Dr. Jeffrey Michael Stitt
1951–2009
In July of 2009 Professor J. Michael Stitt, a member of the English Department since 1981, died suddenly in an ultralight airplane accident. On Mike's birthday, September 22, 2009, the English Department held a memorial service at UNLV; this page will celebrate a great colleague and friend and his remarkable life.
Mike was with the Department of English at UNLV for 29 years. He specialized in folklore, served as Undergraduate Coordinator, Director of the Composition and World Literature programs for the Department, and was honored with a Senior Fulbright Lectureship at the University of Sofia in 1997 and UNLV's College of Liberal Arts' Schmeidel Service Award in 2006. He is survived by his wife, of 15 years, Emire Stitt; and son, Vesko Dinev.
From Dr. Chris Hudgins:
A Folklorist, from the Caves of Pennsylvania...
J. Michael Stitt: A Folklorist, from the Caves of Pennsylvania to the 21-tables of Las Vegas, from the Icy Luge Runs to the Warm Skies of Henderson, from the Cuisines of the World to the Nuturing Life of his Family (with apologies to Woody Guthrie)
Mike Stitt was one of the most intelligent people I've ever known; he was also a wonderfully eccentric and interesting friend, with an occasionally very wicked sense of humor and a great, belly-shaking laugh; and he loved his wife and son with a love that belied comparison and was present in all that he did. That's a pretty attractive thumbnail sketch, what?
Let's start with that eccentric friend, wicked sense of humor thing. One of the many friends and colleagues in distant places I wrote soon after Mike died, jazz man Bill Moody, responded that one of his first, fond memories of Mike was not too long after Mike's 1981 arrival at UNLV from Indiana University's top ranked program in Folklore, at one of the faculty and staff picnic parties we used to hold. With softball and volleyball going on all around, the grill was heating up, and a variety of folk were claiming the cooking duties. Mike's sotto voce comment to Bill: “you can't even get close to that grill without tenure.”
I, too, laughed when I read Bill's tone-perfect recollection. Mike and I bonded in friendship in part through several mutual interests. He was a phenomenal cook of cuisines from around the world I still treasure his sharing with me his Chicken and Andouille Sausage Gumbo, which he managed to snag from a chef in New Orleans. I treasure, too, a number of nights around wilderness campfires, for Mike loved to camp and to explore Nevada during several phases of his life. And we shared an interest in folk music, too — though Mike was good humored about my pointing out that he was outlandishly narrow and traditional in what HE considered folk music. From what I could tell, anything written after 1790 or so, with any hint of an author attached to the song, simply didn't qualify. Still, he was at least indulgent of my affection for Leadbelly, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Woody Guthrie. And, finally, Mike wonderfully enjoyed visiting what the Brits call “public establishments,” on a disciplined but fairly regular basis. The late Tom Clark, and our former colleague in Psychology, Bob Tarte, and Mike and I spent a good many late Friday afternoons, often with a few amateurs joining in, having a malt beverage and sharing stories, jokes, and a few no doubt profound ideas.
Now, speaking of eccentricities, I became somewhat less of a regular in these gatherings, once Mike's fascination with the “folklore” of Las Vegas gambling set in. Tom and Bob were certainly interested participants, but Mike typically explored both the science and the folklore of the thing, including a fine piece on “Conversational Strategies at a Las Vegas 21 Table.” An accomplished and knowledgeable mathematician, with a depth of knowledge about science, too, Mike is one of the few people I've ever known who counted cards so well at the blackjack table that he got kicked out of several casinos. Don't get me wrong, here—he wasn't a gambling addict, but he was THAT good. Early on, many of us knew that Mike, back East, had been a spelunker, though he insisted on the term “caving” to describe the strange affinity of those folks for dark and dank and claustraphobia-inducing spaces, or lack of spaces. Later, as some of you know, Mike became a licensed glider pilot; he gave that up after several years, in part, I think, to concentrate on his family. He also did a stint on the hugely fast luge courses and, often with Vessy, on a record number of roller coasters. Joe McCullough told me just before Mike's funeral that he hadn't known about that hobby until one afternoon when a neighbor inquired after Stitt, proceeding to spin yarns about what an accomplished glider pilot he was. “Who would have expected THAT of a diligent folklorist,” said Joe. And Mike's return to the skies, in that daggone ultra-light, was hugely exciting to him. A week or so before he died, as we exchanged e-mails on things related to his sabbatical, Mike sent me three photographs of his latest enthusiasm, proud and stimulated. When I wrote David Damrosch about Mike's death, he replied immediately, noting how very sad he found the news, “though very like [Mike] to have been taking on new adventures. I'll remember him with real fondness” — as all of us will.
