Retirements / John Griffith, Rick Kenney, and Henry Laufenberg

Submitted by Jonathan Isaac on

With bittersweet emotions we announce the retirements of outstanding professors John Griffith, Rick Kenney, and Henry Laufenberg. We honor their work and want to take a moment to thank them for their years of contributions to our students, profession, and community.

John Griffith 

John Griffith

Professor Griffith is a scholar of American literature, children’s literature, and the Bible as literature, teaching courses in all these areas during his astonishing 55 year career at UW—the longest career perhaps in the history of the English department! After earning his PhD from University of Oregon in 1969, Professor Griffith began as an Assistant Professor at UW in that same year. He was appointed to Associate Professor in 1976. During his career, Professor Griffith has been twice (in 1987 and 2019) awarded an English Department Faculty Teaching Award for a pedagogy rooted in lively class discussion and numerous and engaging in class writing opportunities. He was also awarded an Honorary Membership in the Phi Beta Sigma Freshman Honor Society in 1991. Professor Griffith’s publications include The Literary Heritage of Childhood: An Appraisal of Children's Classics in the Western Tradition (co-authored with Charles Frey), Charlottee's Web: A Pig's Salvation, and several editions of Classics of Children's Literature, an anthology edited with Charles Frey along with an Instructor's Manual. In addition, Professor Griffith has published book chapters on Earnest Hemingway, Benjamin Franklin, William Rose Benet, Stephen Vincent Benet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and children's literature, as well as articles in journals such as Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Studies in Short Fiction, Arizona Quarterly, Early American Literature, and Journal of Narrative Technique.  

Professor Griffith has regularly and successfully taught The Bible as Literature, American Literature: Later Nineteenth Century, Children's Literature, Introduction to American Literature, American Literature: Early Twentieth Century, and later American Literature. He has also contributed to the department and profession in numerous ways, from the Undergraduate Education Committee to the Executive Committee to the Expository Writing Committee and as faculty advisor to undergraduates, to chairing an IWP Search Committee. Beyond the department, Professor Griffith served as English Department liaison with the Provost's Task Force on TA Training, chaired the UW Library Committee, served on the Office for Undergraduate Studies’ Education Advisory Board, the College of Arts and Sciences General Education Committee, College of Arts and Sciences Humanities Council, Faculty Council on Community Services, College of Arts and Sciences ad hoc committee on writing proficiency, College of Arts and Sciences Curriculum Committee, University and College of Arts and Sciences Committees on Academic Conduct, and elected to the Faculty Senate as well as to the Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate. 

Rick Kenney 

Richard Kenney

Professor Richard (Rick) Kenney, a MacArthur award winning poet and teacher of poetry, began his career at UW as an Assistant Professor of English in 1987 and then was promoted to Associate Professor in 1990 and to Full Professor in 1994. He has spent his 37 year academic career in our department, during which time he has taught a wide range of courses in creative writing and in the MFA program, including Advanced Verse Workshop, Advanced Poetry Workshop, Beginning Verse Writing, The Creative Writer as Critical Reader, The Craft of Verse, Advanced Creative Writing Conference, and Literature And Discourse On The Environment (as part of Friday Harbor Labs). He has also mentored generations of  poets. He held the Grace M. Pollock Professor of Creative Writing for twelve years, and was runner-up for the first UW Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award in 2000. 

Professor Kenney is the author of five books of poetry: The Evolution of the Flightless Bird, Orrery, The Invention of the Zero, The One Strand River, and Terminator.  The Evolution of the Flightless Bird (1984) received the Yale Younger Poets Prize. His many other awards include the Lavan Younger Poet Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Academy of American Poets Prize; and the John Masefield Award from the Poetry Society of America; fellowships from the Guggenheim, Lannan, MacArthur, and Bogliasco Foundations; and the Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Ingram Merrill Foundation Award in Literature, the Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy in Rome, the Eunice Tietjens Memorial Prize, the Bess Hokin Prize, the Frederick Bock Prize, and the Oscar Blumenthal Prize.  Since 2007, he has published nearly 150 poems in literary magazines, and his work has been anthologized in numerous collections.  
 

In addition to dozens of readings, workshops, and colloquia, Professor Kenney has been a visiting professor at Grinnell College twice and the University of Iowa’s Writer's Workshop three times, and was the keynote speaker at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop Graduation. Within the department, he has served on the Creative Writing Committee every year, contributing to MFA admissions, advising, and awards; has been elected to the Executive Committee four times; and has served on five search committees. Professor Kenney also initiated and directed the English Department programs in Rome and at the UW marine laboratories in Friday Harbor, serving on the UW Rome Center Faculty Advisory Board, and teaching creative writing spring and summer seminars in Rome as well as creative writing seminars on poetry and science in Friday Harbor; Marine Biology/Humanities Quarter in Friday Harbor; Poetry and Science Symposium, Friday Harbor; and the annual science and poetry symposium at the UW Friday Harbor Laboratories. Beyond the department and UW, Professor Kenney has been a judge for numerous journals, magazines, and prizes, including The Nation Poetry Prize, the Academy of American Poets Lamont Prize, Poetry Society of America, and Cecil B. Hemley Award. He has also served on the Board of Directors for Copper Canyon Press and the Advisory Boards for Seattle Arts & Lectures—Writers in the Schools Program and the Bogliasco Foundation. Most recently, he has been Founding Director of The School Of Athens in Port Townsend and a member of the advisory board for the Jeffererson Clemente Course, the Pegasus Poetry Project with the Port Townsend public schools, and President of the Board of Directors for the Jefferson County Clemente Course. 

Henry Laufenberg 

Henry Laufenberg

Henry Laufenberg was hired as an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Program for Writing Across Campus (formerly Interdisciplinary Writing Program) in 2003 and was promoted to Associate Teaching Professor in 2009.  His record of teaching and service has been exemplary. He has taught PWAC writing courses linked with many science, social science, and humanities classes, including neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, geography, history, political science, and English. For a few years, he taught the only five-credit course for all of the UW Robinson Center’s Academy for Young Scholars students. A core commitment of his pedagogy has been to invite students to cultivate "reasonable skepticism of received scientific knowledge,” and has centered student engagement, consciousness of context, and interdisciplinarity.  Professor Laufenberg has also worked closely with faculty in other disciplines who have taught the linked lecture classes. For example, in a writing link with Philosophy 100, Laufenberg and the philosophy professor created an interdisciplinary unit in which short stories by Borges and Cortazar were read in relation to concepts in the philosophy course. Laufenberg also worked closely with other English faculty to develop writing assignments and materials for English 202, the Gateway course to the English major.  When the English department undertook a curricular revision of the gateway course, Laufenberg played an important role in helping us develop learning goals and best practices. 
 
In addition to his teaching, Professor Laufenberg has served in a variety of leadership and service roles in the English Department. He has worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant Mentor Group Convener and the English Gateway Links Coordinator/Convener, and has presented at PWAC instructors’ Fall Workshops. He has performed other valuable service to the English Department as well, serving on the Undergraduate Education Committee, on a PWAC hiring committee, and on the PWAC Committee every year.  In addition, since 2016 he has served as editor of English Matters, the department’s newsletter. Undertaking this work has enabled the department to stay connected to our broader community, and Professor Laufenberg has done a wonderful job of telling our stories, showcasing the department in its diverse and cross-programmatic range, honoring our alumni, curating recommended readings, and celebrating the collective work of the humanities. 

Please join us in thanking Professors Kenney, Griffith, and Laufenberg for their many contributions to our department, the humanities division, university, and profession, as well as to the generations of students, undergraduate and graduate, they have taught. 

 

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