MAKING MIND THE
OF A
REMARKABLE
In Memoriam: John Edward Alvis
n Dec. 23, 2019, the university bid farewell to a beloved faculty member and alumnus. Professor of English John Alvis, BA ’66 MA ’69 PhD ’73, passed away at age 75, less than two weeks after the passing of his wife, Sara Kathleen, MA ’71, to whom he was married for more than 50 years. John Alvis arrived at UD as a freshman in 1962 in the time of UD legends, studying under Professor of English Louise Cowan during the tenure of President Donald Cowan (1962-77). He then did his master’s and doctoral work under Professor of Politics Willmore Kendall and began teaching at UD in 1968. Though he taught English literature, he had an equal command of politics, philosophy, theology and classical languages, guiding and inspiring five decades’ worth of students and colleagues, some of whom, such as Associate Professor of English Greg Roper, Ph.D., BA ’84, became both.
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In his own English prose, Alvis published seven books on authors ranging from Homer and Vergil to Melville and Hawthorne. He additionally published articles on American political institutions, Christian theology, the films of John Ford and Lorenzo Ghiberti’s “Gates of Paradise” (the doors of the Baptistry of San Giovanni in Florence). A published poet, he also wrote more than 15 plays. A nationally renowned scholar of the works of William Shakespeare, his writings reawakened the study of Shakespeare’s political thought. Alvis’ approach to great literature was to examine how authors use fiction and poetry to explore the eternal questions in regard to the best way of life and the best order of society. He believed that those who seriously study these monumental works witness the aspect of all times, thereby learning to imitate what is good while avoiding that which is otherwise. To Alvis, a liberal education was more than a four-year experience; it was the beginning of a lifelong journey.
“John Alvis spent over 50 years at UD making a remarkable mind,” said Professor of English Scott Crider, Ph.D. “He read and thought about the entirety of the Western tradition and trained — first under his teachers, then under his own tutelage and in dialogue with students and colleagues — to dedicate himself to the wisdom of that tradition of texts. He had the most comprehensive, detailed and intelligent grasp of that tradition of any of us, a grasp always alive and fresh with new insight during discussion and writing.” Alvis devoted his career, and largely his life, to his vocation of teaching at the University of Dallas and to promoting the pursuit of truth and virtue. “We have lost the treasure of John’s mind,” said Crider. “Our disorientation at the loss is matched only by our gratitude at the gift of the mind he made, then gave us. If we now live in a less heroic age at UD than before, his example indicates that we will be responsible for that, for he showed us how to be intellectually courageous while morally upright.”
photos: ud archives.
Read more at udallas.edu/ remarkable-mind.
“By the end of my freshman year, on my Lit Trad II research paper, he wrote one sentence: ‘You are ready to begin writing English prose,’” recalled Roper. “That response — encouraging but not flattering, acknowledging accomplishment while hinting strongly at how far I still had to go — probably was the single most influential sentence of my intellectual career. Someday I hope to write the English prose that John held out for me as a goal that day in April 1981.”