Now, here's the segue: David Damrosch is the Harvard-based editor of the Longman Anthology of World Literature, with whom Mike hadworked very closely over the years. Damrosch admired Mike greatly, and had written a letter in support of “his really interesting sabbatical project on serpents,” as did Doug Unger and as did I. This latest work was typical of Mike's intelligence, imaginative, hugely well informed, striking out to map wonderful new connective tissue that he'd unearthed. The other scholarly colleague of Mike's whom I knew well is John Miles Foley, a superstar, these days, in oral tradition studies. John and I used to play guitar together when we were both at Emory, he as a junior professor, me as a feisty grad student. Foley called Michael's book on Beowulf, which emerged in 1992, the best work written on that Epic Saga in the twentieth century. In addition to his major interests in folklore, of course, Mike's intelligence ranged widely over scientific topics, to the extent that he became hugely interested in UNLV's Institutional Review Board, where he grew expert at the arcane rules, regulations and laws governing the treatment and legal rights of human research subjects. He had a major impact on the life of the university in that regard, while also beginning some work with a well-known psychologist, another friend, Michael O'Boyle, specializing in brain imaging, in relation to Stitt's interest in responses to images of dragons and serpents. And Mike had a huge impact on the university, too, when he took over the World Literature Program and guided it toward its well-structured emphasis on non-Western literatures. His work with Damrosch and on his own, as a matter of fact, had a significant impact on that pedagogy more broadly, especially with his very sophisticated work on web-based teaching, presented at the University of Edinburgh and later published, “The World Literature Hypermedia Project at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.” Mike, then, was a hugely accomplished scholar, a generous colleague, a professor who was beloved by his students, and a man who had a tremendous impact on the life of UNLV.
And, finally, Mike was a beloved and loving husband and father. I was present pretty early on at the Heidelburg Café, when Mike and Emire were just starting to flirt a bit. They quickly became soul mates, and ’twas wonderful to watch, and in their instance that meant that they were soul mates in raising Vessy, then quite young, and, gradually in working together, given Emire's own competence in a variety of languages and her skills as a videographer and maker of documentaries. I was privileged to hear a good bit about the "raising Vessy" part of this. I don't think I'll ever forget Mike's hilarious description of Vessy on occasion attempting to flush unflushable items down the toilet, nor his pride in Vessy's early accomplishments on the piano, with our own daughter's and Vessy's participating several times in the same recital, mentored by the same teacher. Another friend of Mike's, Maureen Horigan, whom he came to know well when he was Acting Director of our Composition program, wrote from Florida yesterday that she still fondly remembered the birthday or welcoming party for the cats Mike and Emire hosted. Their's was a hospitable home, full of good food and fellowship, and balanced by that mutually shared enthusiasm for work. Just a couple of weeks ago, too, we made arrangements such that Emire can be a “guest scholar” at UNLV, with full library privileges, so that she can continue the serpent work, or at least some of it, which Mike, with her help, had mapped out. That work will join her previous collaborations with Mike, such as the documentary on piping in the Rhodope, begun during his Senior Fulbright Lectureship at the University of Sophia. And I know, too, that Mike had high hopes that Vessy might take his own developing computer expertise and come to UNLV as well. Emire's work and Vessy's life are just two of the many, many ways that we will continue to celebrate Mike. I, for one, will sing him many a song, whether he'd call them folksongs or not. And I know that we'll toast him many a toast, too, and tell many a tale not appropriate for this forum. Bless him, and bless Elmire and Vessy.
Dr. Chris Hudgins
Dean, UNLV College of Liberal Arts
From Dr. Richard Harp:
We come today to mourn the passing of Professor Michael Stitt who died in such a tragic, unexpected and shocking way this past summer. We mourn so many different losses: the loss of a friend who was easy going and always available, a colleague who talked knowledgeably and willing, with no concerns about personal territory or specialties, about the most various subjects, a scholar who seemed to have a mastery of an incredible array of interesting topics, a professor, teacher and mentor who brought memorably alive sometimes difficult but exciting subjects, and a husband and father who was loved and cherished—there is indeed much to mourn. And we will not soon forget what we have lost.
