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IN MEMORIAM

IN MEMORIAM

Jill Anne Kowalik

Associate Professor of Germanic Languages

 Los Angeles

1949–2003

 

Jill Anne Kowalik, professor in the Department of Germanic Languages, died October 30, 2003 after a 14 year bout with cancer. Her strength of character in resisting the disease was evident also in her work as a scholar and a teacher. Professor Kowalik received her doctorate in intellectual history from Stanford University in 1985. She was a member of the faculty at Princeton University (1986-1989) before she came to the Department of Germanic Languages at UCLA in 1989.

As a scholar she showed remarkable breadth, publishing on 17th- to 20th-century German literature and philosophy: Lessing, Goethe, Nietzsche, and Thomas Mann. She published articles on self-destruction in Nietzsche and Thomas Mann, on disturbed grieving in Lessing, on feminine identity formation in Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, and on the pathology of religion in Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werther. Her first book, Poetics of Historical Perspectivism (1991), dealt with concepts of artistic imitation and the epistemology of the cultural sciences. She was developing psychoanalytic approaches to the social history and psychohistory of 17th- and 18th-century Germany. The results were to be published in a book on the discourse on grief and pathological mourning. This book project, entitled “Theology and Dehumanization in Early Modern Central Europe,” was close to completion when she died. Friends and colleagues plan to edit and publish it posthumously. Her mentor, Professor Ursula Mahlendorf of UC Santa Barbara, called her “a scholar of enormous promise.” The editor who accepted one of her last articles after peer review commented that Jill Kowalik’s “final work can proudly take its place among the best articles published in this or any other journal. It combines sophistication with accessibility that I have come to associate with [her] research.”

As a teacher, Professor Kowalik had decided to put the emphasis on undergraduate teaching. Her course list was usually weighted in favor of undergraduate courses because she wanted to attract students who were not necessarily majors, but were interested in German topics. Her design of new courses in General Education and her teaching of these courses exemplified her unique creativity. She attracted a great number of students and her enrollments were far above the departmental averages. During spring 2003, she had a total of 70 students enrolled in her classes. Although she could barely walk, she taught her classes as any other faculty member, she administered the final exams and corrected them so that the students got their grades and seniors could graduate. This heroic dedication to teaching was characteristic of Jill Kowalik.

As graduate adviser from 1993 to 1998, she showed the same professional dedication that she exhibited as an undergraduate teacher. She reviewed the departmental regulations and put them into a handbook that will be used for years to come. She advised graduate students of their rights as members of the academic community, and, as member of Ph.D. committees, she shepherded many dissertations to their completion. Graduate students expressed their gratitude that she “soothed and mothered” them from their first visit to UCLA as prospective graduate students to their final degree ceremony.

Her colleagues in the department benefited immensely from her advice and were grateful to see her involved in so many departmental activities and university affairs. She was an active member of the provost’s committee that developed the college cluster program in General Education.

In her community of La Habra Heights, Professor Kowalik was known as a civic leader and engaged environmentalist. Together with her husband, Bill Kowalik, she made educational films about the local nature preserves that were threatened by housing developments and golf courses. She was an avid preservationist and experienced mountain climber. She will be greatly missed by her family, friends, colleagues, and students whose lives she touched profoundly.

 

Ehrhard Bahr