March 3, 2011 - 5:45pm
Former English Prof. Ralph Williams honored for 39-year teaching career
BY PATRICIA SNIDER
After ending a 39-year teaching career at the University last year, former Arthur F. Thurnau Prof. of English Ralph Williams returned to campus on Saturday to take part in a symposium honoring the storied professor.
The symposium — called “Texts Sacred and Canonical: Their Circulation in Public Culture” — included a two-part panel, with four professors on each panel. Sarah Beckwith, professor of English and religion and chair of theater studies at Duke University was the keynote speaker for the event. The symposium compared religious writings like the Bible and Koran to the works of Shakespeare and focused on how they are studied in universities.
Among the professors on the panel, University of California, Los Angeles English Prof. Eric Jager, a former student of Williams, gave his talk on “Augustine’s Confessions: Sacred Autobiography/Secular Classic.” During his speech, Jager drew on Augustine’s teachings and discussed how god was Augustine’s intended audience as opposed to his readers.
John Parker, another former student of Williams and an associate professor of English at the University of Virginia, delivered a talk called, “Why Take Pre-Modern Drama Seriously? Some Thoughts on Piety, Scholarship and Play.” Part of his presentation centered on the idea that the work of a professor is “merely academic” and that a professor’s primary job is to provide instruction to the student.
At the end of the event, Williams stepped up to the podium and thanked the speakers were talking on his behalf. He continued by discussing what teaching at the University meant to him.
“I think I understood a little about love and people when I came here, but I’ve come to learn much more about that, much more complex,” he said. “I’ve come to understand what it means to love an institution.”
Williams ended his talk by stating that students and faculty are “forever on the road.” He said students make a stop along the road when they attend college and that they, along with their professors, are gaining insight for their next stops in the future.
LSA junior Sarah Rollins said that as a freshman she took a class Williams taught on religion, adding that she came to the event because “it is always worth it to hear (Williams) talk.”
“We came because we love him,” Rollins said of attending the symposium. “We have posters of him in our home.”
Williams, who is a Renaissance scholar, focuses much of his work on the Bible and Shakespeare. He graduated Andrews University in 1963 and enrolled as a student at the University of Michigan, where he earned his Ph.D in 1970. The symposium marked his fourth decade of service at the University.
He has won numerous awards, including the 2009 Golden Apple Laureate Lifetime Achievement Award — an award based on a professors teaching and dedication to students —which he also won in 1992.
