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<div>Thanks Deborah and John for relaying this sad and shocking news about Sharon Tyler.</div>
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<div>There was no one like her. I have vivid memories of Sharon in my undergraduate American Renaissance class in 1976. She was a new graduate student fulfilling what were then perceived as "deficiencies," which the Graduate Committee distributed like confetti to incoming graduate students. One new grad student, I recall, was given a deficiency in every field there was. Sharon had only one, in nineteenth-century American literature, so there she was in my course, brilliant and self-confident. She got a string of A's for papers on Emerson, Melville, Thoreau, and Rebecca Harding Davis, and an A in the course. A fellow student was Virginia Ettinger, now Virginia Phillips, the Federal judge who recently ruled DADT unconstitutional. There were other extraordinary students in that class, and I still remember it vividly.</div>
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<div>A year or two later, our colleague Ruth apRoberts distributed a devilishly hard riddle composed by Thomas Macaulay, challenging the faculty and grad students to solve it. The winner would be acknowledged at the annual department party. I couldn't solve it myself. I wasn't surprised when Sharon Tyler was announced as the only department member to come up with the right answer.</div>
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<div>I observed several of Sharon's composition classes over the years and thought they were good and sometimes amazing. She ran a well-organized, humane classroom. When the students "got" her, she could help them transform their writing. But they had to "get" her for the magic to work.</div>
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<div>Sharon was a remarkable, unaccountable person--stunningly intelligent and knowledgeable, insistent on going her own way, kind to cats, good (I was told) at predicting the outcomes of horse races. Perhaps not surprisingly, she wrote the most distinguished essay on Thoreau in my course. They had things in common.</div>
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<div>She will be missed.</div>
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<div>Affectionate regards to all,</div>
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<div>Steve</div>
<div>-- <br><font color="#888888">Steven Gould Axelrod<br>President, The Robert Lowell Society<br>Author, Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words; Robert Lowell: Life and Art<br>Co-editor, The New Anthology of American Poetry, Vols. 1-3<br>
Professor of English</font>
<div class="im"><br>University of California<br>Riverside, CA 92521<br><br><br></div></div>
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<div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 5:00 PM, Deborah Willis <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:deborah.willis@ucr.edu" target="_blank">deborah.willis@ucr.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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<div>Dear Colleagues: I have received sad news from John Briggs about the death of Sharon Tyler, for many years a senior lecturer in our writing program and, before that, a graduate student who received her Ph.D. from our department in 1987. She specialized in Renaissance drama (especially Shakespeare's history plays) and was a frequent contributor to the "Themes in Drama" conference held annually at UCR for many years. More recently, she gave papers at UCR conferences on C.S. Lewis's Narnia series and on "Pottermania." Here is John's eloquent message:<br>
<br><br><font size="2">I</font><font color="#0000ff" size="2"> am sorry to report that today we heard that our friend and longstanding UWP faculty member, Sharon Tyler, has passed away. It is difficult to accept the loss of someone who for these last thirty years has been a unique contributor to the writing program as TA, Lecturer, proctor, grader, and as one who lived the memories of events long ago and colleagues now gone. Thousands of students endured or thrived under her stubbornly rigorous ways, and the great majority became better writers as a result. Her classes often passed the old exit examination at rates surpassing others. Sharon was, not incidentally, a protector of the campus’s feral (but to her friendly) cat population. Many of us knew her as a fount of esoterica, a lover of horses and horse-racing, an entertaining travel companion and conversationalist at the annual readings in Berkeley, and a faithful contributor to the program. She maintained many a vigil as an examination proctor in remote classrooms on campus. As I write this, it is hard not to think of her insistently offering to refine (she would say “to correct”) my phrasing. I will miss counting on her.<br>
<br>Sharon is survived by a brother who lives in San Diego. As I receive more information I will share it with you. <br><br> John<br><br></font>
<p>Deborah Willis, Chair<br>Dept. of English<br>University of California<br>Riverside, CA 92521<br><br>office phone: 951-827-1458<br>email: <a href="mailto:dwill@ucr.edu" target="_blank">dwill@ucr.edu</a> </p></div></blockquote>
</div><br><br clear="all"><br></div></div></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Steven Gould Axelrod<br>President, The Robert Lowell Society<br>Author, Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words; Robert Lowell: Life and Art<br>
Co-editor, The New Anthology of American Poetry, Vols. 1-3<br>Professor of English<br>University of California<br>Riverside, CA 92521<br>