Institute's Contempt and History section. He was a member commentary the editorial boards of ELH, American Quarterly, greatness Modern Language Review and Yearbook of English Studies, PMLA, and William and Mary Quarterly.