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People and organizations
Professor

Paul Grant Stanwood

  • F2348
  • Person
  • 1933-

Paul Grant Stanwood is a Professor of English specializing in literature from Renaissance and Reformation England. He was born April 25, 1933, in Des Moines, Iowa. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts in 1954 from the Iowa State Teachers College (now the University of Northern Iowa), he went on to continue his studies in English Language and Literature/Letters at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), where he obtained his MA in 1956 and PhD in 1961, and also studied abroad at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in 1958-59. He began his teaching career at Tufts University in 1961, and has also at various times taught at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), the University of Cambridge, the University of York, and the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg. However, he has been most active at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where he has been a Professor of English since 1975 and Professor Emeritus since 1998.

Stanwood’s specialization in English rests largely in Reformation-era literature and theology, which first materialized when he edited the last three parts of Richard Hooker’s signature work, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. For this publication, he was part of a joint venture supported by the Folger Shakespeare Library to edit and republish the works of Hooker, which was headed by New York University Professor William Speed Hill (1935-2007), who served as general editor of this edition. Stanwood completed his editing of the Ecclesiastical Polity in 1981, which formed the third of five volumes that were published by Harvard University, and served on the editorial staff until the final volume’s publication in 1998.

Following this, Stanwood continued his investigations into English literature, publishing books on John Donne, John Milton, and Izaak Walton. His most recent work, Paul’s Cross and the Culture of Persuasion in England, 1520-1640, as well as Sermons at Paul’s Cross 1521-1642, was a collaboration with Torrance Kirby, Professor of Ecclesiastical History at McGill University. For his contributions to the study of the English language in the Renaissance and Reformation, Stanwood was made director of the Fourth International Milton Symposium at UBC in 1991, received a lifetime achievement award from the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies in 2008, and variously served as President of the John Donne Society and President of the International Association of University Professors of English. His Sedgwick Lecture, delivered at UBC in March 2008, was published as John Donne and the Line of Wit: From Metaphysical to Modernist in 2009, following which he received the John Donne Society Distinguished Service Award in 2010. He also won accolades for his contributions to Anglican theological study, receiving an honorary Doctor of Sacred Letters degree from the University of Trinity College at the University of Toronto in 2003, and investment into the Order of the Diocese of New Westminster in November 2013.

Stanwood continues to teach at UBC, and lives in Vancouver. The university instituted a prize in his honour, the Paul G. Stanwood Prize, presented to PhD graduates in English with the best thesis.

Willard G. Oxtoby

  • F2087
  • Person
  • 1933-2003

Willard Gurdon Oxtoby was a scholar of religion and a professor at Trinity College from 1971 until 1999. Oxtoby was born 29 July 1933 in Kentfield, California to Gurdon C. Ox-toby and Miriam Burrell Oxtoby. Willard Oxtoby graduated with a B.A. in philosophy from Stanford University in 1955. He then attended Princeton University where he re-ceived an M.A. and a Ph.D. in 1962. From 1958 to 1960 he worked in Jerusalem as part of the team that studied the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1963 he was ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church.

Oxtoby’s first teaching appointment was in the Faculty of Divinity at McGill University where he taught a course on Jerusalem, among others, from 1960 to 1964. Oxtoby then undertook postdoctoral studies in Ancient Near Eastern Studies and Comparative Reli-gion at Harvard where he also held a teaching fellowship. From 1966 to 1971 Oxtoby was an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Yale and from 1971 until his retire-ment in 1999 he was a professor of the study of religion at Trinity College, University of Toronto. While at the University of Toronto Oxtoby founded the Centre for Religious Studies in the School of Graduate Studies and served as its director from 1976 to 1981. Oxtoby also served as a member of the Advisory Council of the Department of Religion at Princeton University from 1971 to 1984 and served as President of the Canadian In-stitute for Advanced Islamic Research from 1984 to 1992. In 1964 Oxtoby was elected to the American Society for the Study of Religion; he served as the Society’s Vice President from 1984 to 1987 and President from 1990 to 1993.

Willard Oxtoby’s publications include The Meaning of Other Faiths (1983), Moral Enlighten-ment: Leibniz and Wolff on China (1992) (with Julia Ching), World Religions: Western Traditions (1996) and World Religions: Eastern Traditions (1996). Oxtoby also edited the American Academy of Religion’s Monograph Series AAR Studies in Religion (1969-1970) and was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Religious Pluralism.

In 1958 Willard Oxtoby married Layla Jurji, and they had two children, David (b. 1960) and Susan (b. 1963). Layla Jurji died in 1980 and in 1981 Oxtoby married Julia Ching, a scholar of Chinese philosophy and religion and a professor at the University of Toronto. Julia Ching died on 26 October 2001 and Oxtoby died on 6 March 2003 in Toronto

Sinclair McLardy Adams

  • F2276
  • Person
  • 1891-1960

Sinclair McLardy Adams was born in London, Ontario on 5 April 1891. He graduated with a BA in Honours Classics, Trinity College, Toronto, in 1913. After a short period as a reporter with the Toronto Daily Star, he taught for three years as classics master at Appleby College, Oakville. In 1919 he received his MA degree in Arts at Trinity College and joined the faculty as a member of the Classics staff in 1920. He served the College in many capacities, including Professor of Classics from 1933 and Professor of Greek from 1936 to the late 1950s. He was College Librarian from 1927 to 1954 and Professor Emeritus until his death. He was a popular teacher and a contributor of many published articles. The culmination of a lifetime’s work on his favourite author was Sophocles the Playwright, published by University of Toronto Press in 1957.

In 1919 Adams married Valerie Dell Waddington (1892-1948), sister of Mossie May Waddington Kirkwood. Prof. and Mrs. Adams had two sons, Geoffrey (1926-2012) and Eric (1933-1934). Prof. Adams died in Toronto on June 9, 1960