Rita Kaplan Gollin (January 22, 1928 – August 7, 2022) was a professor of English and a scholar of American literature.[1]

Quick Facts Born, Died ...
Rita Gollin
Born
Rita Kaplan

(1928-01-22)January 22, 1928
DiedAugust 7, 2022(2022-08-07) (aged 94)
OccupationProfessor of English
Academic background
Alma mater
Academic work
DisciplineAmerican literature
Institutions
Main interestsNathaniel Hawthorne
Close

Life and career

Rita Gollin was born Rita Kaplan on January 22, 1928, in Brooklyn, NY. She graduated magna cum laude from Queens College with a B.A. in English in 1949, and received her M.A. in English from the University of Minnesota in 1950.[2] She earned her doctorate in English from the same university in 1961 under Professor C. H. Foster.[3][4]

She was a professor in the English Department at the State University of New York at Geneseo from 1967 to 2002, where she was named Distinguished Professor in 1995.[5] Before that, she taught at the University of Minnesota and the University of Rochester.[6][7]

She was a scholar of the life and works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, on whom she has authored several books and many articles. Her 1979 book, Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Truth of Dreams, published by the Louisiana State University Press, is consistently included in Hawthorne bibliographies. Her later publications pursued visual-textual studies, focusing on the iconography of Hawthorne portraiture, and a biography of Hawthorne's publisher's wife, "Annie Adams Fields, Woman of Letters." She also edited scholarly editions of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.

She received grants[8][9] from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), as well as the Grace Ellis Ford Fellowship from the AAUW and a State University of New York Research Foundation Fellowship.[6][10] She was president of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society from 1981 to 1982[11][12] and of the Northeast Modern Language Association of America (MLA) from 1978 to 1979.[13][14]

Personal life

She married Dick Gollin in 1950. They lived in Rochester, New York, and had three children; their son Michael died of ALS.[15] She died at 94 on August 7, 2022.

Legacy

Upon her retirement in 2002, Gollin endowed the Department of English at SUNY Geneseo with the Rita K. Gollin Scholarship for Excellence in American Literature. The award goes to one graduating senior and one junior who have demonstrated excellence in the study of American literature.[16]

References

Wikiwand in your browser!

Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.

Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.

Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.