No single voice can hope to express what Jim Berlin meant to us professionally and personally. We at Purdue were fortunate to have worked with him closely for seven years, but Jim was a colleague, friend, and inspiration to many others as well. He shared himself—his time, his support, his ideas—not only with close friends but also with those in the field whose papers he heard at conferences or whom he met in bus or plane stations. This piece gathers together excerpts from tributes offered at the Purdue Faculty Senate and at the memorial services at Purdue and the CCCC.

A Selection from the Memorial Resolution for Jim Berlin, Purdue Faculty Senate

Our colleague Jim Berlin died suddenly of a heart attackon February 2, 1994, after he returned home from his daily jog on the streets of West Lafayette. Surviving immediate family members are his wife Sandy and his sons Chris and Dan, both of whom are students at West Lafayette High School.

Jim was a valued member of the rhetoric and composition Ph.D. pro­gram within the Department of English and a respected figure of national prominence in the field of rhetoric and composition. Two published books helped him build his reputation as a leading rhetoric theorist and historian: Writing Instruction in l9th-Century American Colleges (Southern Illinois University Press, 1984) and Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1 985 (Southern Illinois University Press, 1987). He published numerous articles in journals such as College English and Pre/Text and contributed essays to several major collections. This work, together with his co-edited book on Cultural Studies in the English Classroom (Heinemann­ Boynton/Cook, 1993), established him as the primary theorist and leading spokesperson for the cultural studies movement in composition. He was a frequent visiting speaker at other universities, known for his intense but humorous presentations.

Jim’s interest in cultural studies arose from his keen sense of social mission, both as a teacher and as a citizen. He had a vision of a truly democratic America, where all citizens would fully participate in civic affairs and would share power equally and fairly. He saw the English curriculum—which influences nearly everybody—as a key vehicle for accomplishing this goal. At the time of his death, Jim was finishing a third major book—Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Re-Figuring English Studies (NCTh Press)—that will be published in 1994 or 1995. In this last book Jim reconstructs the history of English studies, showing how the cultural studies curriculum can help resolve the century-old split between “rhetoric” and “poetics” and how that curriculum can contribute not only to improving students’ writing skills but also to helping them become truly thoughtful and literate citizens.

Jim was born in 1942 in Hamtramck, Michigan. The oldest of seven children, he attended St. Florian high School in Hamtramck and distin­guished himself there by earning All-State honors in both football and basketball. He went to Central Michigan University on a football scholarship, receiving his B.A. and graduating summa cum laude in 1964. He was an elementary school teacher in Flint and Detroit before returning to graduate school in 1969 to work on advanced degrees in English. He received both the M.A. and the Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, finishing in 1975. In 1975 he accepted a position as an assistant professor of composition at Wichita State University. From there, he went to the University of Cincinnati, where he served as Director of Freshman English from 1981 to 1985. He held visiting appointments at the University of Texas and at Penn State University before coming to Purdue as professor of English in 1987. James Porter, Purdue University 

Tributes from Colleagues, Students, and Former Students

In 1978, I directed an NEH seminar at Carnegie Mellon. The focus of the seminar was on rhetorical invention.... Jim became a member of that seminar along with nine other talented people.... All of them began giving birth to a very unusual journal called PrelText. Three of that wonderful group of people are no longer with us. That is a great loss to the discipline; it is a great loss to us. Richard Young, Carnegie Mellon University

 JB was catching; his laughter and critiques were catching. Jim and I were in transference together. We perpetually argued about what was needed and desired to be thought and done in our field of rhetoric, especially the history of rhetoric. The argument started between us in 1978 when we were NEH fellows working with Dick Young at Carnegie Mellon. In our arguments, I cannot stress enough, JB was unbelievably supportive of me. How to explain that and now how to live without such support? I have lost over 50 percent of my audience—the time it took working and planning and understanding what I was attempting to talk and write about. He’s for me irreplaceable, and obviously the same to so many of us. Without Jim, my talking and thinking and writing will no doubt change. We wanted to change but not this kind of change. Victor Vitanza, University of Texas at Arlington

When I heard the news about Jim I sent a message on E-mail for people to communicate with me encounters they had had with Jim. I’d like to share just a couple of those with you. ... One person told me a story about a seminar in which Jim was participating at Texas when he was there and Jim had been trying to make a point about social constructionism to some reluctant Texas graduate students. And this graduate student recounted having asked a question in frustration: “Well, does rhetoric make airplanes fly?” and Jim said: “Yes, damn it!” Another person said: “It’s easy to be a hot shot scholar. It’s not so easy to keep one’s perspective in the process, to remain personable, humble, approachable in the bargain.” Jim was a rare and wonderful individual. Sharon Crowley, University of Iowa

