College Mourns the Passing of Larry Stewart
WOOSTER, Ohio – Larry L. Stewart, emeritus professor of English at The College of Wooster, passed away on Wed., June 5, at Akron General Hospital. He was 78.
Stewart came to Wooster in 1967 as an assistant professor of English, was promoted to full professor in 1981, and named the Mildred Foss Thompson Professor of English Language and Literature in 1999, a position he held until his retirement in 2012. He served as chair of the English department, as well as chair of the program in comparative literature, on multiple occasions, and was a member of the college’s teaching staff and tenure committee for almost 25 years.
Stewart’s fields of scholarly interest included 18th-century English literature, the novel, and children’s literature. “Children as Readers,” a course he first developed in 1969, and continued to revise and teach regularly for more than four decades, was a perennial student favorite.
After 45 years of teaching, his enthusiasm and dedication remained undiminished. As he prepared to retire in 2012, Stewart told Wooster magazine, “Today’s students are marvelous writers. I love our students right now. But then I loved them before, too.”
Stewart was the co-author of A Guide to Literary Criticism and Research, published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1986, a member of the Modern Language Association, and a regular presenter at professional conferences. He earned his bachelor’s degree in English from Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, and his master’s and doctorate from Case Western Reserve University.
A celebration of life service will be held on Sat., Aug. 3, at 11 a.m. in Scheide Music Center, 525 E. University St., on the Wooster campus. The complete obituary from The Daily Record may be found here.
Posted in News on June 6, 2019.
