March
29, 2002
Quidnunc
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On March 10, Professor Emeritus of French
Ruth J. Dean celebrated her one hundredth birthday.
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A Century of Contributions
Professor Emeritus of French Ruth J. Dean has had a lot to celebrate
in the past two years. In 2000, the Anglo-Norman Text Society
published her book Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and
Manuscripts, a lengthy listing of extant Anglo-Norman texts of
history, science, medicine, religion, and literature for students
of medieval culture. In November 2001, Dean's book was awarded
the Prix Honoré Chavée by the Académie des
Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, the second oldest of the five
academies of the Institut de France. On March 10, Dean celebrated
her one hundredth birthday at her home in New York City. Said
Dean's colleague and friend Margaret Switten, MHC professor of
French, "Ruth's book is the culmination of many years of
scholarship at Mount Holyoke and the University of Pennsylvania;
it is an invaluable research tool for the medieval French dialect
that gave us a wide and varied corpus of texts and changed the
development of the English language. The Mount Holyoke community
was lucky to have known Ruth, and we are so pleased that she remains
connected to the College and the French department." Dean
stays abreast of the scholars invited to the Ruth Dean Lecture
Series, a series established by contributions from colleagues,
friends, and former students upon her retirement in 1967; last
year, she attended the MHC lecture given by her book's editor,
Professor Ian Short of the University of London's Birkbeck College.
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