Terence Dewsnap, Professor of Literature

In a letter to the Bard community, President Leon Botstein memorialized Professor Dewsnap.

It is with regret that I share the sad news of the death, last week, of Terry Dewsnap, long-time professor of English at Bard. Terry’s family prepared the obituary note, below. It is their wish that it be shared with the Bard community.
 
Terence Francis “Terry” Dewsnap, professor emeritus of English at Bard College, died from cancer at his summer home in Cotuit, Massachusetts, on September 24, 2020, his 87th birthday. A long-time resident of Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, he was born in 1933 in Revere, Massachusetts, to Frank and Anna Clare Dewsnap. He attended Immaculate Conception School in Revere; received his AB in math and MA in English literature from Boston College, where he edited the student literary magazine and sang with the Glee Club; and was awarded his PhD in modern British literature by the University of Wisconsin.
 
While in class at Boston College, through alphabetical seating, he met Catherine Margaret Desmond. They married on December 28, 1957, at St. Luke’s Church in Belmont, Massachusetts. Together they raised five children—Terence F. “Ted” Dewsnap Jr. ’82 (Anne) of Hudson, New York; Ellen Dewsnap of Belmont, Massachusetts; Ann Cwiklinski (Ray) of Glen Rock, Pennsylvania; the late Desmond Paul Dewsnap; and Molly Meinhardt (Jack) of Washington, D.C.—and had seven grandchildren: TJ, Raymond, Thaddeus, Juliana, Joseph, Maggie, and Freddy. He is also survived by his sister Marilyn Buckley and brother Paul Dewsnap; his brother Donald died in childhood. His niece Jennifer Dewsnap-Shipley '88 also attended Bard.
 
Terry’s teaching career began at LeMoyne College in Syracuse, New York. In 1963, he started teaching at Bard College, where he remained for 53 years, until his retirement in 2016, chairing the Division of Languages and Literature, directing the Irish and Celtic Studies Program, helping found the Victorian Studies Program, serving as faculty representative to the American Association of University Professors, and teaching countless students to love Victorian detective stories and novels—and a few to love Finnegan’s Wake. Located on the Bard College grounds, the Dewsnap home was a true extension of that campus, with colleagues, faculty poker players, and students regularly joining Terry and Cay around the dining room table.
 
His essays and reviews, on subjects and authors including Christopher Isherwood, Richard Murphy, Flann O’Brien, the Irish Big House, and Watergate autobiographies—have appeared in several journals. While a graduate student, he wrote booklets on W.H. Auden, William Golding, and Thomas Wolfe for the Monarch Notes series. In 2008, he published Island of Daemons: The Lough Derg Pilgrimage and the Poets Patrick Kavanaugh, Denis Devlin, and Seamus Heaney. He recently finished a manuscript on James Joyce’s Catholicism.

Leon Botstein
President

Post Date: 09-30-2020