Dedication to the Memory of Joseph T. Skerrett, Jr.

JOSEPH T. SKERRETT, JR.

Professor of English

(June 23, 1943–July 25, 2015)

Photograph courtesy of Archie J. Brown Collection

“And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.”

—Geoffrey Chaucer

A devoted friend and supportive colleague, Joseph T. Skerrett, Jr., Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, passed unexpectedly at his home in Belchertown, MA, on Saturday, July 25, 2015. “Joe,” as many of us called him, was born, June 23, 1943, in Brooklyn, NY, to Joseph Taylor Skerrett, Sr., and Anna Victoria Cannon Skerrett. In 1964, Joe graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English from St. Francis College, which, in 1998, also awarded him an honorary Doctor of Literature degree for his “outstanding commitment and dedication to education and for being a caring and beloved teacher to scores of men and women” as well as being “a distinguished and loyal alumnus of St. Francis College who represents the ideals of a liberal education with a strong Franciscan spirit of giving and caring,” declared President Frank J. Macchiarola. In 1965, Professor Skerrett received a master’s degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University, and in 1975, Yale University awarded him the PhD degree in English. Two years earlier he had joined the faculty of the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. A year after he began teaching at the University of Massachusetts, he helped found and launch a new journal, MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, an academic quarterly which helped to expand the breadth of American literary studies and thus to give serious considerations to the ethnic and racial diversity of American literature. From 1987 to 1999, Joseph Skerrett served as the Editor of MELUS, for which he received the University of Massachusetts Chancellor’s Award for Multiculturalism in 1996. “He doesn’t make a big fuss about himself,” declared the English Department Chair, Stephen Clingman, in 1996. “He does the work and he’s been doing the work and he would be doing it even if there wasn’t an award. It’s due recognition for the quiet, but inspirational, work that Joe has done for many years,” the Chair continued in his discerning description of Joseph Skerrett.

He was a founding member of the Callaloo Conference group that is now in its tenth year, and from 2009 until his passing he was an associate editor in charge of book reviews for Callaloo. He is author of the textbook anthology Literature, Race, and Ethnicity: Contesting American Identities (2001); co-editor with Amritjit Singh and Robert E. Hogan of Memory, Narrative, and Identity: New Essays in Ethnic American Literatures (1994) and Memory and Cultural Politics: New Approaches to Ethnic American Literatures (1996); and co-editor of Encyclopedia of English Studies and Language Arts: A Project of the National Council of Teachers of English (1994). He is also known for the numerous articles he wrote on Ralph Ellison, James Weldon Johnson, Paule Marshall, and Richard Wright in a number of academic journals, including American Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Callaloo, and Studies in Short Fiction; and for his critical contributions to volumes edited by Harold Bloom, Kimberly Benston, Arnold Rampersad, Valerie Smith, Marjorie Pryse, and Hortense Spillers. Via his editorial engagements as well as his critical studies, he was able to make various invaluable contributions to the development, publication, and promotion of various marginalized literatures in the United States.

The Callaloo staff, members of the Callaloo Conference group, and I mourn Joseph T. Skerrett’s passing. We will never forget meeting him, working with him, and sharing our various productions with him, as he enriched our work and our lives with his words and deeds—selflessly and tirelessly encouraging and supporting us as a friend and colleague.