Timothy Shutt

For eighteen years Professor Timothy Baker Shutt has taught at Kenyon College in rural Gambier, Ohio, famed for its splendid teaching, for its literary tradition, and for its unwavering commitment to the liberal arts. No teacher at Kenyon has ever been more often honored, both by the college and by his students, for his exceptional skills in the classroom and as a lecturer. Professor Shutt’s courses in Kenyon’s interdisciplinary Integrated Program in Humane Studies and in the Department of English alike are always heavily oversubcribed, and he lectures on Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, the Bible and the Greek historians, Virgil and Dante every year to a packed house.

Shutt is a native of Ohio, raised in Michigan and schooled in Connecticut, where he was honored as an All-American swimmer during his high school years at the Hotchkiss School, and devoted much of his time to drama. He majored in English as undergraduate at Yale (’72). After three years at St. Mark’s School of Texas, where he taught English and History---and coached swimming---Shutt went on to graduate school in English, specializing in medieval literature and the history of ideas at the University of Virginia as a du Pont Fellow. After earning his Ph.D. in 1984, Shutt spent two further years at Virginia as Mellon Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, and took a position at Kenyon in 1986, where he has taught happily ever since, deeply enjoying his contacts with his students and the peaceful life of the Ohio countryside.