Passing of Prof. Morris Dickstein

H-Judaic Passing of Prof. Morris Dickstein

Discussion published by Shalom Berger on Thursday, March 25, 2021

H-Judaic joins in mourning the passing of Morris Dickstein (1940-2021), Distinguished Professor of English and Theater at the CUNY Graduate School and Senior Fellow at the Center for the Humanities. Prof. Dickstein considered himself one of the last survivors of the group known as the "New York Jewish Intellectuals." He infused Jewish learning into his work, and often boasted of his studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

His official bio, on his website, reads as follows:

Born in 1940, Morris Dickstein grew up in New York. He received his education at Columbia, the Jewish Theological Seminary, Cambridge, and Yale, where he worked with distinguished critics such as Lionel Trilling, F. R. Leavis, Raymond Williams, and Harold Bloom. Returning to New York, he taught first at Columbia, closely observing the 1968 student uprising, and then at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University, where he is currently Distinguished Professor of English and Theatre and senior fellow of the Center for the Humanities, which he founded in 1993.

Dickstein’s interests have ranged from English Romantic poetry to the history of criticism, from American cultural history to modern and contemporary fiction. He began teaching film courses in 1975 and writing about film in the late 1970s for publications likeAmerican Film, Bennington Review, Partisan Review, and Dissent. His connection to the tumultuous world of the New York intellectuals began with a book review forPartisan Review in 1962, when he was a year out of college. He was a member of the editorial board from 1972 until it ceased publication in 2003. A longstanding contributor to the New York Times Book Review and the Times Literary Supplement, he has also written for The American Scholar, Bookforum, The Nation, and many other publications, combining a career as a teacher and scholar with the activities of a public intellectual.

His books include a widely known cultural history the 1960s, Gates of Eden, nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism in 1978 and selected as one of the best books of the year by the editors of the New York Times Book Review. Among his other books are a study of modern criticism, Double Agent (1992); a social history of postwar American fiction,Leopards in the Temple (2002); and a collection of essays on realism and literature, A Mirror in the Roadway (2005). His book Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression (2009) received the Ambassador Book Award in American Studies from the English-Speaking Union and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism. His most recent book is a memoir, Why Not Say What Happened: A Sentimental Education (2015). Dickstein is a member of the National Society of Film Critics and has served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle, as Vice-Chair of the New York Council for the Humanities, and as president of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. The late Norman Mailer described him as “one of our best and most distinguished critics of American literature.”

Tablet Magazine filmed Prof. Dickstein when his autobiography appeared. The film is available here: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/the-last-of-the-morrises Many thanks to Menahem Butler for sending this to us.

Citation: Shalom Berger. Passing of Prof. Morris Dickstein. H-Judaic. 03-25-2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/28655/discussions/7475936/passing-prof-morris-dickstein Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Judaic

We extend deepest condolences to the family and thousands of students of Prof. Dickstein.

Jonathan D. Sarna

Chair H-Judaic