Laura's Vita

     Laura's Vita, (resume or short biography), was in her FSU personnel file and dates from April, 1976.  I will reproduce the document here with links to various pages or sites as our research continues.  A copy of the original document in PDF format can be viewed here.  I will replicate the spellings and capitalization from the original on this page.

Vita (page 1)

Name:  Laura Jepsen

Personal:  Born October 30, 1907, Single

Present Position:  Associate Professor, Department of English

Education:    B.A.  (journalism)  University of Iowa 1929

                      M.A.  (Latin & Greek)  University of Iowa 1936

                      Ph.D. (English)  University of Iowa 1946 (link to the program from her Dissertation Defense)

Academic Experience:    Associate Professor, Florida State, 1971-

Assistant Professor, Florida State, 1947-1971

Instructor, Florida State, 1946-1947

MacMurray College, 1945-1946

Instructor, Northrop Collegiate School Minneapolis, 1942-1945

Instructor, Rock Falls, Illinois, high school 1939-1942

Instructor, Maquoketa, Iowa, high school and junior college, 1937-1939

Research Note:  MacMurray and Northrop were both women's only colleges as was Florida State when Laura first arrived

Area of scholarly interest:  Comparative literature

Publications:  (articles and reviews omitted)

Book:      ETHICAL ASPECTS OF TRAGEDY (Greek, Senecan, Shakespearean)

University of Florida Press

"This contract has been approved by the Attorney General as per his stamp -Jan. 7, 1951"

Agreement made between publisher and author - Jan. 18, 1952

Book appeared in 1953

Reprinted by AMS Press, New York, 1971

Reviewed in England, Switzerland (four languages)  Selected by Irving Ribner for Section

on Tragedy in BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TUDOR AND STUART DRAMA, p. 20 (1966)

Cited in bibliography for A DEFINITION OF TRAGEDY by Oscar Mandel, 1961

Papers read:  "Prince Andrey as Epic Hero in Tolstoy's WAR AND PEACE,"

SAMLA, (printed in SAMLA Bulletin Nov. 1969)

"The Circle as Symbol of Eternity in Tolstoy's WAR AND PEACE,"

Southern Conference on Slavic Studies, University of South Carolina, 1973

"Tolstoy, Precursor to Joyce as Mythmaker,"

Southern Conference on Slavic Studies, Vanderbilt University, 1974

"Heroism in the COSSACKS," SAMLA, 1975

Vita (page 2)

Ph. D. Students:  Dissertations Directed

Barbara Ewell

To Move in Time:  A Study of the Structure of Faulkner's AS I LAY DYING, LIGHT IN AUGUST, and ABSALOM, ABSALOM

Max Halperen

A Structural Reading of the Cantos of Ezra Pound (his M.A. with me on poetry of Dylan Thomas)

Lee Pryor

An Examination of the Southern Milieu in Representative Plays by Southern Dramatists, 1925-1956

Elton Henley

William Gager's Ulysses Redux (1952): A Facsimile Edition and an English Translation

Howard Gowen

Beyond the Limits of Nihilism: An Analysis of the Works of Albert Camus

Bernard Benstock

Heroic Alchemy: A Study of Language, Humor and Significance in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake

One thesis should be listed, since the author is, to the best of my knowledge, the only Florida teacher to receive State and National recognition as TEACHER OF THE YEAR (1969)

Thesis:  Barbara Coleman

A. E. Housman:  Proud Rebel

Research Note:  Barbara Coleman has a very interesting history, honored by Richard Nixon when she won her award for National Teacher of the Year and has a Miami-Dade High School named after her as well.

Positions held by doctorial students, to the best of my knowledge:

Ewell: Radford (Va.) College. (recently rotating chairman of English)

Halperen: North Carolina State University (Raleigh)

Pryor: University of Houston (Texax) Editor Forum, International Journal on the Arts

Henley: University of South Florida (Tampa)

Gowen: University of South Florida, in Humanities

Benstock: Kent State University (Ohio).  Internationally known as Joycean scholar.  Published dissertation extended as a book, Joyce-Again's Wake.  Lectures at Sligo, Ireland, and elsewhere.

Four of these are full professors: Halperen, Pryory, Henley, Benstock.

Note:  Bernard Benstock later listed Laura in the Acknowledgments of his book Joyce, Again's Wake published in 1965.

 

 

Vita (page 3)

Honors:    Eta Sigma Phi, honorary classical languages fraternity

Among 10 nominations considered by Paul Piccard for Coyle E. Moore Award in 1962

Awards:  Appointed Alternatere for Summer Grant in Humanities, 1964

Faculty development grant in Humanities received, 1969

Service:  Founder (with Nikola Pribic) of FSU Comparative Literature Circle, which presents an annual symposium of national and internationally known speakers, (100 papers read in January 1976)

Danforth Committee, two years

Courses Developed:    Tragedy, from Aeschylus to the Absurdists, European Novel, Tolstoy

Travel:    Oxford-Cambridge sponsored Hellenic cruise (archaeologists and historians as guides), 1954

Solo journey around the world (all continents except Antartica) to see art works (of man and nature): Inca ruins, El Greco paintings, Chartres Cathedral, Byzantine icons (Kremlin), Giotto frescoes, pyramids and sphinx, Taj Mahal, Emerald Buddha (Bangkok), platapus (Australia), Grand Canyon, 1972

Bibliographical entries:          DIRECTORY OF AMERICAN SCHOLARS

INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARS DIRECTORY (Strasbourg, France)

DICTIONARY OF INTERNATIONAL BIOGRAPHY (Cambridge, England)