To me, Jim Berlin’s life can best be characterized by its intensity. He worked intensely, he argued intensely, he partied intensely, and he loved his family and friends intensely. And Jim’s intensity was infectious, encouraging all who knew him to work, argue, party, and love more intensely than we might have otherwise. The conversations Jim and I had about teaching and teacher preparation and his efforts to define our theoretical positions and the pedagogies they imply have challenged my thinking and inspired me to the work I’m most proud of. Like many others who worked with Jim, who read his work, who knew him, I find myself influenced by him in countless ways. Irwin Weiser, Purdue University

I feel very much in need of a mourning ritual because I am still having a very hard time grasping the fact that Jim is dead.... I am having trouble coming to terms with this because I didn’t realize how much I relied on his work and on the example of his work, both in its theoretical rigor (I think it gave me courage to think about things that I might not have ventured without that work being there) and also in its passionate commitment to social justice, which I think is something that is easy to make fun of or to make fun of yourself for feeling. The fact that Jim never wavered in that commitment was very sustaining to me, and I didn’t realize until after he was gone how much I just relied on him being there, sort of like a nuclear reactor putting out energy, putting out this solid base of energy and commitment that I was drawing on without really being aware of it. I really needed that energy, and I don’t know what I’m going to do now that I don’t have it anymore. I haven’t figured that out yet. This is just a terrible loss. Patricia Bizzell, Holy Cross College

Jim and I corresponded frequently. I loved those dashed out, full-of-energy, handwritten letters—rough, rough—yet filled with that wonderful laugh booming out through his words. One story I remember about Jim took place at the 1988 WPA Summer Conference in Newport, Rhode Island, where all of the robber barons’ summer cottages were. Seven of us after this conference rented a fifty-two foot ketch and went out into the bay for the day. Jim took the tiller of that yacht and I got pictures of him doing that. He was obviously enjoying himself. I sent him a snapshot of himself piloting that yacht, a Marxist! I told him that was my blackmail picture. He wrote back saying: “If it ever comes to a showdown, I’m going to explain that that snapshot was taken at a cardboard set in an amusement park—innocent amusement, not decadence. I treasure this picture and what fun we had that day sailing. Theresa Enos, University ofArizona

When news of Jim’s death reached me there was a letter from Jim in my mailbox. It was a letter from me to him and we had spoken a lot in the month before he died and I thought I’d be talking with him for another twenty years because I needed it. I’m not sure if he needed it, but I needed it and I just assumed that he’d be around me like an oak tree and his disappearance was a terrible blow. I’ve grieved terribly for it and have cried a lot and have been overwhelmed by grief.... Jim was a certain kind of man that in the Yiddish tradition we call a mensch and Jewish boys grow up hearing a lot from their fathers: “Be a mensch, be a mensch.” And we keep looking at them for the profile of the mensch to figure out how to do it, which is not as easy to see. But Jim was a certain kind of a man.... Jim was extremely capable and never made a big deal about it; his accomplishments rested easily on his shoulders, which meant that it never was a burden on us who dealt with him because he wasn’t throwing weight around. He just carried the weight very graciously and this is an achievement given how ferociously socialized all of us are, but especially men, becoming competitive careerists in the way we deal with each other. Although Jim was taller than me, bigger than me, and stronger than me, when I talked with him I never felt that we were involved in a macho verbal wrestling match, which was a really wonderful experience about relating to him as a man in the academy. Ira Shor, City University of New York

Many people have talked here about him being attacked, but he attacked a lot as well and we shouldn’t forget that. When we are at CCCC, I feel that we remember Jim Berlin best if we find the courage to speak our deepest convictions because that is the way that we will change this profession and that is what Jim wanted to do. Patricia Sullivan, Purdue University

We all had our different kinds of conversations with Jim Berlin. With some he talked mostly theory, with others teaching or sports or the current squabbles in the profession or politics, and with all of us he talked about his family. With me Jim talked, of course, about his family and about the upper peninsula of Michigan, which he loved very much. But mostly with me he talked about politics; I don’t mean party politics, but if you knew him at all well, you’d know that’s the case. When he found out, for example, that I was trying to bring a faculty union to Michigan Tech, he wrote and called regularly to tell me how important that work was and to warn me that if we didn’t win, it might be bad for me but, accepting that, I should go on. We didn’t win and it hasn’t been bad for me. But Jim’s warnings were fair and appropriate, because they were about friendship and institutional reality. In the last year, when we talked politics, Jim expressed true frustration that maybe he wasn’t doing enough to really make a difference in a world where people are hungry and homeless and cold. In one of our last phone conversations, he talked about how teaching and talking were just not enough.... When you go home [from the CCCC], if you will give something of yourselves to those organizations [homeless shelters and food banks and soup kitchens], you will make a better world for Jim’s sons, and you will make a better world for each other. And that is what Jim Berlin’s life meant to me. Diana George, Michigan Technological University

