Anna Lisa Crone

[Donna Orwin]

Lisa Crone had a gift for friendship, and I am sure that I am only one of many who benefited from this.  We were together at Harvard Graduate School in the 1970s, but we became close friends only when I spent a year in Chicago, 1991-92.  Lisa’s daughter Lily babysat my sons, and I had the privilege of participating in a seminar that Lisa was running on Russian intellectual history.  It was one of the peak intellectual experiences of my career.  Lisa’s knowledge of Russian and her attention to detail and style as we read Kireevsky, Khomyakov, Soloviev, and other thinkers provided an exemplary model of teaching and scholarship for me and the students.  I was also astonished at the amount of effort that Lisa spent on her graduate students, who responded by writing with her in large numbers.  Among her other accomplishments, she trained many of the young scholars in our discipline.  As memorable to me personally as the classes were our long conversations after them, in which!
  Lisa’s wide-ranging knowledge of our field, her modesty, and her love of discussion deeply impressed me. I last spoke to Lisa in April, when she was set to battle yet another resurgence of the cancer that had struck her in 1994.  Despite the direness of her situation, which she reported in detail, she offered to put up my son, who was visiting the university, and we talked shop.  Concerned as ever with her beloved daughter and husband, she was also still thinking about the Chicago program to which she had contributed so much, and especially about the many students whom she had mentored.  

________________________________
Donna Tussing Orwin, Professor
Department of Slavic Languages and Literature
University of Toronto
President, Tolstoy Society
Alumni Hall 415
121 St. Joseph St.
Toronto, ON
Canada M5S 1J4
tel 416-926-1300, ext. 3316
fax 416-926-2076

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------