IN MEMORIAM

Andrew L. Griffin

Associate Professor of English, Emeritus

UC Berkeley

1939 - 2009

Andrew Griffin, associate professor emeritus of English, died in March 2009 of Lewy body dementia. He joined the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1967 before receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1969. He retired in 1999. Born in May of 1939, Mr. Griffith grew up in Portland, Oregon, graduated from Lincoln High School in Portland and went on to Harvard University, graduating summa cum laude with an A.B. degree in 1960. He entered Princeton University as the Charles Scribner Fellow but returned to Harvard for his Ph.D. in English. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Joshua Reynolds’ theory of art. Harvard University granted him a Knox Fellowship in Fine Arts to work on this project at the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes in England in 1965-66.

 

At Berkeley, he taught courses on literature and culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, especially courses on English romanticism and early Victorian literature. He was highly praised by students for his courses on Keats, Wordsworth, the Brontës, autobiography and its theories, and the painting of self-portraits as versions of autobiography. Students appreciated his ability to convey to them his fine sensibility in the interpretation of painting. They knew him as encouraging intelligent discussion and provoking lively interest in the works they examined together. Although he was well versed in the critical scholarship, he always approached the poems, essays, and novels with a certain freshness and enthusiasm, as well as with a wry humor. Students liked him and respected him. He eventually decided to focus on undergraduate teaching, and he truly dedicated himself to his talent for teaching. He also initiated courses in film and film appreciation in the English department. He wrote a number of essays: one on Wordsworth (published in PMLA), one on John Stuart Mill, another on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. His essay "Have Pity on the Werewolf" was reprinted in anthologies for its brilliant writing. He also wrote a number of book reviews of studies on English romanticism and painting.    

 

Mr. Griffin served as an assistant dean, and later as associate dean, of the College of Letters and Science. He was also the vice chair for courses and curricula in the English department and often served as the chair of the English department in summers.   

 

Mr. Griffin is survived by his longtime partner, Grace Liu, his two sons, Benjamin and Tobias, and his sister, Molly Gregory.

 

 

Richard Hutson                                                                                            

2010