James Hampton Kirkland
James Hampton Kirkland | |
---|---|
![]() Portrait by Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer (1938) | |
2nd Chancellor of Vanderbilt University | |
In office 1893–1937 | |
Preceded by | Landon Garland |
Succeeded by | Oliver Carmichael |
Personal details | |
Born | September 9, 1859 Spartanburg, South Carolina |
Died | August 5, 1939 Ontario, Canada | (aged 79)
Spouse | Mary Henderson |
Children | 1 daughter |
Alma mater | Wofford College (BA) Leipzig University (PhD) |
Signature | ![]() |
James Hampton Kirkland (September 9, 1859 – August 5, 1939) was an American Latinist and university administrator. He served as the second chancellor of Vanderbilt University from 1893 to 1937.
Early life
[edit]James Hampton Kirkland was born and raised in Spartanburg, South Carolina.[1][2] His father, William Clark, was a Methodist pastor.[1] His mother, Virginia Lawson Galluchat Kirkland, lived in Abilene, Texas, by the early 1880s.[2]
Kirkland was educated at Wofford College in Spartanburg.[2] Two of his teachers were William Malone Baskervill and Charles Forster Smith.[2] It was Smith who suggested to Kirkland that he should study in Germany.[2] As a result, he left the United States in 1883.[2]
Kirkland enrolled at Leipzig University, where he studied "Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and Anglo-Saxon".[2] He received a PhD from Leipzig University in 1885.[2] His PhD thesis was published in 1886 as a pamphlet entitled A Study of the Anglo-Saxon Poem, the Harrowing of Hell (Grein's Hollenfahrt Christi).[3][4] It was an attempt to ascertain whether Cynewulf was the author of a poem entitled The Harrowing of Hell.[4] Meanwhile, Kirkland spent a semester at Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, followed by a few months in Geneva, Switzerland, where he started learning French.[2] He also visited Italy, Paris, and London.[2]
Career
[edit]Kirkland was appointed Professor of Latin at Vanderbilt University in 1886.[1][2] Two of his colleagues were Baskervill and Smith, his former professors at Wofford.[2] Another colleague was Milton W. Humphreys, a Confederate veteran who also received a PhD from the University of Leipzig.[2] Two more colleagues had also studied at the University of Leipzig: Waller Deering and Alexander R. Hohlfeld.[2] He edited the works of Horace, a Roman lyric poet in a collection entitled Horace: Satires and Epistles, which he published in 1893.[3]
Meanwhile, Kirkland was appointed as chancellor in 1893.[5] He was only thirty-three years old.[2] According to Professor Edwin Mims, who served as the Chair of the English Department from 1912 to 1942, he was chosen for "his temperament, his training, and his personality."[6]
In 1895, Kirkland was a co-founder of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.[7] He served as its Secretary and Treasurer until 1908.[7] He was also a member of Phi Delta Kappa.[8]
Meanwhile, as the Chancellor of Vanderbilt University, Kirkland upheld the morale on campus when Old Main, a historic building on campus, caught fire.[1] Under his leadership, classes resumed the next day.[1] Nearly a decade later, in 1914, he oversaw the separation of Vanderbilt University from the Methodist Church.[1] By the mid-1920s, he moved the Vanderbilt University Medical School to a new building on campus, thanks to donations from the Rockefeller Foundation and the General Education Board.[1]
Kirkland published God and the New Knowledge with his colleague Edwin Mim and Oswald Eugene Brown in 1926.[3]
Kirkland remained Chancellor during the Great Depression. In 1933, he was forced to lower faculty salaries.[9] By June 1937, the budget had improved and he suggested raising the salaries back to their original levels.[9] He retired as chancellor on July 1, 1937.[8]
Personal life
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c3/Mary-henderson-kirkland-by-lutz.jpg/150px-Mary-henderson-kirkland-by-lutz.jpg)
Kirkland married Mary Henderson.[2] They had one daughter, Elizabeth. Kirkland summered near Ahmic Lake in Canada with his family and his friend, Abraham Flexner, from the 1910s.[10]
Death and legacy
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Vandy-Kirkland-2.jpg/150px-Vandy-Kirkland-2.jpg)
Kirkland died on August 5, 1939, in Ontario, Canada, where he was vacationing.[8] Old Main, Vanderbilt's administration building, was renamed Kirkland Hall in his honor.[1] Kirkland's papers are kept at Vanderbilt University Archives and Special Collections.
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f g h "Vanderbilt University: James H. Kirkland 1893-1937". Archived from the original on June 7, 2011. Retrieved April 28, 2010.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Becker, Anja (November 2008). "Southern Academic Ambitions Meet German Scholarship: The Leipzig Networks of Vanderbilt University's James H. Kirkland in the Late Nineteenth Century". The Journal of Southern History. 74 (4): 855–886. doi:10.2307/27650317. JSTOR 27650317.
- ^ a b c James Hampton Kirkland, HathiTrust
- ^ a b Garnett, James M. (1886). "Reviewed Work: A Study of the Anglo-Saxon Poem, the Harrowing of Hell (Grein's Hollenfahrt Christi) by James Hampton Kirkland". The American Journal of Philology. 7 (4): 520. doi:10.2307/287218. hdl:2027/njp.32101067689495. JSTOR 287218.
- ^ Paul K. Conkin, Gone with the Ivy: A Biography of Vanderbilt University Knoxville, Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press, 1985, p. 94
- ^ Edwin Mims, Chancellor Kirkland of Vanderbilt, Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Press, 1940, p. 185
- ^ a b Holland, Holton (1945). "Establishing and Improving Standards for Secondary Education in the South". The High School Journal. 28 (1): 31–48. JSTOR 40362394.
- ^ a b c "Keeping Abreast of the Times". The Phi Delta Kappan. 22 (1): 21. September 1939. JSTOR 20258952.
- ^ a b Bentley, H. Blair (Summer 1984). "Pedagogy in Peril: Education in the Volunteer State During the Depression". Tennessee Historical Quarterly. 43 (2): 181. JSTOR 42626444.
- ^ Robert D. Collins, Ahmic Lake Connections. The Founding Leadership of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee: Eveready Press, 2004