The Penn English Department honors Professor Daniel DeWispelare 

 ——-  Daniel J. DeWispelare, 1983-2024 ——-

After earning a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Penn in 2011, Daniel DeWispelare taught for a year at Bilkent University in Ankara. He was then appointed Assistant Professor in the English Department at George Washington University, where he taught for 12 years. In  2018, he advanced to the rank of Associate Professor with Tenure at GWU.  He died in January, 2024.

Daniel DeWispelare was a scholar and teacher of international 18th and 19th-century literature. He was a true comparatist, prodigiously accomplished in world languages. His book Multilingual Subjects: On Standard English, Its Speakers, and Others in the Long Eighteenth Century  (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017) makes evident DeWispelare’s questing intelligence, his devotion to exploring possibilities for meaning and justice across cultures, and the superb uses to which he put his formidable linguistic expertise. 

Here at Penn, Daniel was known as a quick learner and as an independent, erudite young scholar. Faculty and fellow grad students alike admired his scrupulous research, his insightful writing, and his openness to new ideas. 

Those of us who were lucky enough to count Daniel a friend will always cherish the memory of his gentleness, his curiosity, and his sly humor. Daniel DeWispelare had an extraordinary mind and unusual abilities, but was entirely without pretension. He approached people with generosity and optimism, and he made others feel at ease. He had a superb ability to listen. Despite a long illness and considerable suffering, Daniel always maintained his intellectual exuberance and quiet personal grace.

Professor DeWispelare was a scholar of truly capacious intellectual reach who left behind publications that will remain significant to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century studies. He was a world traveler, a celebrated teacher, and a person whom it was an honor to know. His colleagues at Penn mourn and salute Daniel DeWispelare.

-- Toni Bowers, Professor of English

Professor Daniel DeWispelare’s obituary from the GW Hatchet:

https://gwhatchet.com/2024/02/26/cherished-english-professor-british-romanticism-scholar-dies-at-40/