Summer 2014
Around the Quads
In Memoriam: Robert L. Belknap ’57 SIPA, ’59 GSAS, Professor Emeritus
By Karl Daum ’15
Robert L. Belknap ’57 SIPA, ’59 GSAS, Professor Emeritus of Russian in the Department of Slavic Languages, a long-time Literature Humanities instructor and a former acting Dean of the College, died on March 17, 2014. He was 84.
Belknap was regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts on Russian literature, particularly Dostoevsky. He authored two major studies, The Structure of The Brothers Karamazov (1967, reprinted 1989) and The Genesis of The Brothers Karamazov: The Aesthetics, Ideology, and Psychology of Making a Text (1990). Together with Columbia colleague Richard F. Kuhns Jr. ’55 GSAS, Belknap also wrote Tradition and Innovation: General Education and the Reintegration of the University (1977).
Belknap was born in New York City on December 23, 1929, and graduated from Princeton in 1951. He began teaching at Columbia in 1956 following Army service and earned a Ph.D. in 1959 from GSAS in Slavic languages and literatures. He also studied at the University of Paris and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) State University.
Belknap began teaching Lit Hum in 1960 and continued for nearly every year thereafter. He chaired Lit Hum in 1963, 1967–70 and again for two years in the 1980s. He also taught courses in Russian and comparative literature and literary theory and major Asian classics. He was acting Dean of the College in 1975 and was associate dean for student affairs, chair of the Slavic languages department and director of the Russian (now Harriman) Institute. In 2000–01, Belknap was honored for distinguished service to the Core Curriculum. He was presented the Mark Van Doren Award for Teaching in 1980 and a Society of Columbia Graduates’ Great Teacher Award in 2010.
In fall 2013, Core lecturer Anne Diebel Ph.D. ’13 GSAS was appointed the inaugural Robert Belknap Core Faculty Fellow, a named lectureship endowed by Belknap’s former student Jay Lindsey ’75. Teaching Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature: Essays in Honor of Robert L. Belknap was released in February.
Liza Knapp ’85 GSAS, department chair and associate professor of Slavic languages, said, “Bob was a magisterial teacher of literature in true Columbia tradition, a guiding intellect and scholar in the field of Russian literature and a committed educator who devoted his energy and vision to making Columbia an institution to be proud of.”
Belknap is survived by his wife, Cynthia Whittaker; daughters from a previous marriage, Lydia Duff, Ellen ’86 Arch. and Abigail Krueger; stepchildren, Erica and Andrew Whittaker; and sisters, Louise Belknap Carter and Barbara. A memorial service is scheduled for St. Paul’s Chapel on Friday, September 12, at 2 p.m.