Lucy Biederman received a Nord Grant to create a website that promotes creative writing and reading among engineering majors.

Cara Byrne‘s review of Julia Lee’s Our Gang: A Racial History of The Little Rascals was published in the latest issue (10.2) of the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth.

Faculty of the Past:

Mary Esson Reid

Mary Esson Reid graduated from the University of Toronto in 1920 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. From 1920 to 1923 she worked as an instructor in the English department at the University of Wisconsin. After earning her Master of Arts degree in English from Wisconsin in 1923, she spent the next two years studying at Somerset College, Oxford. Upon her return to her native Canada in 1925 she taught for a year at the University of Saskatchewan. She joined the faculty of Cleveland College of Western Reserve University just one year after its founding as an Instructor of English in 1926. In 1930 she attained the rank of Assistant Professor. During this period she also began working on her PhD at Yale University, writing a dissertation on “The Background of Shelley’s ‘Laon and Cythna.’” Reid took a leave of absence to complete her dissertation, and was awarded her PhD in 1941. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 1943, and earned the distinction of Professor in 1951. She was Head of English and Comparative Literature at Cleveland College from 1941-45, and taught at Cleveland College until her retirement at the age of 67 in 1963.

Reid co-edited The Bible Read as Literature: An Anthology (Cleveland: Howard Allen, Inc., 1959) with the critically acclaimed and widely published Cleveland poet Collister Hutchison. Reid also published the article, “The Historical Interpretations of ‘The Parliament of Foules,’” in the publication University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature (1923).

Mary Esson Reid’s academic career rested primarily on her renown as a teacher of English for foreign students. She conducted original research in Basic English with Professor I.A. Richards at Harvard University in 1944 and with Professor Walpole at the University of Chicago in 1946. This research led to an invitation to join the faculty at the University of London in 1948 as a special lecturer on teaching English to non-native speakers. She was also appointed to Harvard University’s summer school faculty in 1950. While she could not accept the position at the University of London, she did accept the position at Harvard where she continued to develop her reputation as one of the most effective and innovative teachers of non-native English speakers.

Throughout her tenure at Cleveland College Mary Esson Reid was one of the strongest faculty voices advocating for classes in the evenings to make the College more accessible to adult learners. She also headed the College’s program for foreign students, and made herself available as an advisor and mentor to non-native students in all the colleges of Western Reserve University. When Reid retired in 1963 she was respected and beloved by faculty members, alumni, and students. Many of her former students and colleagues wrote to the Western Reserve University to express their appreciation for Professor Reid’s sense of humor, patience, and unfailingly high standards for academic quality from her students. An annual prize was established in her name and awarded by Cleveland College in the late 1960s and Western Reserve College in the 1970s.

While she had become a naturalized citizen of the US in 1943, Reid relocated to the Rosedale neighborhood of Toronto following her retirement. She lived in Toronto and York, Ontario, until her death in 1981.

Entry by Hayley Verdi and Kurt Koenigsberger, from records in University Archives, CWRU, and from public documents.
Photo courtesy University Archives, CWRU.