ITHACA, NY (WSKG) – Nobel Laureate and novelist Toni Morrison is being remembered on Cornell’s campus as a graduate and a professor.
Morrison died earlier this week at the age of 88.
She earned a Master’s degree in English from the University in 1955 and was an A. D. White Professor-at-Large from 1997-2003. She also visited and lectured at Cornell several times.
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File
FILE – In this May 29, 2012 file photo, author Toni Morrison receives her Medal of Freedom award during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
It is Morrison’s generosity with Cornell students that Anne Adams remembers best. She was Morrison’s faculty host during her professorship.
“The importance of the imagination,” Adams said. “In questioning and thinking about American society and how the imagination and memory are critical to that. Those are the things she enjoyed talking to students about, engaging with students about.”
Adams is a retired professor at the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell. She also worked with a German publisher on the translation of several of Morrison’s novels.
The Pulitzer Prize winner’s ties to Cornell are something Riché Richardson said will have lasting importance to students and faculty. She is a professor at the Africana Center where she teaches a course on Morrison’s novels.
“Those connections are very treasured,” said Richardson. “And her impact intellectually on this campus, I think on the world of literature is definitely continually felt.”
Toni Morrison last visit to Cornell was in 2013.
Full disclosure: Cornell University is a WSKG underwriter.