It is with great sadness that the Centre for Comparative Literature shares the news that Professor Peter W. Nesselroth, former director of the Centre, died on May 31, 2020.
In Memoriam: Professor Peter W. Nesselroth
It is with great sadness that the Centre for Comparative Literature shares the news that Professor Peter W. Nesselroth, former director of the Centre, died on May 31, 2020.
Born in Berlin on March 1, 1935, Peter William Nesselroth survived the Holocaust and came to the United States in 1950. He earned a B.A. in Romance Languages from the City College of New York in 1957, going on to receive his M.A. (1958) and Ph.D. (1968) degrees in French and Romance Philology from Columbia University. He worked as an Assistant Professor at the City College of New York before joining the French Department at the University of Toronto in 1969. Cross-appointed to the Centre for Comparative Literature beginning in 1977, Peter became director of the Centre from 1983 to 1997. During those years, he hosted high-profile visiting professors at the Centre including Hugh Kenner, Edward Said, Mieke Bal, Barbara Herrnstein-Smith, Vladimir Ivanov, Julia Kristeva, Derek Walcott and Charles Taylor. Peter counted some of them as friends, and he was known by all visitors, students and colleagues for his dry wit and urbane manner. Peter’s own research interests were wide-ranging, including nineteenth and twentieth century French and American literature, Dadaism and Surrealism, structuralism and post-structuralism, with special interests in Lautréamont and Derrida. He published Lautréamont’s Imagery: a stylistic approach (Genève: Droz, 1969); Problems of Textual Analysis (Paris: Didier, 1971); and Psychanalyse et langages littéraires (Paris: Nathan, 1977), as well as dozens of scholarly articles and book chapters.
Peter retired from the University of Toronto in 1998. That year he was appointed as a Visiting Professor at the Université Paris 7 – Denis Diderot, and in the same year he was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes académiques by the French Government. A few years later, in 2003, Peter held a research fellowship at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. He became a Senior Fellow of Massey College in 2010, and he continued to be interested and involved in the life of the Centre for Comparative Literature. Peter’s presence is missed by many.
Peter is survived by his children with former spouse Carolyn Nesselroth, Daniel (Adrienne) and Eva (Thomas), and his grandson, Zygmunt. Donations may be made to Red Door https://www.reddoorshelter.ca/ways-to-give/tribute-gift in lieu of flowers.
Photo Caption: Peter W. Nesselroth
