Sad news

Prof. Bruce Stovel, one of my mentors at the U of A, died yesterday morning. He had just retired last year, which would make him around 65 or 66 years old (much too young to die, in my estimation).

Bruce was initially my supervisor when I started at the U of A, when my project was still about Jane Austen and popular culture. He was also my assigned teaching mentor during first year, someone I could go to with any teaching questions. Our pairing was not coincidental; thinking it would be best for me to work with someone I already knew, he'd asked the GTA Supervisor for me since we'd already met a couple of times. Bruce was an active teaching mentor. He voluntarily went through my first set of essays to be sure that my marks were on par with the department's expectations, and was always accessible by e-mail to answer any odd, last-minute questions that came up. He was generous with his time and his experience.

Bruce was also instrumental in my getting published for the first time. He strongly encouraged me to submit my term paper for his Austen seminar to Persuasions for publication, and was thrilled that it got accepted. I know I would have eventually published something at some time, but getting the article in my second year was a big high.

Bruce was well liked and well respected by students and staff alike. He was always encouraging and lovely to chat with. Though he was no longer my supervisor (it was a very amicable and mutual split), he was my first academic mentor in the PhD (and, frankly, in grad school) and I looked forward to sharing news of milestones such as my first job and my first book with him. The last time I saw Bruce was at the Jane Austen conference in Tucson, where I went to his talk and he went to mine. We talked about my paper later and he seemed really taken with the ideas in it. It made me feel more like his colleague than his student.

It seems like I'm too young to have one of mentors die before I've even finished my PhD. As far as I know he wasn't sick. He'd talked about doing a few laps in the hotel pool at the Tucson conference. The news was very sudden and a lot of people were shocked.

I was very very fond of him.

I am going to miss him very much.