Amy A. Kass

Amy Apfel Kass (September 17, 1940 – August 19, 2015)[1] was an American academic and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.[2] Kass spent most of her career as a professor of classic texts in the College of the University of Chicago .[3] Her scholarly interests included courtship and marriage, civic engagement, citizenship and citizen formation, and philanthropy. Her books include Giving Well, Doing Good: Readings for Thoughtful Philanthropists, Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying, and What So Proudly We Hail: America’s Soul in Story, Speech, and Song. Her outstanding teaching skills influenced generations of students.[4]

Career

Kass received her B.A. from the University of Chicago, and her M.A. from Brandeis University. In 1973, Kass earned her Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University.[5]

In the mid 1960s, Kass began teaching high school history in Lincoln-Sudbury, Massachusetts. During the summer of 1965, she and her husband, Leon Kass, spent a month in Holmes County, Mississippi to do civil rights work. Working with the Medical Community for Human Rights and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), the Kasses "lived with a farmer couple in the Mount Olive community, in a house with no telephone, hot water, or indoor toilet. They visited many families in the community, participated in their activities, and helped with voter registration and other efforts to encourage the people to organize themselves in defense of their rights."[6] Later that fall, Leon Kass wrote a letter to his family and friends detailing the couple's experiences and appealing to them to donate to the Civil Rights Movement.[7]

Amy Kass’s professorial teaching career began at Georgetown University in 1969, where she taught at the Institute for Adult Education. She then taught at Johns Hopkins University and St. John's College in the 1970s. Her career at the University of Chicago started in 1978 when she was appointed Senior Lecturer in the Humanities Collegiate Division.[8]

Along with her husband, Kass cofounded in 1977 the "Human Being and Citizen" common core course at Chicago, today the most popular humanities core course at Chicago, devoted to the question of what is an excellent human being and what an excellent citizen.[9] She was also founding director of the "Tocqueville Seminars on Civic Leadership" at the University of Chicago.[10]

Kass served on the National Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as on the Council of Scholars of the American Academy of Liberal Education, and as a consultant on American history and civic education at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.[11] In 2005 and 2006, Kass organized a lecture series at the Hudson Institute called “Dialogues on Civic Philanthropy.”[12]

Publications

Kass has authored numerous articles and is the editor of five books, including the reader Giving Well, Doing Good: Readings for Thoughtful Philanthropists.[13] Kass is also well known for the compilations of courtship stories she co-edited with her husband, Leon Kass, called Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying.[14]

In 2011, Kass co-edited the book, What So Proudly We Hail: America’s Soul in Story, Speech, and Song with Leon Kass, and Diana Schaub. The book is a compilation of short readings on areas of American identity, character, and civic life.[15]

In addition to these longer works, Kass has also written articles on the themes of patriotism and civic duty for both the National Review, and the Weekly Standard.

Awards and honors

Kass received the Llewelyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from the University of Chicago in 1980.[16] She was also the recipient of the Florence Bamberger Award from The Johns Hopkins University.[17]

Throughout her academic career Kass has also received several grants for her work in civic engagement, including two from the Lilly Endowment to run a project on civic leadership.[18]

Selected bibliography

Books

Selected articles

References

  1. ↑ http://hudson.org/research/11535-amy-a-kass-1940-2015
  2. ↑ http://www.hudson.org/learn/index.cfm?fuseaction=staff_bio&eid=KassAmy
  3. ↑ http://olincenter.uchicago.edu/apfelkass_cv.html
  4. ↑ See Keiper, Caitrin, "The Greatest of Teachers," The Weekly Standard, September 7, 2015, at 13 and Schaub, Diana, "Her 'Epic Reverberations,'" The Weekly Standard, September 7, 2015, at 15.
  5. ↑ http://olincenter.uchicago.edu/apfelkass_cv.html
  6. ↑ Kass, Leon. "Letter on the Civil Rights Movement". The Meaning of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. What So Proudly We Hail. Archived from the original on 21 February 2013. Retrieved 15 January 2013.
  7. ↑ Kass, Leon. "Letter on the Civil Rights Movement". The Meaning of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. What So Proudly We Hail. Archived from the original on 21 February 2013. Retrieved 15 January 2013.
  8. ↑ http://olincenter.uchicago.edu/apfelkass_cv.html
  9. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-02-11. Retrieved 2011-06-15.
  10. ↑ http://fora.tv/speaker/1892/Amy_Kass
  11. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-02-11. Retrieved 2011-06-15.
  12. ↑ http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=5401
  13. ↑ http://www.hudson.org/learn/index.cfm?fuseaction=staff_bio&eid=KassAmy
  14. ↑ https://books.google.com/books?id=juqtAAAAIAAJ&q=wing+to+wing+kass&dq=wing+to+wing+kass&hl=en&ei=YP34TYOoA7Cp0AHdyMSECw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA
  15. ↑ http://www.whatsoproudlywehail.org/book#about_the editors
  16. ↑ https://www.uchicago.edu/about/accolades/quantrell.shtml
  17. ↑ http://olincenter.uchicago.edu/apfelkass_cv.html
  18. ↑ http://olincenter.uchicago.edu/apfelkass_cv.html

External links

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