Remembering James Heffernan, Prolific Literature Scholar and Champion of the Humanities

James Heffernan, professor emeritus of English and longtime resident of Hanover, died on July 21 of metastatic prostate cancer. He was 85.

"James was a prolific scholar of literature, a cherished teacher, and a passionate champion for the humanities. With his expansive intellect, playful wit, and generous spirit, he touched the lives of countless students and colleagues at Dartmouth and around the world," Dean Elizabeth F. Smith said in a message to the Arts and Sciences community.

Born in 1939, and raised in the Boston suburb of Jamaica Plain, Heffernan earned his BA from Georgetown University in 1960 and his PhD in English from Princeton in 1964. He was an instructor of English at the University of Virginia for two years before joining Dartmouth as an assistant professor in 1965. After being promoted to associate professor in 1970 and full professor in 1976, Heffernan served as chair of the English department from 1978 to 1981 and as the Frederick Sessions Beebe Professor in the Art of Writing from 1997 to 2004, when he retired.

The author of 10 books and dozens of scholarly articles, Heffernan began his academic career with a focus on English Romantic poetry and broadened his focus over the years to the entire Western canon and the interconnections between literature, art, and politics. He also co-authored a popular textbook, published first in 1982 by W.W. Norton, Writing: A College Handbook, that sold over 100,000 copies in its first year and continued through five editions.

Heffernan followed his first book, Wordsworth's Theory of Poetry: The Transforming Imagination (1969), with The Re-Creation of Landscape: A Study of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Constable, and Turner (1985), which compares the nature poetry of two major Romantic poets to the work of two of England's most important landscape painters.

In 1992, Heffernan edited a collection of essays, Representing the French Revolution: Literature, Historiography and Art, that was published after he hosted a conference on the French Revolution at Dartmouth in July of 1989. The acclaimed historian Simon Schama described the book as "the best set of essays that we have" on English responses to the French Revolution, and he called Heffernan's piece on Wordsworth's Prelude a "superlative essay, the best modern reading of the Prelude I know."

Heffernan next turned his attention to ekphrastic poetry, in which poets set out to re-create in words a work of visual art. His 1993 book, Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery, was followed in 2006 by Cultivating Picturacy, a collection of essays on the relationship between literature and art. The book was praised by many eminent scholars, including Gillen D'Arcy Wood, who called it "a treasure for scholars and students interested in the history, theory, and practice of text-image relations."

In 2009, Heffernan launched Review 19, which reviews academic studies of 19th-century British and American literature. With hundreds of reviewers, ranging from graduate students to emeriti, the site published nearly 700 articles and drew more than 200,000 unique visitors.

His next book, Hospitality and Treachery in Western Literature (2014), traces the giving and taking of hospitality in Western literature, from Homer's Odyssey to Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? This was followed by his 2023 book, Politics and Literature at the Dawn of World War II, the first comprehensive study of the impact of the outbreak of World War II on the literary work of American, English, and European. The New York Review of Books called it "an appealing enticement to read some of the most inventive works of wartime literature and to recognize their contributions to the historical record."

In addition to his scholarly writing, Heffernan wrote extensive political commentary. Between 2005 and 2017, he published nearly 70 columns in the Huffington Post, with topics ranging from abortion rights and immigration to terrorism and the Israel-Palestine conflict. He also authored a number of satirical pieces, with titles such as "Should Stephen Colbert Be the Next Pope?" and "Jesus and His Wife: The Pre-Nup."

At Dartmouth, his literature courses garnered copious praise from students, especially his senior seminar on James Joyce's Ulysses. His other popular courses included Romantic Poetry and A Survey of English Literature: Dryden to Eliot.

Heffernan was also highly regarded by students around the world who watched his lectures via the Teaching Company's Great Courses: 24 lectures on Ulysses and more than 20 additional talks on authors including Jane Austen, Albert Camus, and Samuel Beckett. His courses attracted numerous five-star reviews, including praise of his "acting (and singing!) skills" and ability to "recite dialogue so beautifully in character." They also inspired students from as far as Iran to write Heffernan with messages of gratitude, leading in some cases to years-long correspondences.

Heffernan also took great pride in helping to host Democratic candidates on campus. In 1992, he introduced Hillary and Bill Clinton to their first Dartmouth audiences—the former on Jan. 9 and the latter on Feb. 13. In 1994, when Hillary returned to campus as first lady, Heffernan was invited to drive in her motorcade as it traveled from Lebanon Airport to the Hopkins Center and then back after her speech.

In his public lectures and writing, Heffernan advocated vocally for the study of the humanities. "Having spent trillions of dollars fighting terrorism with bullets and bombs, we need literature and the humanities now more than ever, because they strive to heal, to nurture the most priceless of all our possessions: our humanity," he wrote in a 2021 column in The American Scholar. His final book, a memoir posted on his website, details a blueprint for the future of the humanities at Dartmouth, which includes the revival of a required year-long course for first-year students covering ancient to modern texts.

A palpable love of words permeated all of Heffernan's work, which also includes poetry he composed for family members and friends on special occasions, such as a free verse narrative about his mother on her 100th birthday. In his memoir, he reflects on the famous words of Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 "Having lived more than twice as long as Dylan Thomas, I do not rage against the dying of the light," Heffernan wrote. "On the contrary, my point of departure for this chapter is my own little twist on his angry couplet:

Do not go silent into that good night,
Write, write against the dying of the light.

This sense of joyful engagement defined his approach to teaching. "Ultimately, my teaching springs from a passion to learn, which is what I strive to share with my listeners," he said. "School is just the beginning of education. If you want to stay alive to the very end of your life, never stop learning."

Heffernan is survived by his wife, Nancy Coffey Heffernan; his two children, Andrew and Virginia Heffernan; their partners, Heidi Rose Robbins and Richard Stanislaw; and his four grandchildren, Kate Robin Heffernan, Dylan Heffernan, Benjamin Samuels, and Susannah Samuels. Funeral services will be held at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Hanover in the early fall, followed by interment of ashes in the Columbarium.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the LISTEN Center of Lebanon in Heffernan's honor. 

The Dartmouth flag will be lowered in Heffernan's honor on Aug. 7 and 8.