In Memoriam, Jill Anne Kowalik (1949-2003)

URSULA MAHLENDORF In Memoriam, JiIl Anne Kowalik (1949-2003) On October 30, 2003, Jill Anne Kowalik, associate professor of German Ui the Department of Germanic Languages at UCLA, died at her home of the misdiagnosed metastatic breast cancer she Uved with for her last fourteen years. She is survived by her husband, BUl Kowalik, a research geologist. A graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara Ui phUosophy and German, JUl received her Ph.D. in German Studies from Stanford University in 1985. After serving as assistant professor of German at the University of Colorado, Boulder (1985-1986) and at Princeton University (1986-1989), she taught at UCLA since 1989. Though barely able to walk because of a brain tumor Ui the late spring of 2003, she finished the quarter's classes, graded exams for over one hundred students, and then went to the City of Hope for radiation. She was on research leave when she died. Even though the illness required several lengthy hospitaUzations and intensive treatments (two bone marrow transplants and one femur replacement), for which she was given sick leaves, and even though she underwent numerous, debUitatUig chemotherapy regimens, Jul foUowed a fuU teaching schedule of graduate and undergraduate classes. At JUTs memorial, a former graduate student described her effect on undergraduates and graduates with the foUowing words: "If time was one of the resources that JUl was short of, it was also the resource she gave most generously. Regardless of her own commitments, not to mention her health, JUl always devoted her time to her students and the department —to discuss a matter, or solve a problem. As a teacher, her Socratic approach engaged aU students from aU disciplines and demanded the highest standards from hersetf and her students; she was a truly inspiring , and provocative teacher." As a scholar, JUl was just beginning her career with briUiant essays on Thomas Mann, Kleist, and the EnUghtenment, when the illness struck. Despite that she produced a score of articles on the works of such writers as Goethe and Lessftig as weU as dictionary entries and numerous book reviews Ui such venues as German Quarterly, Modern Language Quarterly , Monatshefte, the Lessing Yearbook, and the Goethe Yearbook. When her first book The Poetics of Historical Perspectivism: Breitinger's Critische Dichtkunst and the Neoclassic Tradition was pubUshed Ui 1992 by University of North Carolina Press, she was afteady at work on a revaluation of the concept of melancholy Ui the eighteenth century. This Goethe Yearbook XII (2004) 252 Ursula Mahlendorf vast Uterary/historical project regarding mourning rituals and pathological grief from their sources Ui Greco-Roman antiquity through Christianity into the eighteenth century aUowed her to confront her own death squarely. The project demanded that she spend summers and leaves, Ui between treatments for the cancer, Ui German archives and Ubraries, studying the history of mourning practices, funeral sermons, and ways of dying. The work required that she not only gain a knowledge of theological theorizing about death but also of the psychology of trauma and loss. Since she never did anything by halves, she entered psychoanalytic training and a training analysis as a research candidate with the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute which she carried through over several years together with her teaching schedule and university duties. She finished a few chapters of the study that was to be caUed "Theology and Dehumanization : The Discourse on Grief in Early Modern Central Europe." Some appeared as articles in abbreviated form Ui scholarly journals; some she read as conference papers; several were almost complete. German Studies is the poorer for her not being able to complete the work. JUl Kowalik was a steady, Uvely and articulate presence at professional Uterary and psychoanalytic conferences. She regularly read papers at the MLA, The German Studies Association, the Philological Association of the Pacific Coast, the Clark library, and the University of California Interdisciplinary Psychoanalytic Consortium. Her finely crafted, nuanced, clear and brilUant analyses of theoretical positions or of Uterary works provoked engaged discussion. At these conferences, graduate students as weU as younger coUeagues from aU over the nation and from Germany sought her out and she gave generously of her counsel to further their professional...