Professor who led Pitt’s English department, focused on writing
David Bartholomae had a gift for spotting talent and nurturing it.
Along with his day job as an award-winning scholar, prolific author and former chairman of the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh, Mr. Bartholomae also served as a writing coach for journalists, including those at the Post-Gazette.
While he was widely admired for his impact on generations of students studying composition, literature and English, Mr. Bartholomae was to others something more: a dear friend and inspiration.
“He is the definition of a mensch,” said his neighbor and Pitt trustee, Bill Lieberman. “He was a pretty incredible guy.”
He taught his students much more than just the basics, recalled former graduate student Stacey Waite, now an English professor at the University of Nebraska. He taught them about life.
“I learned more from Dave than how to be an expert in the field of composition studies or how to be an excellent teacher,” she said. “Dave taught me, with such humor, grace, and honesty, how to be a guiding force for other human beings. His mentorship is with me in the way I teach, the way I parent my own children, the way I navigate the world as a writer and person.
“David Bartholomae was the kind of teacher who trusted his students first — trusted them to do the difficult work of learning, to struggle, to approach difficult things with openness and curiosity. And every time I do that work, every time I tell my own kids that not knowing things is part of the joy and challenge of this world, every time I help my
students see that they understand more than they think they do, Dave is with me in that moment. It has truly been one of the great honors in my life to have been his student.”
Mr. Bartholomae died Tuesday at his Shadyside home of head and neck cancer. He was 75.
He grew up in Akron, Ohio, the eldest child of a cardiologist.
As a freshman at Ohio Wesleyan University, he met fellow student Joyce Dunlop. The couple married a week after their graduation, in June 1969.
“He was already deciding to be an English major when we met,” said Ms. Bartholomae, a retired Spanish teacher at Fox Chapel High School.
At first, he planned to pursue a career as a football coach and English teacher, but changed his mind shortly after earning a Ph.D. in English from Rutgers University in 1975.
Instead, he and his wife came to Pittsburgh, where he accepted a job at Pitt.
“I got interested in teaching writing, and it was part of a general movement to turn attention to general education and the teaching of writing,” Mr. Bartholomae told Pitt News in 2015. “I had a job offer at Boston University to be a Victorianist and a job offer here to come and work in the composition program. I surprised all my friends, colleagues and professors by coming here to teach composition, instead of going to Boston to be a Victorianist.”
Mr. Bartholomae served as chair of the English Department from 1995 to 2009, when he was named Charles Crow Chair of Expository Writing. He remained in the position until his retirement in 2018, though he continued writing and editing part-time in recent years as a professor emeritus.
He started coaching writers at the PG in 1988.
“In his once-a-week writing coach days at the PG, he was a welcoming presence and knew how to listen — fundamental requirements for getting writers in the door and helping them do their best work,” recalled former PG writing coach Peter Leo. “He was a model for me to draw on when I became writing coach years later.”
For his students, there was no one like Mr. Bartholomae.
“Dave was the most gracious and generous teacher I’ve had. He read student writing carefully and attentively,” said former student Peter Moe, associate professor of English at Seattle Pacific University. “When he was chairing my dissertation, we talked about teaching and reading and writing, yes, but he also gave me much guidance on life itself, on marriage, on parenting. He advised me in so many more ways than on just my coursework. I take great pride in being able to call him my teacher, and I know that, given his 44 years at the University of Pittsburgh, there are thousands of other students who can say the same.”
He was widely admired by colleagues as well.
“Dave was the person who was generous and interested enough to help form everyone he touched as chairman of the English Department at Pitt,” said Cindy Skrzycki, senior lecturer emerita at the Pitt English Deptartment. “He loved writers and writing and shaped the department to celebrate both.”
When he was selected for a Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Deusto in 1982, Mr. Bartholomae and his wife moved their young family to Bilbao, Spain, for a year. He returned many more times over the years, serving as a visiting scholar at the school in Spain.
“We loved it,” his wife recalled.
When he came back, Mr. Bartholomae brought some of Spain with him to Pittsburgh, too.
“He hired me in his last year as chair, in 2008, and everybody who knew him would probably say the same thing — he was a very outgoing, gregarious, welcoming and benevolent person,” said Gayle Rogers, Andrew W. Mellon Professor and current English Deptartment chair. “He loved to have everybody over to his house and his special affection in life was Spain.”
New Years celebrations at the Bartholomae home always included the Spanish custom of eating 12 grapes at midnight for the promise of good luck, prosperity and happiness in “el Año Nuevo (the New Year).”
The recipient of a number of awards and distinctions, including being named by the Carnegie Foundation as Pennsylvania Professor of the Year in 2014, Mr. Bartholomae looked out for his fellow faculty members and served a guiding hand, Mr. Rogers recalled, especially for freshman students and fledgling writers.
“Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers,” a 1987 textbook co-authored by Mr. Bartholomae, was reprinted 12 times and had a major impact in English studies worldwide.
“It’s still a standard textbook used by universities for freshman composition,” Mr. Rogers said. “You can walk into any college bookstore and see that on the shelves everywhere.”
So- called “freshman comp” was one of the studies he was best known for, Mr. Rogers said.
“Dave was a tireless champion for the cause of first-year writing,” he said. “For the longest time, the model was very top-down: students arrived in college and were trained on an imposed set of rules of grammar, essay structure, acceptable topics, voice, and more. Dave helped invent and renovate the field of modern composition studies by having us think about what we, as college teachers, are asking students to do in this situation. He put the focus on the imaginative power and agency of students as writers, readers, and creators who could still master a craft with the aid of excellent pedagogy guides— which Dave himself was. He made our own Department of English into a prime place for the study and practice of exactly this kind of training for students and teachers alike, and it’s something we carry on today.”
Mr. Bartholomae’s role at the university, and in the lives of those he touched, can hardly be overstated, said Mark Nordenberg, Pitt’s chancellor emeritus.
“Dave Bartholomae was the kind of faculty member around whom great universities are built,” Mr. Nordenberg said in a statement. “Not only did he receive the highest forms of recognition for his own work, but he provided extraordinary leadership as the chair of our English Department, helping take it to everhigher levels of impact and achievement. In everything he did, Dave displayed the human qualities that made him both beloved and respected.”
Along with his wife, Mr. Bartholomae is survived by his children Jesse Bartholomae, of Kennett Square, Chester County, Daniel Bartholomae, of Mattawan, Mich., and Catherine Liese, of Niantic, Conn.; along with his siblings, Rebecca Bartholomae, of Fairfax, Va., Philip Bartholomae, of Akron, Ohio, and Suzanne Bartholomae, of Cincinnati.
A celebration of life is being planned at the University of Pittsburgh in May.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations be made to the David Bartholomae Fund, made payable to the University of Pittsburgh, PO Box 640093, Pittsburgh, PA 15264- 0093 or online, www.giveto.pitt.edu/bartholomae. This fund will be used to support undergraduates in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences.
“David Bartholomae was the kind of teacher who trusted his students first — trusted them to do the difficult work of learning, to struggle, to approach difficult things with openness and curiosity.”
Stacey Waite, former student, now an English professor at the University of Nebraska