Academic

Matthiessen LGBT Chair at Harvard

By Alfred Brophy

We've been talking a lot about Harvard of late--particularly the belt-tightening in light of the recession.  So it's a real pleasure to talk about an expansion there: a new chair in "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies."  This morning's New York Times brings Jacques Steinberg's article on the chair, named for renowned Harvard literature professor F.O. Matthiessen (1902 -1950). According to the Times,

The visiting professorship was made possible by a gift of $1.5 million from the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus, which will formally announce it at a dinner on Thursday, after Harvard?s commencement exercises. With the gift, Harvard said it would regularly invite ?eminent scholars studying issues related to sexuality or sexual minorities? to teach on campus for one semester, according to a draft of a university press release.

I have spent a lot of time with Matthiessen's classic The American Renassiance--a brilliant and formative work in the American studies genre.  It inspired a book I like even more--David Reynolds' Beneath the American Renaissance, about the literature that was written in the same time, but that was often more low brow, like the crime novels.  I think this is yet another place where the legal history literature can learn something from the methods of the literature scholars--there's some good work yet to be done on the thousands of cases that no one reads from the antebellum era that ran alongside the great common law decisions of the era.  One might term such a study, "beneath the grand style."

I knew that Matthiessen died young (though when I was a graduate student "young" didn't seem quite so young as it does now--he died at age 48 or thereabouts).  I knew nothing of the circumstances of his death until now. From the Times again:

The chair is being named for F.O. Matthiessen , a Harvard scholar and literary critic who ?stands out as an unusual example of a gay man who lived his sexuality as an ?open secret? in the mid-twentieth century,? according to the release.

Professor Matthiessen, the release added, ?leapt to his death from the window of a Boston hotel room? in 1950, despondent, at least in part, over the death several years earlier of his partner, the artist Russell Cheney.

The trusts and estates professor in me impels me to link to the deed of gift and memorandum of understanding between the HGLC and Harvard University.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on June 03, 2009 (boomark / email).