English professor McGowan to succeed Tyson at Institute

February 20, 2006

Chapel Hill, N.C. — Dr. John McGowan has been appointed The Ruel W. Tyson Jr. Distinguished Professor of Humanities and director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The professorship is named in honor of the Institute founding director, who will retire from that position on June 30 after nearly 20 years at the helm.

Tyson, who has been at Carolina since 1967, will continue as professor of religious studies. McGowan, a UNC professor of English and comparative literature, will become Institute director on July 1.

"Ruel Tyson has been the creative force driving the Institute for the Arts and Humanities from the beginning," said Dr. Bernadette Gray-Little, dean of the UNC College of Arts and Sciences. "The fellowships, programs and facilities he has established over the past two decades will benefit faculty, students and the wider community for generations to come.

"I am delighted that John McGowan has accepted responsibility to lead the Institute as Ruel retires from the director's post," Gray-Little said. "John is an award-winning teacher and scholar who has enjoyed a long association with the Institute as a former associate director, advisory board member and faculty Fellow. He has the knowledge and experience to build on Ruel's extraordinary vision to take the Institute forward."

The Ruel W. Tyson Jr. Distinguished Professorship in the College of Arts and Sciences was created in 2000 with gifts from alumni totaling $666,000. The donors were C. Knox Massey Jr. and Mary Ann Keith Massey of Atlanta and the J.W. Burress Foundation, under the leadership of John Woodfin Burress III and Mary Louise Bizzell Burress of Winston-Salem. The Masseys earned bachelor's degrees from UNC in 1959 and the Burresses in 1958.

Their gifts, with $334,000 in state funds from the Distinguished Professors Endowment Trust Fund, created the $1 million professorship.

Based in UNC's College of Arts and Sciences, the Institute, established in 1987, has grown to provide a wide range of fellowships, seminars, workshops and facilities to develop faculty teaching, scholarship, leadership and service.

In 2002, the Institute moved into Hyde Hall, a new, 15,000 square-foot building designed to reflect the historic architecture surrounding it on McCorkle Place. Hyde Hall was built and furnished with $6.8 million in private contributions, including a lead gift from alumni Pitt and Barbara Hyde of Memphis, Tenn.

McGowan joined the UNC faculty in 1992 and has been recognized repeatedly for outstanding teaching and scholarship. Last year he won the university's J. Carlyle Sitterson Freshman Teaching Award and an Association of English Graduate Students Mentoring Award.

He also received the university's Distinguished Post-Baccalaureate Teaching Award (2002), the Institute of the Arts and Humanities' Chapman Family Teaching Award Fellowship (1999) and Pardue Family Fellowship (1994).

McGowan co-directed two National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminars for college teachers, in 2001 and 1997. He also co-directed a UNC conference in 2000 on "Teaching for the Public Good: The Future of the Humanities."

An expert on 19th-century British literature, critical theory and cultural studies, McGowan has written or edited six books, including "Democracy's Children: Intellectuals and the Rise of Cultural Politics" (Cornell University Press, 2002); "Hannah Arendt: An Introduction" (University of Minnesota Press, 1998); and "Postmodernism and Its Critics" (Cornell University Press, 1991), which was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Book by the American Library Association. He co-edited the "Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism" (W.W. Norton, 2001).

McGowan previously taught at the University of Rochester and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He received a doctorate in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1978.

Tyson has been a member of the UNC religious studies faculty since 1967. He chaired the department from 1975 to 1980. Under his leadership, the Institute has become a vital hub for faculty fellowship and engagement across disciplines. More than 300 UNC faculty members have benefited from semester-long fellowships at the Institute , where they have met with colleagues from other departments and shared ideas about teaching, creativity and scholarship.

In 39 years at UNC, Tyson has taught and written extensively about humanistic education, religious and public ethics, and the philosophy and anthropology of religion.

In 2002, the university honored him with the Thomas Jefferson Award, given to faculty who exemplify Jefferson's ideals and objectives. In 1996, he was inducted into the Order of the Golden Fleece, the university's highest honor society.