I always responded to Jim as a physical presence; I wanted to be close to him physically, and I’ve had the same feeling that Sharon has had walking down the halls. I’m just sure that I’m seeing him and then he disappears. I’m also learning about my intellectual debt to him by listening to people. Somebody asked me about Jim, somebody who didn’t know Jim and what role he played in my life. I tried to recall a time in my professional life when I didn’t know of or know about or rely on Jim Berlin, and I couldn’t think of that moment. The first immediate contact I had with him was at the time I gave my first paper at RSA in 1986 at Arlington, and, as so many of you have recounted, he came to me after the paper and said how much he enjoyed it and how much we needed people doing that kind of work in our profession. What a great thing to hear just in the beginning.... Jim was very blunt and very funny and he would say things about people that really cut to the heart of the matter. He did have allegiances; he did have opinions and views that he defended in a very strong way.... Jim continued to grow and change as an intellectual and I remember an image of him walking down the hall saying: “Can you imagine this—I’m forty-five years old and they’ve kept Marx away from me all this time. I finally got it; I finally got it.” Susan Jarratt, Miami University of Ohio

I don’t remember which CCCC it was and I don’t remember which year it was, but Jim looked at me and said: “I love Composition and Resistance, I love being part of the project, but one of the things I regret is how many times I appear in the transcripts; look, I appear more than anyone else. I can’t help it. I just want to get involved. I just want to talk.” And I told him a story that happened in the graduate seminar I was teaching. We were reading Compo­sition and Resistance, and one student pointed out, “Look how many times Jim Berlin talks.” Then another student said, “But look, eighty percent of the time he speaks, it is to encourage other people to talk.” Mark Hurlbert Indiana University of Pennsylvania

He opened spaces for me, for my students, for the lives I touched. He didn’t just open spaces; he opened them for critique and revisioning.... He opened a space for my work, which did not require a sacrificing of my passion. And he infused the lives of his colleagues, his students, his family members and his whole profession in the same way, daring us to take our work as labor and to wear faces that mark us as knowing the pain of working through, rather than always already and repeatedly acting out, the theoretical, pedagogical, prac­tical, structural, and personal injustices of our lives and our world, calling us (can you hear him?) to open spaces for the possibility of one another’s existence as we go. Nancy DeJoy, Nazareth College

When I think of Jim, I think of laughter. But I want to talk about another part of him that has been important tome. I also remember his patience. He could gauge so well when to critique and when to give us space to work through a problem at our own pace and our own time. Lam grateful to Jim for that. He gave us space to think, and I realize now much more than I did in graduate school how seldom we are given that gift and how important it is. Susan Carlton, Pacific Lutheran University

Not only the field but the program at Purdue has an enormous hole that cannot be filled. Jim gave support to those of us who did work that was marginal to the field, that did work where the field has not yet come. Myrna Harrienger, Texas Tech University

Jim joined the picket line when our Tippecanoe Environmental Council protested toxic water pollution and inadequate dump cleanups along the Wabash River, and he went to our AFT teachers union meetings, too. He had a strong sense of community, championed student rights, and decried indi­vidualism. Probably, he would nowwant and expect us to link arms and work as comrades, fighting injustice. Karen Griggs, Purdue University

Purdue graduate students saw a side of Jim that few others have been fortunate enough to see. As much as Jim roared against the power of oppressive hegemony, those who knew Jim knew that he loved life. Jim was directing my dissertation when he passed away. His physical presence will be missed greatly, but his intellectual presence will remain in my work and the work of many of his students and colleagues for a long, long time. Bruce McComiskey, Purdue University

His passion made him a powerful teacher and mentor to me. He pushed me to do my best work, and though we often disagreed, I always felt like his colleague as much as his student. He gave me a lot of opportunities, a lot of space to learn, and a lot of advice—from how to write a proposal to how many glasses of wine I’m allowed when I go on campus interviews. Lisa Langstra at, Purdue University

The dialogue that I shared with Dr. Berlin was sometimes tense, but always instructive.... This dialogue, that began the day he invited me to come up to his office to discuss certain ideas, continued throughout my studies in his courses and culminated in the plan for a CCCC presentation. Then tragedy struck. I mourn the loss of my teacher, ally, and friend. I miss his physical presence, but I am also so thankful to have known him. His brilliance and enduring spirit leave a permanent impression on my soul and serve as a constant reminder that I should first be consistent and believe in action and, second, continue to challenge myself and my students with projects that reflect his image, the relentless critique of the material, social and political influences. Anne Marie Mann Simpkins, Purdue University

James Berlin, thou shalt be sorely missed in our memories for many years to come. Edward P.J. Corbett Ohio State University