Shakespeare expert to bid adieu to Penn

Friends, colleagues and current and former students of English Professor Phyllis Rackin gathered on Saturday to celebrate her career and accomplishments.

After 40 years of service at Penn, Rackin is set to retire at the close of the academic year. Rackin said her feelings about her pending retirement are mixed.

"I've loved my teaching here, I've loved my students, I've loved my colleagues, I've loved the stimulating intellectual atmosphere," she said. "It will be hard to leave all that."

In light of this occasion, the University sponsored "Contestation and Renewal in Early Modern Studies: A Conference in Honor of Phyllis Rackin."

"The conference is really the bringing together of so many people that she has mentored over the years, whether they're graduate students, undergraduate students... or colleagues," School of Arts and Sciences Associate Dean Rebecca Bushnell said. "She has been an amazing, demanding and sympathetic mentor for so many of us."

School of Arts and Sciences graduate student Erika Lin agreed that Rackin has been a mentor to her students intellectually and emotionally.

"She's very good at pushing students to be the best that we can be while feeling really excited about out work," she said.

English Professor Stuart Curran noted the unusual nature of the conference as a means of celebrating retirement, citing the festschrift -- a collection of essays by former students presented to a retiring professor -- as the more common retirement tradition.

The conference "is all done as this great happening," Curran said. "I've never seen anything like this. It was, in my mind, the greatest expression of gratitude toward a former teacher and mentor that I've ever seen."

The idea for a conference in Rackin's honor came from English Professor Jean Howard, a friend and colleague with whom Rackin co-wrote the book Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare's English Histories.

Howard teamed up with graduate students Lin, Marissa Greenberg and Michelle Karnes to make the the conference a reality.

Greenberg and Karnes also coordinate the Medieval Renaissance discussion group, a program in which Rackin has been heavily involved.

"She's been a valuable contributor, as have many of the faculty, but she's particularly enthusiastic and productive in her engagement with the students," Greenberg said.

Rackin certainly has had many accomplishments. The former president of the Shakespeare Association of America has published several books and articles.

Participants in the conference not only celebrated Rackin's career accomplishments, but her personal accomplishments as well.

In 1973, Rackin instigated a landmark legal case, bringing suit against the University for discriminatory action. Rackin had been recommended for promotion to associate professor with tenure, but after being turned down for promotion, Rackin alleged that she had been discriminated against because of her gender. The battle was a success for Rackin, and she became one the first female professors to receive tenure.

"It was really brave of her to fight that fight," said Karnes.

"It's important to a lot of us who are female scholars," added Lin.

Saturday's conference ran all day, beginning at 10 a.m. and continuing well into the evening. Colleagues and former students of Rackin's read their original works, while Bushnell, Howard and English Department Chairman David Wallace offered a few remarks.

The conference culminated in an emotional presentation by scholar Kim Hall, who offered Rackin a lectureship that had been created in her honor.

"You saw the pleasure and shock and emotion on Phyllis' face," Greenberg said. "That made me happy. It was the icing on the proverbial cake."

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