校友为金博尔·金教授职位筹集资金
They want to honor the memory of a beloved English professor whose lessons changed their lives.
从20世纪60年代末到21世纪初, in the weeks leading up to class registration at Carolina, a piece of advice was whispered through generations of Tar Heels, like the quiet sharing of a family’s secret recipe. 为即将到来的学期做准备的学生们, this advice may have come from a friend or older sibling — or in the later years, 即使是来自父母.
It went something like this: Find out what class English professor Kimball King will teach next semester and enroll in it.
For John Preyer ’90, it was a friend who shared the “take the class” advice. 普莱尔一开始反对, protesting that he was a political science major with no use for 20th-century British theater.
“I said, ‘I don’t want to read a bunch of British plays,’” Preyer recalled. “My friend said, ‘Just trust me, you’re going to love him.“我注册的时候，班级已经满了, but Kimball ended up making a spot for me — and that changed my life.”
培养对文学的热爱
Arriving at Greenlaw Hall each morning dressed neatly in a jacket and tie, King carried himself with a look and manner that suggested the Ivy League style of his hometown of Princeton, 新泽西. A student wandering into his class for the first time might mistakenly expect a more traditional approach to teaching, a professor intent on imparting his own considerable knowledge while spending no time cultivating enjoyment of or connection with the material.
But King’s teaching style was precisely the opposite of that. For King, personal responses to art and literature were all that mattered. 学生们崇拜金的平易近人, for his interest in their literary tastes and for his insistence that great works of literature were created to fill human beings just like them with feelings that were worthy of deep exploration.
A group of former students are now fundraising to create an endowed professorship in honor of King, 谁在2019年去世. 有了更多的礼物， Dr. J. 金博尔·金杰出教授 will support a faculty member whose teaching and scholarship cultivate appreciation of and deeper connection with literature.
在过去的25年里，马丁·路德·金也曾带领暑期旅行团前往伦敦, 帮助超过一个人,000 students discover the power of productions at the city’s many world-class theaters. The list of plays ranged from Shakespeare classics to avant-garde productions by contemporary playwrights.
King was well-known and respected among many luminaries of modern theater. 一次伦敦之旅, Brandon Lowery ’99 recalled seeing a production of Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” soon after the film “Shakespeare in Love” had catapulted Stoppard to a new level of fame. Stoppard was there that night and came over to greet King, who insisted on an impromptu discussion with his students. Other students remembered meetings and discussions with writers and actors including Sam Shepard, 大卫·马梅特和约翰·马尔科维奇.
“他会非常自豪的。”
King’s son Scott said that the movement to create an endowed professorship is the ideal way to honor his father.
“We would love to see his name live on in association with the University he devoted his life to, 他也会为此感到骄傲,他说. “他对教学非常投入, and his hope was always that he could help people appreciate the range of great writing and drama and art out there in the world.”
To support King’s legacy of teaching excellence, make a gift to the Dr. J. 金伯尔金杰出教授基金.
