George Armour Craig (November 15, 1914 – January 29, 2002) was a long-time professor of English and, at the end of his career, the acting president of

Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher educatio ...

Life

Craig was born on November 15, 1914, in

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

, where he attended the

Hawken School Hawken School is an independent, coeducational, college preparatory day school in Northeast Ohio. Hawken currently has two main campuses, the Lower and Middle Schools in Lyndhurst and the Upper School in Chester Township, plus a third, an urb ...

. A member of the

Alpha Delta Phi Alpha Delta Phi (), commonly known as Alpha Delt, ADPhi, A-Delt, or ADP, is a North American Greek-letter social college fraternity. Alpha Delta Phi was originally founded as a literary society by Samuel Eells in 1832 at Hamilton College in Cli ...

fraternity, he graduated

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal a ...

from Amherst College in 1937, and subsequently studied English at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

receiving an M.A. in 1938 and a Ph.D. in 1947. Craig married Margaret Ball, who died in 1996, and the couple had two children, daughter Sara Margaret Ballantine and son James Ball Craig. He died at 87 on Tuesday, January 29, 2002, after a long illness in

Hanover, New Hampshire Hanover is a town located along the Connecticut River in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States. As of the 2020 census, its population was 11,870. The town is home to the Ivy League university Dartmouth College, the U.S. Army Corps of Eng ...

, where he had retired.

Career

Craig taught in the English Department at Amherst from 1940 to 1985. In 1983, after the untimely death of President Julian H. Gibbs, he became acting president for 15 months. During this time, he oversaw the abolition of campus fraternities, following a white paper of a few years earlier that had made the recommendation. Craig's areas of specialty were 17th- and 19th-century English literature. Along with the late Theodore Baird, Craig was instrumental in promoting and sustaining the famous required freshman composition course at Amherst. One of six teachers honored at the White House in 1980, his former student, the poet

Richard Wilbur Richard Purdy Wilbur (March 1, 1921 – October 14, 2017) was an American poet and literary translator. One of the foremost poets of his generation, Wilbur's work, composed primarily in traditional forms, was marked by its wit, charm, and gentle ...

(Amherst College 1942), said Craig had taught him “not only to be fiercely attentive to texts, but also to watch what we said and wrote.... Armour Craig was forever asking the embarrassing question, ‘What do you mean?’”

References

Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Amherst College faculty Amherst College alumni 1914 births 2002 deaths Presidents of Amherst College Hawken School alumni 20th-century American academics {{US-English-academic-bio-stub