When I was asked to write a retirement tribute for Don Bialostosky, I immediately thought of an informal gathering last December: I had visited Pittsburgh as Don and his wife, Sue, were preparing to leave for sabbatical in Portugal. While I hoped to catch up with Don about my recent work with graduate writing programs at North Carolina State University, it was a hectic time for both of us—travelling from family Christmas visits in other states, late planes and traffic on I-79, shopping on the Strip. Despite the last-minute nature of my visit, Don insisted that I stay for coffee even as he and Sue were getting ready to welcome the visiting scholars who would be staying in their home during their sabbatical. This story encapsulates Don’s generosity as a professor, advisor, and friend.
I first “met” Don as an undergraduate at John Carroll University, in Cleveland, Ohio, through his study, Making Tales:Poetics of Wordsworth’s Narrative Experiments (University of Chicago, 1984). That book, which explores Wordsworth’s narrative poetry through the lenses of Bakhtinian narrative theory and rhetoric, proved indispensable to my undergrad honors paper on Wordsworth’s “Michael” and fueled my growing interest in the rhetorical practices of Romantic poetry, an unusual topic in literary scholarship. When I learned that Don and Lawrence Needham, my composition professor at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland, Ohio, had also edited a collection on rhetoric in the Romantic era, Rhetorical Traditions and British Romantic Literature (Indiana University Press, 1995), I knew that I had to apply to the University of Pittsburgh for graduate school. My interactions with Don during a campus visit further solidified Pitt as my choice: Although time had passed since those seminal works on Romanticism and rhetoric, Don listened excitedly as I told him of my interests and how I’d discovered his earlier works, embodying the collegiality and open-mindedness that I went on to observe throughout Pitt’s English department. Don and his work, moreover, demonstrated the department’s hallmark interests at the intersections of literature, rhetoric, and composition, and showed me a model for my own interests that similarly crossed subdisciplines.
Likewise, as a professor, Don led seminars with the same sense of collegiality and open-mindedness as he combined older theorists with newer approaches. These seminars, on topics like rhetoric in the Romantic era and on thinkers like Mikhail Bakhtin and Bruno Latour, featured lively discussions among students with diverse research interests—from Literature and Composition grad students to MFA students to teachers with the Western Pennsylvania Writers’ Project, the latter of which Don led during my time at Pitt. I came away from those seminars not only learning about rhetorical theories but also understanding how others’ interests—composition pedagogy, linguistics, and creative nonfiction—meshed with my own interests and goals. As a seminar leader, Don created an inclusive space for students to share their views and orchestrate their voices to create new connections.
As an example of Don’s mentorship as a professor, he encouraged me to explore a hunch that I had about Chaucer’s moralizing narrators in The Canterbury Tales during a Bakhtin seminar in my first year of graduate school. Then he worked with me to develop my seminar paper into a publishable article. In addition to providing feedback on the Bakhtinian angle, Don introduced me to the medievalist Peggy Knapp, who gave perspectives on period-specific scholarship, helping me grow a scholarly network in Pittsburgh and leading to my first publication in The Chaucer Review. Likewise, throughout my first publication process, Don gave thoughtful advice for coping with academic reviewers’ feedback, which can be quite upsetting for early-career grad students. I learned when to ignore the negative “ideologue critic” and find a journal with a better fit for my project, advice that I continue to share with graduate students across disciplines in my current role.
As I moved towards the dissertation stage, Don patiently supported my interest in the rhetorical training of Romantic essayists, a topic that grew out of discussions in one of his seminars: In a seminar on rhetoric and Romantic poetry, we had, somewhat randomly, discussed Thomas De Quincey’s quirky essays on rhetoric and style, and I was intrigued to learn more about the work of De Quincey, along with that of writers like William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb, who formed a minor canon of essayists. As chair of my disseration committee, Don encouraged me to articulate their relevance within both histories of rhetoric and Romanticist scholarship—for example, helping me to frame articles for journals with different readerships, such as Studies in Romanticism and Rhetoric Review. Throughout the dissertation journey, I enjoyed regular meetings with Don, where we exchanged feedback on drafts; he, too, appreciated new insights on topics like the biographies of romantic essayists, classical education in eighteenth-century England, and contemporary theorizations of epideictic rhetoric. Don, along with a wonderful committee, showed immense support for an unusual research topic that wove together literary scholarship, rhetoric, and histories of our disciplines. In addition to being grateful for all his specific feedback on my writing, I most appreciate Don’s advice for finding common ground with scholars of different subfields, a rhetorical perspective that continues to guide my work with graduate student writers in a professional development setting.
Complementing his roles as professor and dissertation advisor, Don has been a great friend beyond my time at Pitt. A champion for graduate students pursuing versatile career paths, he has consistently supported my career, which has taken unexpected twists and turns, from a visiting position at a local liberal arts college to the Brittain Fellowship at Georgia Tech to, most recently, program administration at North Carolina State University. I greatly appreciate Don’s thoughtful feedback on my job applications for a range of positions and thank him for being a great listener as I prepared for job interviews. I would also like to thank Don and Sue for their hospitality over the years: They opened their home, then in Highland Park, to class and department parties, and held dinners for students and visiting scholars. They always made time for coffee visits at cafés around Highland Park and Shadyside. Congratulations, Don! Wishing you and your family a happy, healthy retirement, and best of luck with your next chapter!
—Katie Homar
Katie Homar completed her PhD in Critical and Cultural Studies (Literature) in 2014, in addition to a certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) in 2017. She currently works at North Carolina State University as director of Academic and Engineering Writing Support, where she coordinates programs for graduate writers across disciplines.