12/08/2022
Dear colleagues,
With the news that our dear colleague Christian Smith died last Saturday, we have been mourning the loss of a role model, brilliant scholar and friend.
We would like to share our colleague's Evelyn Gajoswski's tribute to Christian here:
"I am saddened to let you know that Christian Smith passed away in his sleep on the morning of Sat., 6 Aug. 2022. He is survived by his partner, Annie Barker, in Berlin and by family members in Los Angeles. He earned his PhD in the Department of English and Comparative Studies at the University of Warwick, where he worked as a Teaching Fellow. He was awarded an Honorary Shakespeare Research Fellowship at Kingston University London. Routledge recently published his monograph, Shakespeare’s Influence on Karl Marx: The Shakespearean Roots of Marxism (2022). He co-edited a Karl Marx bicentennial special issue of the journal, Shakespeare, and contributed the chapter, “Marxist studies,” to The Arden Research Handbook of Contemporary Shakespeare Criticism (2021, 2022). He was also active in many professional associations: SAA (Shakespeare Assn. of America), ESRA (European Shakespeare Research Assn.), BSA (British Shakespeare Assn.), MLA (Modern Language Assn. of America), and Kingston Shakespeare, having co-organized and co-led several paper panels and research seminars in recent years. His authoritative, vigorous, and spirited presence at these meetings will be dearly missed."
Christian Smith was also one of our most brilliant authors, so we would also like to share his article “The point is to change it”: The Imperative for Activist Literary Studies", which was published in our special issue titled "English Literary Studies Today: From Theory to Activism".
His reliable, vigorous, & spirited presence will be dearly missed.
https://doi.org/10.14198/raei.2020.33.06
