Thursday, December 8, 2011

Hunter College ~ Filling My Toolbox For Life

Hunter College
Today, Our Town newspaper published my column on Hunter, the college on the Upper Eastside. In the piece I pay tribute to my two best teachers during my five years at Hunter. (I liked my fourth year at Hunter so much I did it again the next year. I was a “super senior.” Actually, I was 9 credits shy of degree so I plugged along.)

Robert J. White, classics, who imitated a werewolf and launched tribal mating calls during lectures. Professor White turned me on to D.H. Lawrence and Edward Albee and Pasolini films. Professor Richard Barickman taught me poetry, Hardy, George Eliot, Thackeray, Dickens and Henry James. He always wore riding boots like Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, with the pants tucked in and taught me critical literary analysis. Both those guys were cool and effective teachers.

Old Hunter College 1912 Cornerstone @ Lexington Ave

Professors White and Barickman led me to a rich appreciation for ancient civilizations, Thomas Mann, Romantic and Victorian poetry (I still own my Washington Square Press paperbacks edited by William H. Marshall). Both men loved language and their students with all their hearts and we soaked it up. Hunter College helped fill my toolbox for life.






Thomas Pryor & Robert White December 2010
Read the full Our Town piece here.


Thomas Pryor Hunter ID Sept 1972

2 comments:

Lidian said...

Am enjoying reading your blog - thanks for the Twitter follow, BTW, which is how I came to your blog (am following back). I especially liked this Hunter post since I went to HCHS in the 70s (graduated in 1980). And my great aunt, who was a research scientist, went to Hunter College in the early 1920s. I wish I'd asked her about it (and a lot of other things, too).

Thomas Pryor said...

thank you, Lidian, I thoroughly enjoy your blog.