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Memoir
James H. McIntosh
Regents' Proceedings 328
Regents' Proceedings 328
James H. McIntosh, Ph.D., professor of English language and literature and American culture in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, will retire from active faculty status on May 31, 2002.
Professor McIntosh received his B.A. degree from Harvard University in 1955 and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University in 1959 and 1966, respectively. Professor McIntosh taught at Tufts University from 1962-67 and at Yale University from 1967-75. He joined the University of Michigan faculty as an associate professor in 1975 and was promoted to professor in 1989.
From the start, Professor McIntosh's scholarship was distinguished by an ambition to focus on major writers of the American renaissance and to offer his own perspective on a body of literature that had already received a good deal of attention. Based on his research, Professor McIntosh wrote several rich and subtle essays on Emerson, Hawthorne, and Melville and a major book, Thoreau as Romantic Naturalist: His Shifting Stance Toward Nature. In 1987, Professor McIntosh edited the Norton Critical edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tales, and in 2000 his singularly original study, Nimble Believing: Dickinson and the Unknown, was published.
Professor McIntosh steadfastly demonstrated his willingness to place his intellectual skills and conscientious judgment at the service of both the English department and the Program in American Culture. During his tenure at the University of Michigan, he pioneered courses in North/South American literatures, and he served the Program in American Culture as one of its most distinguished and longest-serving directors from 1984-91. In those years, Professor McIntosh helped to lay the foundations for the Latino/a Studies Program, which later achieved national stature. Professor McIntosh also served on the graduate admissions committee and many hiring and tenure committees for the Program in American Culture.
Professor McIntosh' s appreciation of and respect for English literature and for world culture is much admired and appreciated by his students and colleagues. He has been a valued and superb mentor to all who brought him their questions and their manuscripts.
The Regents salute this distinguished scholar by naming James H. McIntosh professor emeritus of English language and literature and American culture.