Call Number:

Ms. Coll. 1283

Repository:

University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts

Extent:

0.5 linear feet (1 box)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Kermit Vanderbilt typescripts and page proofs of American Literature and the Academy: The Roots, Growth and Maturity of a Profession, 1986, Ms. Coll. 1283, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania

Date:

1986 (inclusive)

Creator:

Vanderbilt, Kermit

Form:

Writings (documents), Page proofs, and Typescripts

Abstract:

Kermit Vanderbilt (born 1925) was a professor of English and a widely published author. This collection includes the typescripts and page proofs for his book American Literature and the Academy, published in 1989.

Kermit Vanderbilt, born September 1, 1925 in Decorah, Iowa, was a widely published professor of English. He graduated with a bachelor's degree from Luther College in 1947, a master of arts from the University of Minnesota in 1949, and a doctor of philosophy from the University of Minnesota in 1956. He was an instructor of English at the University of Minnesota from 1954 to 1957 and an assistant professor at the University of Washington from 1958 to 1962. He then went to San Diego State University where he began as an assistant professor in 1962 and eventually became a professor emeritus in 1990. He remained at San Diego State University for the rest of his career. In 1964, Vanderbilt was an American Philosophical Society grantee; in 1972, he was the American Council Learned Societies grantee; he was a Guggenheim fellow from 1978 to 1979; and was the National Endowment for the Humanities grantee in 1986. The funding he received from the National Endowment for the Humanities was used for his American Literature and the Academy. In addition to his academic work, Vanderbilt served with the United States Naval Reserve from 1943 to 1946.

This collection includes the typescripts and page proofs for Kermit Vanderbilt's American Literature and the Academy: The Roots, Growth and Maturity of a Profession, published in 1989 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. Vanderbilt's book is divided into three "books" or sections: Roots, Growth, and Maturity. According to the description of the book (found in box 1, folder 4), this volume is "the biography of an academic profession whose members have ... 'helped created for Americans a sense of our literary history and, within that growing literary tradition, our awareness of a private and national selfhood.'" Researchers will find references to authors, literary editors (including H.L. Mencken, Robert Spiller, and Van Wyck Brooks), and professors of English (including Arthur Hobson Quinn). In his introduction, Vanderbilt states that the contents "point to a story that embraces our early nationalistic pride, Anglophilia and Anglophobia, literary-critical wars, the rise of literary histories, the origin of university departments, curriculum development, textbooks and anthologies, graduate study, cooperative scholarship, professional societies and politics, and more." The typescripts are annotated.