But more than this today we will celebrate Mike’s life and try to recall him in the manifold and diverse ways that he touched our lives. We want to bring him back into our midst so that we see and hear once again his deep and resonant voice, his solid and gentle presence. ... Mike was a Renaissance man. We will hear today about his many interests and so I want only to touch here, briefly, on his professional scholarly interests and on his success as a teacher. Mike received his B.A. degree from Penn State University in 1973 and his M.A. and PhD from the University of Indiana, the latter in 1981. Indiana of course is one of the prestigious centers of folklore study in the United States. He was indeed expert in fields such as folklore and mythology and his development of the critical English department sequence in world literature, required of all university students, gained him national recognition. He had been awarded a sabbatical for this academic year and was working on a book that would also have garnered wide interest, an examination of the worldwide phenomenon of the dragon. ... This is a study that would have had broad interdisciplinary interest and Mike and Emire have completed film documentaries on this subject as well.
Mike’s scholarly monograph Beowulf and The Bear’s Son. Epic, Saga, and Fairytale in the Northern Germanic Area, was published by Garland Press in 1992. Chris Hudgins notes that John Miles Foley, distinguished classicist at the University of Missouri, called this book the best work written on Beowulf in the twentieth century. It has been cited and quoted from by many scholars for many years after its publication. Mike also co-authored, with Robert Dodge of the English department, a book entitled A Type and Motif Index of Early American Almanac Narrative, published by Greenwood Press. All these works are by a man who could, and did, write just as easily and knowledgeably about the remote Scandanavian origins of the story of Hamlet.
Whenever a student told me over the years, and many did, that they were taking a course with Professor Stitt, there was an enthusiasm in their voice that was genuine. The range of recorded student comments about his courses encompassed that he was a “very good teacher,” that he was “awesome,” “extremely knowledgeable,” that he was a “great professor,” to more personal remarks that he “loved his subject,” that he “was the nicest professor I’ve ever had at UNLV,” that, and this is one of my favorites, he “was a very knowledgeable teacher [with] a nice beard,” to my very favorite, that “I kept taking his courses because of his voracious passion for teaching students and the passion for the subject matter itself—his life’s work. He was always so full of life and reminded me a lot of a real-life Gandalf.” This uniting of his work and his life is one of the many things his colleagues will remember the most about him.
Dr. Richard Harp
Chair, UNLV Department of English
From Dr. Timothy Erwin:
In Memoriam Michael Stitt
In losing Mike Stitt we’ve lost an extraordinarily gentle soul, a man who made us all better than we were. I like to think that his spirit fills every corner of the room here just as he filled countless classrooms with his inspiring and selfless example. Simply by being his steady and rational self, Mike could always be depended upon to bring reason and harmony to a departmental discussion. If he happened to disagree with anyone, it was always with a tactful demurral. He would start with a low clearing of the throat. “Well,” he would say, swallowing hard, “there’s another way of looking at that.” He would pause until you asked him what it was, and then reluctantly he would go on to explain how he saw the matter. And as often as not, Mike’s was the way his colleagues would ultimately come to view things.
Mike was genuinely gifted. He had a wonderful knack for friendship. He was only voluble when he became excited about a subject. Most of those moments, I suspect, he saved for his students. But in an offhand way he would often surprise you with what he knew, and about dozens of things. One morning years ago we took a long drive in my MGB into what is now called the Lake Mead recreational area. In those days there were no ranger stations or toll booths, just two-lane blacktop opening with each curve of the road onto one broad vista after another. We headed out along the North Shore and returned via Lake Mead Boulevard, skirting Frenchman’s Mountain on the way back. The topography of the valley was new to me, but Mike, who had himself only been in town a couple of years, already knew what lay hidden down this wash, or what you could see from that promontory. He eventually persuaded me that the high desert was indeed beautiful, and that its petroglyphs and pictographs, its yuccas hearths and mountain falls, told a fascinating story.
Mike knew his wines well before their study became fashionable, and he was a gourmet cook even before he married his lovely bride. He could turn an ordinary meal into a feast. Who knew that home-made spaetzle and braised rabbit could be so delicious? Mike was foremost an acknowledged expert on mythic and epic literature worldwide. As others have already noted this afternoon, his generous instruction has left, and will continue to leave, an indelible imprint on generations of UNLV students. The project he was to complete this year was an investigation into the figure of the dragon in folklore from the far East to ancient Greece. Beowulf concludes with the slaying of a dragon, we recall, and my guess is that it was the ending of that work which got Mike started. Although inevitably serpentine, dragons differ remarkably from East to West. The European dragon as depicted in the legend of St. George is winged, bloodthirsty, and fearsome; the Asian dragon familiar from the costumes worn by dancers during Chinese New Year’s Day parades, is benign but unruly. Mike would no doubt have tamed both creatures with ease in this new book of his, getting them to lie down together like lambs, to speak easily with one another about common values across cultural difference, and to differ reasonably about their respective traditions. What a wonderful colleague! What a sweet, sweet man.
Dr. Timothy Erwin
Professor of English