Remembering James A. Parr (1936–2022)

In my first doctoral class with Jim, he didn’t bring a prepared syllabus. Instead he consulted with the seven of eight of us gathered in the seminar room: which comedias had we read recently or often, which did we want to brush up on, what topics did we want to explore when looking at lesser-known authors and plays? The resulting syllabus required us to prepare two plays and two critical essays each week, but no one complained because of this collaborative approach to designing the syllabus. In particular, we enjoyed that the carefully chosen texts and essays often contradicted each other, and provided a springboard for intense debates. The next semester, in the Don Quixote seminar, he assigned his own recently published masterwork, Anatomy of Subversive Discourse—but also essays that offered vastly different perspectives of Cervantine narrative structure. Four years later, Jim and I had lunch in order to discuss the turn towards ideological study that my dissertation had taken. Even though he was not a fan of cultural studies, he listened carefully as I provided the examples of close reading to back up my ideas. Then, even though Jim was gravely concerned that materialist frameworks would be harmful to the Humanities as an intellectual enterprise, he supported me completely with the other doubters on my dissertation committee. I observed similar examples of support for new approaches in Jim’s work with his other graduate students—my USC siblings. There are no “School of Parr” scholars precisely because he encouraged us to blaze our own trails, in fields as diverse as feminist, cognitive, and queer studies. This sense of openness marked my relationship with Jim over the following three decades and is also the hallmark of his contributions to the fields of comedia and Quixote studies. Dating all the way back to 1974, his Hispania essay on the state of Golden Age studies encouraged comedia scholars to move beyond close reading and incorporate interdisciplinary and comparative approaches. Under his leadership as editor, Bulletin of the Comediantes solidified its position as a top tier journal that publishes forward-thinking essays; not seeking to claim the cutting edge, but publishing a steady stream of thoughtful studies that advanced our knowledge as the discipline evolved.

Jim’s upbringing resembles that of our current students. He was a first-generation college student from a modest midwestern background, the local boy who succeeded. He served in the military after his high school graduation, then earned his doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh. In an astonishing leap, he was named full professor and head of the department of Murray State University by the age of twenty-seven. Even a cursory glance at the daunting record of achievements on his curriculum vitae reveals the depth and breadth of his scholarly endeavors. Jim published five books and more than sixty articles in highly respected journals, many in the era of typewriters and hard- bound copies of the MLA Bibliography. He was honored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright Foundation. The University of Alabama named him “Eminent Scholar” in 1994. He also served in countless professional organizations, including a term as president for the Cervantes Society of America.

James Parr played an important role in the evolution of our discipline, one that should not be overlooked or forgotten, but celebrated. His ability to look beyond his personal perspective to support innovative and high-quality scholarship is a model for current and future scholars.