Kaster and Knoepflmacher receive Behrman Award

By Ruth Stevens on May 8, 2007, 5:18 p.m.

Robert Kaster, the Kennedy Foundation Professor of Latin Language and Literature, and Ulrich Knoepflmacher, the William and Annie S. Paton Foundation Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature, have received Princeton's Behrman Award for distinguished achievement in the humanities. They were honored at a May 5 dinner.

Kaster joined the classics faculty in 1997 after teaching for 22 years at the University of Chicago. He has taught and written primarily in the areas of Roman rhetoric, the history of ancient education and Roman ethics.

His book "Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity" earned the Goodwin Award of Merit for its outstanding contribution to classical scholarship from the American Philological Association in 1991. Kaster's other books include "The Tradition of the Text of the 'Aeneid' in the Ninth Century," "Suetonius: 'De Grammaticis et Rhetoribus,'" "Emotion, Restraint and Community in Ancient Rome" and "Cicero: The Speech on Behalf of Publius Sestius."

Knoepflmacher earned a Ph.D. in English from Princeton in 1961. He returned to teach in the University's English department in 1979 after 18 years at the University of California-Berkeley. His interests include Victorian literature and culture, 19th-century poetry, the English novel, and English and American children's books.

Knoepflmacher is the author of seven books on Victorian subjects, including "Emily Bronte's 'Wuthering Heights': A Study" and "Ventures Into Childland: Victorians, Fairy Tales and Femininity." He also edited or co-edited 10 other books, including "The Endurance of 'Frankenstein'" and "Forbidden Journeys: Fairy Tales and Fantasies by Victorian Women Writers." He recently has finished an illustrated children's book and is completing a memoir called "Oruro: Growing Up Jewish in the Andes." Knoepflmacher, who plans to transfer to emeritus status this summer, will receive a lifetime achievement award from the Children's Literature Association in June.

Bestowed annually, the Behrman Award was established in 1975 by a gift from the late Howard Behrman, a physician and book collector. 

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